Hi, English isn’t my mother tongue so I was asking myself that question since I first encounted a w/… Back then I was like: “What tf does ‘w slash’ stand for?” And when I found out I was like “How, why, and is it any intuitive?” But I never dared to ask that until now
Dr., Mrs., Ms. etc. are traditionally abbreviated with periods/dots but it does raise issues typing on one’s phone because autocorrect thinks it’s the end of a sentence, so sans dots is becoming more common. And there’s other examples which have never had dots, like nvm and af
X is a little special, it stands for Cross and therefore also for Christ. When illiterate medieval people had to sign documents they were told to make the sign of the Cross, since they were usually swearing
Edit: anyone else always pronounce PED XING as pedexing instead of pedestrian crossing?
Using the period with titles is standard in the US and leaving out the period is standard in the UK.
As a non-Christian, I never made that Xmas connection. It sounds cool, but I was never sure why anyone started calling that (and evidently never curious enough to go looking for an answer or even really ask, I just kinda took it as one of those things that is how it is because people are going to people).
Oddly enough, people who didn’t know that part of the history got angry “they took Christ out of Christmas!” So then people who liked the holiday but not the religion used it to do exactly that. As you say, people people.
Well, as a Christian, I wouldn’t feel bad about it because the poster is not correct. The X in Xmas does not stand for a cross, it comes from the Greek spelling of Christ which is Χριστός. The chi-rho symbol (☧) is an imposition of the first two letters (Χ and ρ) and is still commonly used to refer to Christ in some denominations.
As a bonus: if you’ve ever wondered (or not wondered) why some Christian symbolism uses a fish, ἸΧΘΥΣ (or ICTHYS) is an acronym for Ἰησοῦς Χρῑστός Θεοῦ Υἱός Σωτήρ, “which translates into English as ‘Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior’.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichthys) This has been used since the first century.
And that presumably is drawn as a fish in some language?
“ἰχθύς” is the ancient greek word for “fish” https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ΙΧΘΥΣ
I don’t see that word used in their comment?
click on the link pls
Oh… I see, so it’s the word for fish.
It would be like if we had an acronym F.I.S.H. and some people got cute and drew a 🐟 instead of writing F.I.S.H.
Both Dr and Dr. are possible.
Yes, that’s how I pronounce it.
When you type Dr., et al., you normally follow it with a proper noun. Why is the auto caps an issue?
For instance, if you want to text someone “I have an appointment with the Dr. at 11 on Tuesday”. Depending on the dr’s name it might be more to type than someone cares to, especially if it isn’t the most pertinent piece of information.
If you are gonna put Dr then odds are you’ll follow with @ and it’s a non-issue.
Because, as you probably just noticed, it’s sometimes part of a sentence, used without the name. Maybe I’m texting “Dr says it’s not a tumor, I’m pregnant” or something.
In addition, Dr (w/ or w/o .) sometimes means Drive, and USPS sorting machines prefer no dots, so that might also drive autotype to choose dotless, or at least offer it.
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In formal communication I would type it out, but not, for instance, texting my kids with updates on the cat or their dad or whatevs