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Posted by Harlan Messinger on January 23, 2008, 8:55 am
Please log in for more thread options Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> Scripsit Jon Fairbairn:
>
>> The OED:
>>
>> 3. esp. A shortened form of a spoken word, or written
>> symbol; a part of a word or symbol standing for the
>> whole.
>
> Get a better dictionary, like Merriam-Webster:
ROFL. What audacity.
> "Abbreviation
> 1 : the act or result of abbreviating : abridgment
> 2 : a shortened form of a written word or phrase used in place of the
> whole <amt is an abbreviation for amount>"
In other words, it's the dictionary that has the less comprehensive
definition that you prefer. Oh, but you're probably using the free
version. Let's see what the Merriam Webster Unabridged has to say:
"2 a : a shortened form of a written word or phrase used for brevity in
place of the whole made commonly by omission of letters from one or more
parts of the whole ... often extended to include signs and symbols (as ÷
for divided by, & for and, $ for dollar);"
To forestall any argument based on strict etymological, literal grounds
to the effect that an abbreviation *must* involve
abbreviating--shortening--and not substituting, I will note that under
the same logic, "pájaro", the basic Spanish word for "bird", could only
be used to refer to sparrows (Latin "passer").
Another perspective: suppose the W3C had noted that traditional
abbreviations (shortenings) and substituted symbols are conceptually, if
not formally, the same, serving the same purpose and used in the same
kinds of places (such as table cells where "n/a" might be found in one
cell and a dagger symbol in another, both requiring explanation), and
that the same kinds of general information about them would be useful to
user agents (i.e., what they stand for, how they are to be pronounced,
whether they can be cross-referenced to a glossary), so they viewed them
as one kind of thing that it would make sense to denote with a single
tag. What would they call it? Well, can you think of anything more
appropriate than <abbr>? Or would you expect <abbr_or_symbol>? Or would
you conclude that since (in your view) there isn't a single common word
to describe both kinds of short forms, it would be necessary to come up
with separate tags, not because they would be used to mark up
conceptually different kinds of elements, but because of a shortcoming
in English vocabulary? I don't know about you, but I suspect the outcome
would have been a single tag, <abbr>.
> The OED is obscure here, since if parsed as "(A shortened form of a
> spoken word)", or (written symbol)", it means that any written symbol
> (e.g., "I" when used as a personal pronoun) is an abbreviation. If
> parsed as "A shortened form of ((a spoken word), or (written symbol))",
> it's slightly ungrammatical but makes more sense: in principle, non-word
> symbols may have abbreviations, too.
I agree that the wording is poor. The W3C HTML specification is often
worded more poorly than that, so I suppose we should disregard its
substance as well.
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