VP is the short form of *vice-president*, and it is used in two very different places. In politics, especially American politics, the VP is the country's second-highest leader, the person who takes over if the president cannot serve — "the VP will attend the funeral", "who will he pick as his VP?". In business, a VP is a senior manager, one level below the top, usually in charge of one area: VP of Sales, VP of Engineering, VP of Marketing. Note that in big American companies there can be many VPs at once, so the title says "senior", not "second in the whole company". You write it with capital letters and normally with no full stops (VP, though V.P. is also seen), and you say it letter by letter: "vee-pee". It works as a noun on its own ("she made VP last year") and in front of another noun ("the VP candidate"). The plural is VPs. It is informal-to-neutral: fine in speech, in email, on a business card and in headlines, but formal documents usually spell out *Vice President*. One more thing — VP has other meanings in other fields, but in ordinary English this is the one people mean.