W.Va. is a written short form of West Virginia, one of the fifty states of the United States. You will see it in books, older newspapers, footnotes, and addresses on printed material — anywhere space is tight. It is written only; nobody says 'double-you-vee-ay' out loud. When you read it aloud, you read the full name: West Virginia. The dots matter: this style keeps a full stop after each shortened part, W. for West and Va. for Virginia. Modern American addresses more often use the two-letter postal code WV instead, with no dots and both letters capital, because that is what the post office wants on an envelope. So the two forms split by job: WV on mail and in tables, W.Va. in running text and traditional publications. There is one point of confusion worth naming. West Virginia and Virginia are two separate states. West Virginia broke away during the American Civil War in 1863 because its western counties did not want to leave the Union. So W.Va. and Va. are not the same place, and neither one is part of the other. West Virginia is a small, mountainous, historically coal-mining state; Virginia is bigger, on the coast, and includes the suburbs of Washington DC. Getting these two mixed up is a common mistake even for Americans who live far away.