>>>>> "Michael" == Michael G Schwern <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Michael> I'm going to come at this from a different angle. One that
Michael> says "leave it as ie/eg" or perhaps simply "who cares?"
Michael> because the effort to correct all the ie's and eg's and it's
Michael> and [ae]ffects just doesn't seem worth the effort.
To parody the overused Mastercard meme:
Fixing old stuff: too expensive, except as collateral repair
Writing new stuff correctly: priceless
When I was but a young techwriting whippersnapper, one of the first
rules I learned was "never use ie or eg". Why? Not because they were
obscure, but because people usually use the wrong one. :) So it became
drilled in my head to say "for example," or "such as" instead of the
latin abbreviations. Same for "etc"... replace it with "and so on", or
whatever you precisely mean.
Perhaps we could adopt this as a general guideline for future writings,
but not make any crusade to fix it "in the past"?
--
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