Imagine you're abbreviating a title that has a kn-word in it (e.g. Should Know).
What is the preferred way? Is it SK or SN?
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5The Gnostic Knights of Pneumatic Knowledge, aka the NNNN.– Matthew FrederickCommented Jun 15, 2011 at 4:52
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6In chess notation, "Knight" is abbreviated "N", but that is only because "King" is abbreviated "K".– DanielCommented Jul 16, 2011 at 19:13
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4 Answers
Abbreviations are usually based on the first letters of the words they represent, and I would choose "SK" in this case (additionally "SN" is a well-known abbreviation for "Serial Number" across many different industries, so it's probably a good one to avoid when possible as well).
Consider also the word "Herbs," a word for which some people don't pronounce the letter "H" -- regardless of how this word is pronounced, an abbreviation would normally include the letter "H" to represent it (using the letter "E" would be confusing).
answered Jun 15, 2011 at 3:27
Kn starting a word would become K, by convention. For instance, JSYK is common shorthand for Just so you know.
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1Or IDK, AFAIK, etc. quite a few of these out there. Commented Jun 9, 2014 at 20:48
AFAIK, know is often abbreviated to K.
More generally, both phonetic and spelling-based abbreviations exist.
answered Jun 9, 2014 at 20:51
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Can you give some examples of phonetic abbreviations? I can't think of any at all… Commented Jun 9, 2014 at 23:02
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1@JanusBahsJacquet N for Knight (chess) skips a silent letter while XML for Extensible Markup Language uses the name of the letter X to represent the /ks/ sound of extensible. Much rarer than just the letter being used, though. Commented Jun 9, 2014 at 23:16
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Ah yes. X is a good example. That one seems to be quite common, even, initial /eks/ being represented by X rather than E. Commented Jun 10, 2014 at 6:08
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@JanusBahsJacquet: "X" is funny, since it can sometimes represent various sequences of letters. Receive/transmit abbreviates to rx/tx, but transmit shortens to xmit (and, less often, transducer is xducer, etc.) None of those are phonetic; I'm not quite sure where they came from.– supercatCommented Aug 28, 2014 at 21:42
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@supercat They derive from the etymology of the words: trans- means ‘across’, and X is of course also a cross. The same notional use is found in Spanish, where por (‘through, via, across’) is often written x in textspeak, as in xk (= porque ‘because’ or ¿por qué? ‘why?’). Commented Aug 28, 2014 at 22:32
Abbreviations could be with the pronunciation of the word, for example, 'n' for 'and', and 'k' for 'okay'. Other such abbreviations can be seen here.
It really depends where you are. If you are texting, then maybe 'N', if you are putting it as a message, probably either, if you are putting it as the name of something, probably 'K'.
answered Jun 15, 2011 at 5:02
