Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with abbreviation

Why is South Africa abbreviated as ZA?

theseampsgoto11 — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 20:30:31 -0800

Why is South Africa abbreviated as ZA? I just got back from South Africa, where most of the URL's end with .co.za. I've also seen the country abbreviated as ZA. Is there a reason why ZA is used instead of SA? None of the official names for South Africa involve a Z and the domain .sa doesn't seem to be used by any other country, as far as I can tell.

The only answer I got so far was something along the lines of "they ran out of letters by the time they got to the bottom of the world."

What is the origin and reasoning for abbreviating "contract" as "K"?

JakeWalker — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:08:47 -0800

What is the origin and reasoning for abbreviating "contract" as "K"?

Doctor, Doctor, what's the correct abbreviation for doctor!?!

ranglin — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 23:52:20 -0800

InaneQuestionFilter: When you abbreviate doctor, does it get a full-stop? ie. should it be Dr or Dr.? I know this seems like a silly question, but I can't seem to find a consistent answer, either among the people I work with (mainly academics) or online (maybe I don't know what to search for).

From what I remember in high school english class, an abbreviation only gets a full-stop when the last letter of the abbreviation is not the last letter of the word. So, prof. gets a full-stop, but Jr doesn't.

However, this doesn't seem to apply to titles. People seem to continually write doctor with a full-stop. Mister is even worse, even though 'Mr' ends in the 'r', everyone writes it with a full-stop.

So, what's the official word? 'Dr' with or without a full-stop (I'd like to get my e-mail sig right!)?

Airport Codes

SpecialK — Sat, 17 Jan 2004 00:18:07 -0800

Why is there sometimes an "X" added on the end of a three letter airport code? i.e. LAX I thought that it might stand for international, but that doesn't make sense, because ORD (Chicago O'Hare) and many other airports are international and don't have X on the end. Anyone know? I live in PDX, and I always get asked why there's an X when I'm travelling and refer to Portland as PDX.

The word "stat"

jpburns — Sat, 13 Dec 2003 08:22:17 -0800

Where does the word "stat" come from, as in "Give me 20ccs of Ringer's Lactate, stat!"?
(I know it means quickly, but what's its origin?)