- From: Lachlan Hunt <lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au>
- Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2006 20:49:23 +1100
Jonathan Worent wrote: > > --- Christoph P?per <christoph.paeper at crissov.de> wrote: > >> First off I think the requirement for a |title| is too strict, >> because there are time and space saving abbreviations everyone >> knows -- i.e. either their expansion or their meaning -- that do >> not need an expansion, e.g. "e.g." or "AIDS". Therefore the second >> sentence should use 'may', not 'should'. > > I disagree. There is never a guarantee that people will know what an > abbreviation stands for, I know what AIDS is but not what it stands > for. If you know what AIDS means, does it really matter that you don't know it stands for "Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome"? Does it really matter you don't know that DNA stands for "Deoxyribonucleic acid", that radar stands for "Radio Detection and Ranging", that i.e. stands for "id est", or that e.g. stands for "exempli gratia"? In most cases, it doesn't. Those abbreviations are so common, that, in the common cases, it really doesn't matter for the reader what their expansions are, their meaning is already understood. In fact, for those cases, it's usually not necessary to even mark it up as an abbreviation (particularly i.e. and e.g.). It all depends on your target audience and the purpose of the content. e.g. Say a news site is reporting some new genetics research and mentions DNA. It's not necessary for the site to provide the expansion. In fact, most people wouldn't have a clue what Deoxyribonucleic acid means (if they can even pronounce it), so providing that expansion would be completely pointless. However, in a scientific article that is trying to explain what DNA is to a scientist, yes it would be useful to supply the expansion. Abbreviation expansions should only be supplied when they help the reader to understand the content, not just because the word happens to be an abbreviation. This online book also provides some very useful information. http://joeclark.org/book/sashay/serialization/Chapter07.html#h2-1340 -- Lachlan Hunt http://lachy.id.au/
Received on Thursday, 2 November 2006 01:49:23 UTC