{"id":3907,"date":"2023-06-19T01:11:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-19T06:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/?p=3907"},"modified":"2023-05-29T09:24:56","modified_gmt":"2023-05-29T14:24:56","slug":"abbreviations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2023\/06\/abbreviations\/","title":{"rendered":"Abbreviations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>This is another fundamental of written communications that we seem to have forgotten\u2014the humble abbreviation.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let&#8217;s abbreviate:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Jn: John<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>DevSecOps: Development, Security, Operations<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&amp;: and<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>etc: and other similar things<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>USA: United States of America or United States Army or &#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The last item in the list is confusing, but given the context we always know what that means, right? Sorry, we don&#8217;t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I contend that we should not use abbreviations any longer. 98.6% of the abbreviations we use today are not worth the trouble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em><strong>An abbreviation is to be used in a case where we don&#8217;t have enough space to type the full word(s).<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That is a controversial statement. In the days of computers (that&#8217;s us, right?) with word processors and &#8220;powerpoints&#8221; and all this wrap around text automatically and easily scaled font sizes and such (gosh, a lot of things to help us), we have plenty of space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Why do most of us abbreviate so much? We don&#8217;t want to type the words. &#8220;USA&#8221; is much easier to type than &#8220;United States of America.&#8221; It is so much work to type those four words instead of those three letters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Again, all this computer writing stuff makes it easy to type the four words. Just type USA everywhere. Then use the find-and-replace software to &#8230; well, you know, find the abbreviation and replace it with the words. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Confusion gone. Extra work gone. A little more clarity restored. A little more clarity is a good think. At least I think so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think it is worth the effort. Let&#8217;s lessen our use of abbreviations. We have the space for the full words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips This is another fundamental of written communications that we seem to have forgotten\u2014the humble abbreviation. Let&#8217;s abbreviate: The last item in the list is confusing, but given the context we always know what that means, right? Sorry, we don&#8217;t. I contend that we should not use abbreviations any longer. 98.6% of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[114,113,292,67,5],"tags":[226,225,295,187,128],"class_list":["post-3907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brevity","category-clarity","category-tools","category-work","category-writing","tag-brevity","tag-clarity","tag-tools","tag-work","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3907"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3908,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3907\/revisions\/3908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}