My rule for writing documentation is as follows: first use of a commonly abbreviated term is written in its complete form, with the acronym or short form in par

My rule for writing documentation is as follows: first use of a commonly abbreviated term is written in its complete form, with the acronym or short form in parentheses. Then, the rest of the text in that same page can freely use the shorter form as needed. So "the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is bla bla... When using FTP, remember to bla bla..." I think that's the most structured and correct way to introduce an acronym. Another style is to use "short form (long)" but "long form (short)" feels better to me (although I'm not a native speaker so maybe I got it the other way around!).