[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Hyperlink convention

[Stan Shebs]

David Friedland wrote:

>
> See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1921_in_Germany#Reparations]
>
> It says "a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 
> milliard gold marks"

When people write for a wide audience, I often see "thousand
million", which is less graceful, but unambiguous. Alternatively,
[[milliard]] is a quick way to inform the person unfamiliar with
the term (and it forestalls editors "fixing" the "thousand million"
usage).

Good writing for the rocket/arugula case would say "rocket lettuce"
or "arugula lettuce", and/or link them, because a reader from India
will probably not recognize either term!

It's certainly possible for Americans to use terms that mystify
others - even the OED doesn't know "bumbershoot", without which the
Seattle festival is unintelligible - and likewise for other
dialects, but our goal should be to explain it all, not try to
cover it up.

Anyway, there are a bunch of Britishisms I prefer, like "US"
instead of "U.S.", so there's no preference setting that
would be completely satisfactory to me. There are also
subdialects to think of; US military usage is closer to British
English than civilian usage, due to years of NATO coordination.

Stan