Re: emacs-28 b7d7c2d9e9: Add cross-reference to alternative syntaxes for Unicode

[Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com>]

> Sent: Sunday, October 23, 2022 at 8:05 AM
> From: "Richard Stallman" <rms@gnu.org>
> To: "Po Lu" <luangruo@yahoo.com>
> Cc: eliz@gnu.org, rpluim@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: emacs-28 b7d7c2d9e9: Add cross-reference to alternative syntaxes for Unicode
>
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > FWIW, even living in a country where the average level of proficiency in
>   > English is very low, I find that most people are able to understand
>   > abbreviations such as "i.e." and "e.g."; they are taught in the
>   > education system and are in fact used quite often on the internet.
>
> I suspect it varies from country to country.
>
> I would not know where to find the reports I got that people had
> trouble understanding these Latin abbreviations, since it was years
> ago, but I did get them.  People who don't recognize "e.g." will
> certainly recognize "for example", so there's no harm in choosing the
> latter.

We could provide a list of abbreviations.  Although I am not against the
use of "for example".  An alternative to "for example" which is short would
be "as in".

The New York Times also uses e.g. and i.e.  Although the Oxford Style Manual
has dropped the use a comma after e.g. and i.e. to avoid double punctuation.
The Guardian, The Economist and The Times of London use eg. and ie.  Thusly,
their use is very common actually.