[Wikipedia-l] Naming conventions for US States

Derek Ross derekross at fisheracre.freeserve.co.uk
Wed Jun 19 20:46:18 UTC 2002


And on this subject, just what is the most commonly spoken language in
Georgia?  English?  Russian? Or Georgian?  It all depends on which Georgia
you mean...

Cheers

Derek


----- Original Message -----
From: Manning Bartlett
To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2002 9:25 PM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Naming conventions for US States


Re the recent (and excellent) efforts being made to apply consistency for
naming conventions, I would like to throw a mild spanner in.

How come cities in the USA are identified simply by [[City, State]] and not
[[City, State, USA]]? There would seem to be a presupposition that
*everyone* will recognise US state names.

Admittedly you'd be hard pressed to find someone who hasn't heard of
California. However a lot of people might not have heard of Iowa, Missouri,
New Hampshire, Montana, or Louisiana, or would not know that New York,
Mississippi and Washington are also states, or that New Mexico is actually
in the USA.

I did a quick survey of people in my office (all of whom can be regarded as
quite highly educated), and in each case I managed to find a US State they
had never heard of or were confused about. By means of comparison, those US
editors might try and name the 6 states of Australia, or the 9 provinces of
South Africa, or the I-don't-know-how-many Provinces of Canada (with due
apologies to my Canadian colleagues). And that is only considering the
English-speaking world...

Manning




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