My possibly apocryphal understanding is that i18n and l10n both arose due to differences in American and British spellings of both words (z or s in the suffix).

My possibly apocryphal understanding is that i18n and l10n both arose due to differences in American and British spellings of both words (z or s in the suffix). Simplifying “localization/localisation” to l10n saves more than 8 characters it saves 19.