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"aka: is perfectly apt, so long as you know that the reader will understand
what the acronym means. A serial port that is labled "S1" on an instrument
panel but identified as "COM1" in the O/S is most definitely "Serial Port,
aka S1, aka COM1." The original question, was whether all readers would
recognize "aka" as meaning "also known as," and it was correctly framed for
the circumstances described. Alternate terms or names for objects is not
the same thing as words that are synonyms.
Gene Kim-Eng
On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 4:45 PM, MARK bAKER <mbaker -at- analecta -dot- com> wrote:
> Familiar or not, "aka" is not apt. What aka means is that a person (or
> object) is also known by another name. It does not mean that those names are
> synonyms. John Smith may be aka Fred Blogs, but that does not make the words
> "John Smith" and "Fred Blogs" synonyms. Words don't have names and so cannot
> be also known by other names. Synonym is not uncommonly represented as
> "syn".
>
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