3 ms·

Don't abbreviate unless you have great confidence that everyone hearing or reading your words shares the same dictionary.

eesmith 4y ago
And this is not the case here? I mean, there's always going to be today's 10,000 [1] who doesn't know what, say, "VB.NET"[2][3] means. [1] https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kwhitefoot https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kwhitefoot [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic_(.NET) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic_(.NET) But explaining or footnoting everything defensively, rather than pointing out misconceptions as they arise, seems excessive. Further, someone may deliberately use a minority definition in order to stress a philosophical point. One valid viewpoint is that a publication is a publication is a publication. A preprint, a blog post, or a peer-reviewed journal publication should be given equal weight as being "published." I'll call this position #1. Another valid point is that some works are incomplete, and may go through multiple drafts before reaching the final, "published" form, which it's best known by, and is likely the most polished of the versions. I'll call this position #2. Often people want feedback, and one way to get feedback is by publishing a preprint. (There are others. I recall reading of a mathematician, about a century ago, who would first publish in his home country, and native language, to get friendly feedback from colleagues, before publishing in English. He's cited for his later publication.) Someone who holds position #1 might fully understand that I use the dictionary with position #2, and still deliberately use position #1 in order to popularize that #1 dictionary. The difference isn't one of confusion or lack of knowledge, but one of viewpoints. Let me be clear - I'm not saying that that's the case here. Instead, my example is meant to show it's not necessarily so simple as "shares the same dictionary" or not.

eesmith 4y ago

And this is not the case here? I mean, there's always going to be today's 10,000 [1] who doesn't know what, say, "VB.NET"[2][3] means. [1] https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kwhitefoot https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kwhitefoot [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic_(.NET) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic_(.NET) But explaining or footnoting everything defensively, rather than pointing out misconceptions as they arise, seems excessive. Further, someone may deliberately use a minority definition in order to stress a philosophical point. One valid viewpoint is that a publication is a publication is a publication. A preprint, a blog post, or a peer-reviewed journal publication should be given equal weight as being "published." I'll call this position #1. Another valid point is that some works are incomplete, and may go through multiple drafts before reaching the final, "published" form, which it's best known by, and is likely the most polished of the versions. I'll call this position #2. Often people want feedback, and one way to get feedback is by publishing a preprint. (There are others. I recall reading of a mathematician, about a century ago, who would first publish in his home country, and native language, to get friendly feedback from colleagues, before publishing in English. He's cited for his later publication.) Someone who holds position #1 might fully understand that I use the dictionary with position #2, and still deliberately use position #1 in order to popularize that #1 dictionary. The difference isn't one of confusion or lack of knowledge, but one of viewpoints. Let me be clear - I'm not saying that that's the case here. Instead, my example is meant to show it's not necessarily so simple as "shares the same dictionary" or not.