I try to constantly improve my writing style, where improve normally means "simplify". I am personally guilty of overusing these abbreviations through force of habit, but I edit them out when I can. For anywhere with a formal house style, adopting this seems to make sense, even for things like scientific papers. Excessive use of jargon is a common accessibility problem and in most cases, there's no good reason for it other than dogma.
I am also a big fan of the old Borland "no nonsense licence" for similar reasons. For anyone that hasn't read it, here's a link:
http://www.osnews.com/story/22342/Borland_in_the_1980s_Treat...
This just illustrates that even something requiring the precision of a legal document can be written in plain, approachable English. There really is no excuse.
I don't notice the difference, but non-natives have occasionally said they've been surprised when certain information is clear, such as letters from a bank.
[1] http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/services/crystal-mark.html
Usually the only places you still regularly saw "inst", notwithstanding and heretofore. If you wanted to understand at first reading being a contract lawyer helped.
The Plain English Campaign took out most of the low hanging fruit years back.
I'd also love to see other governments to take a similar approach, but that seems highly unlikely for most countries including Spain (where I am from).
"e.g." means "exempli gratia" -- I am fairly confident the majority of readers in an international audience (or maybe even a national one) will not actually know this and come up with their own personal backronym (like "ergo" or "example given").
"i.e." means "id est" (literally "that is") -- I know for a fact that even people with some exposure to Latin get this one wrong and instead think it means something like "in exemplum", which actually leads to people using it incorrectly when they should actually use "e.g.". I know this is what I did as a teenager in Germany (while learning Latin in school) and I know that this is what many of my German colleagues tend to do, simply because it seems like an obvious equivalent of the German "zum Beispiel" ("for example").
In the context of a website that explicitly tries to use simple English when possible, I think it is perfectly valid to preempt this confusion and not use phrases which are not actually English and can trivially be substituted with unabbreviated English equivalents in prose (whereas even the unabbreviated Latin would likely not help the reader).
EDIT: I'm not saying you shouldn't use "e.g." or "i.e." ever. I personally use them all the time. But it's absolutely consistent to avoid them when you're trying to use simple language to be understood by a broad audience with varying levels of comprehension.
(Note, I grew up in England. I have begun to suspect that these abbreviations are used a little less in the US. But there again, if that is the case then the problem still lies with people's unfamiliarity due to not much usage — or perhaps with screen readers' unfamiliarity due to US-centric development — not with Latin.)
(Also, wouldn't the German equivalent of "i.e." be "d.h." which I'm sure I've seen for "das heißt"?)
I'm not a native English speaker, and I've never studied Latin, but I do have access to Wikipedia, Google, and dictionaries, and a policy of not using words I don't understand. If you come across something you don't understand, there really is no excuse for making something up instead of looking it up. It wouldn't be difficult to avoid horrors like "per say" or "segway".
Also, if when learning English you didn't use any words you didn't perfectly understand, you are most certainly in the minority.
Strongly disagree. "e.g." has its place; it is often clearer than any alternative. Likewise "i.e.". "eg" is unpleasantly confusing even as an ordinary reader and should never have been allowed, but to remove "e.g." too is to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
(neat, huh?)
Most of the cases I see "e.g." and "i.e." -- with or without the dots -- it means "I'm putting zero effort into putting these phrases together into a clear sentence."
"If you have committed any crimes egg tax fraud, insurance fraud, theft"
Egg tax fraud anyone?
There are counter-examples, such as AP and NYT, but this usage - without full-stops - is not uncommon or abnormal.
[1] http://www.economist.com/style-guide/abbreviations
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-e
[3] https://www.cam.ac.uk/brand-resources/guidelines/editorial-s...
2. There is no official version of the English language. Pronunciations, spellings and style guides change over time.
Disclaimer: This post is subject to Muphry's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law
I.e. & e.g. aren't English, but rather Latin. Any educated person in the Western world should understand them, no?
http://www.technologylawsource.com/2015/06/articles/informat...
So if you have a website currently up and you're providing a product or service, similar to having a wheelchair accessible entrance, you may be required to provide a more accessible website, or an accessible alternative.
For those of you who aren't familiar with website accessibility, you might want to brush up on the ADA guidelines. https://www.ada.gov/pcatoolkit/chap5toolkit.htm
I tend to test run my websites through Lynx to make sure it works fine without JavaScript, try to navigate with only a keyboard in Chrome and Firefox, and try it out with a cheap or free screenreader like Chromevox.
And, like the article says, even leaving aside screenreader users this has a practical benefit for many users. If your prose is complex enough that you have to use a Latin abbreviation for precision you’re probably in need of a content designer to simplify it.
<abbr title="Fat Finger Syndrome">FFS</abbr>
This also helps reduce ambiguity about the meaning of an acronym, improving the communication of semantic intent.
That said, it appears that expansion of <abbr> isn't consistently supported[1].
I suspect most screenreaders would simply say "Eff Eff Ess".
[1] http://www.powermapper.com/tests/screen-readers/labelling/ac...
https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-e
It recommends dropping the dots. I know we were taught in school to treat them as abbreviations and therefore include the dots so I'm not sure where this new fashion comes from.
Since people get it wrong, and there are more natural ways of writing these, these guidelines seem quite reasonable.
You seem to be assuming that a screen reader's job is to somehow communicate meaning. It isn't. It's my job to listen and decide what I'm hearing. If you read "ect.", your brain automatically corrects it to "etc." because you're used to seeing it often. It's probably subconscious, right? It works exactly the same for me. I'm well-versed in the spelling/grammatical/other errors many people make when writing, the only difference is that I consume them via my ears, not my eyes.
Or, to put it another way, think about a guide dog. Its job is to actually guide a blind person, make decisions, keep them safe. It actually has to think. I prefer my assistive technology as dumb as possible though, so I use a cane. Its my job to use the cane, take in what it's telling me about the ground and area immediately around me, and quickly make decisions based on that information. The screen reader is more like a cane than a guide dog, basically.
edit: personally, I don't have to use a screen reader, but I do read words "aloud" in my mind when reading, and I believe seeing "eg" or "ie" without dots would make me stumble mentally too...
Even fewer people are familiar with Latin.
See my previous comments in this thread to learn why this is necessary, and why it's unrealistic to expect screen readers to "just work™". It's a nice goal, but it won't happen.
