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Re: abbreviations

for

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: May 27, 2010 10:12PM

<EMAIL REMOVED> wrote:

> The proper format for the acquired immune deficiency syndrome is
> "AIDS" in all capital letters.

According to some authorities or just opinions, maybe. According to some
other authorities or opinions, "aids" shall be written in lowercase because
it is pronounced as a word (i.e., it is an acronym in the original sense of
that word).

> This avoids any potential confusion.

Even when read aloud?

There are always possibilities for confusion, and in this particular case,
you don't even need much imagination.

On the other hand, using <abbr> or <acronym> markup would help remarkably
little if at all in reducing confusion. To begin with, the vast majority of
people use browsing software that either ignores such markup completely or
uses it in misleading ways, like underlining the element's content in a
manner that suggests that it is some kind of a link, even though it isn't.

So recognizing the problems does not mean that we should use some particular
techniques purported to solve them, when they actually don't.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/