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Subject:Re: Correct Wording for Examples From:Guy Haas <ghaas -at- NETSCAPE -dot- COM> Date:Fri, 22 Nov 1996 16:34:21 -0700
The abbreviations i.e. and e.g. are widely MISunderstood in
the nontechnical audience. A lot of folks do not know that
i.e. and e.g. mean different things. R
Readers of our generation (can't say for sure about Elna, but
I was graduated from high school in 1961) are pretty good
about it, but a whole SHIPload of our audience has been
educated by the declining American Educational System in
the intervening years.
All three of the shops in which I have plied my technical writing
trade (across 15+ years) deprecated "i.e." and "e.g." in favor of
the phrase forms "that is" and "for example."
--Guy Haas
Software Exegete
ghaas -at- netscape -dot- com
At 04:12 PM 11/22/96 -0800, Elna Tymes wrote:
>Gillian McGarvey wrote:
>>
>> Is it correct that we generally shouldn't use abbreviations like "e.g."
>> and "i.e." in order to avoid giving the user any extraneaous terms that
>> cause the reader to process more info than they must already?
>>
>No, it is NOT correct to avoid using these abbreviations, which are in
>wide use in the non-technical audience.
