Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by silicon2401 1457 days ago
> chimps f.x.

Just a small note, that abbreviation seems extremely rare to me. You might have better readability by saying "e.g." which means the same thing, or just writing it out. It took me a while to figure out whether you were referring some body part belonging to chimps or something

4 comments

Wow even after reading the above comment I still can't confidently piece together what "chimps f.x." means. Is it "chimps for example"?
seriously? I speak internally while writing and "for example" feels more fluent than "exempli gratia". that's why I prefer fx. I'm not a native speaker, though
Another native speaker chiming in. This is my first time encountering f.x. and it took me quite a while to figure out (essentially guess) what it meant. Most people I know and situations I've encountered use e.g. (possibly without even knowing what it means). In common usage e.g. is "for example" just like etc. means "and additional things" or i.e. means "that is".
I wish I could write or speak another language anywhere close to as well as you do English.

You're right! I certainly don't think of the words "exempli gratia" -- I literally think the letters "e g" as a mental shorthand for "for example". I often find myself writing "e.g." first, and then expanding it to "for example" when re-reading what I wrote.

Sorry. English is weird. "f.x." seems like it should be a preferable abbreviation for "for example", but it just isn't idiomatic. I figured out that was what you meant when reading it, but it definitely stood out in much the same level of wrongness as seeing code that isn't formatted correctly or that uses a non-idiomatic way of doing things (list comprehensions in Python).

I always thought e.g. meant "example given"; there's also "i.e." which I presumed meant "in example".

anyway, "for example" takes two seconds to type (if that), if abbreviations cause confusion (in general, in any situation, especially professionally), avoid them.

Anyway I'll brb, I got an I&A meeting for our SAFe procedure, gotta get our CI's and DoD in order and make sure we execute LCM properly. No I don't know what any of these abbreviations mean, but this is the situation we find ourselves in, lmao

I'd suggest sticking to "e. g." as well. I'm also not a native speaker and have never seen the abbreviation "f. x." before so I couldn't figure out its meaning.
If you know what e.g. stands for, you don't need to expand it. Native speakers just say "e.g.", as in, "ee gee". If you don't know what "fx" stands for then how would you expand it? It's not a common abbreviation at all
FWIW the abbreviations listed in Wiktionary are f.e. and f.ex.
chimps: f(x) = y^2
Depends on where in the world you hail from originally. I have also seek "fks" to mean the same thing. More common with non-native English speakers.
It's probably a feature of non-western English varieties. I've never seen "fks" used to mean "for example" and would never imagine that that's what it stands for.