On Sun, 24 Jul 2005 00:46:47 -0400, Peter T. Daniels
<grammatim@...> wrote:

> Nicholas Bodley wrote:
>
>> I had an e-mail tussle on another non-linguistic List with my
>> contention that the two-letter postal codes are not abbreviations. Even
>> the US Postal Service, being realists, "gave in" and now refers to
>> them as "abbreviations". I contend that anyone with a
>> decently-developed "literary sense" (uncommon in our current society)
>> will not regard them to be abbreviations at all.

[PTD]

> If they're not abbreviations, what are they?

Letter codes. Some are identical to traditional state abbreviations; many
are not.

> What does "abbreviation" mean to you?

I won't look up a definition. We all know why they are used; space and
convenience seem to be the primary reasons. They are a shortened form of a
longer word, a form which follows a traditional, formal structure; the
first letter is kept (and "strong" digraphs probably should be); they end
with a period/full stop. The letters before the period suggest the
original word, and (in most cases) are contained in the word. They could
be the first few letters after the initial. State-name abbreviations, for
instance, start with a capital letter, and the rest are small. Short
abbreviations are likely to contain the first and last letters of the
full-length word. I'm thinking of "Penna." and "Pa.", for instance. "PA"
is not an abbreviation; both letters are capitals, and it has no trailing
period. "PA." has a trailing period, but its second letter is a cap.,
also, which is not (yet) literate.

Short forms such as "i18n" and "l10n" (Hmm! Not "lion"!) are whimsical,
yet useful, and I'd consider thme to be abbreviations of a different sort.

(Caveat: I'm falling asleep as I type...)

Regards,

--
Nicholas Bodley /*|*\ Waltham, Mass. (Not "MA")
The curious hermit -- autodidact and polymath
Hope for these times: Paul Rogat Loeb's book --
"The Impossible Will Take a Little While:..."