letter Ｕ (not "you")

So I ran into this while writing a post containing physical/electrical notation.

We're sorry, but your post appears to contain abbreviations that we don't like people to use at the Ranch. Because JavaRanch is an international forum, many of our members are not native English speakers. For that reason, it's important that we all try to write clear, standard English, and avoid abbreviations and SMS shortcuts. See here for more of an explanation. Thanks for understanding.

If the abbreviation occurs within code, you can use code tags to post it successfully. If the abbreviation is a variable name, you can use the tt tag.

The specific error message is: "ｕ" is a silly English abbreviation; use "you" instead.

Ｕ is used for Voltage and I would rather not use 'you' as a symbol for voltage…

(I am using ｕ and Ｕ here to avoid it (fullwidth letters from unicode)).

I learned a long time ago that it is just best to write out the long hand form of the word and not abbreviate. It just helps everyone, and never is faster anyway because some one will post, "what does O.P. mean anyway), so you have to make a second post explaining the abbreviation.

Your own post is an example of this, if you just spelled Volts a few times, it would have saved the 30 word secondary post you just made.

This is one of those culture things that as a writer I really hate. Online...it is no big deal, but now I am seeing magazine articles where writers are using abbreviations everywhere. I just want to scream, "You are a professional writer, start showing some professionalism and spell out fabulous and not, "fab"..."


By the way: O.P Means Orginal Poster

Current = (Voltage_generator - Voltage_battery) / (Resistance_wire + Resistance_generator + Resistance_battery)
vs.
I = (V_gen - V_bat) / (R_w + R_gen + R_bat)      [ideally this would be a fraction]

Yes, writing out in a normal post is the better idea, but occasionally using symbols is advantageous for various reason (shorter, easier to read, doesn't span multiple lines).
And when I do use symbols I always introduce them first (especially if there isn't an established set of symbols).

It's good to remember that not everyone here speaks English as a first language or understands technical shorthand.

When possible, please write it out in full so that the information is accessible to more people.  

A long time ago, people were posting way, way too much to coderanch using abbreviate text speak.  So the moderators fired up a function to prevent that.  

And then when we got our software upgrade, it came with that.  Frankly, I like the part where we prevent the abbreviated text speak.  

And now you are being thoroughly punished for the crimes of those that came before you.  

It is worthwhile to explore ideas so that we can all get what we want.  Possibly some small change in the software.   In this case, what might that be?

paul wheaton wrote:It is worthwhile to explore ideas so that we can all get what we want.  Possibly some small change in the software.   In this case, what might that be?

I think we already have one.

the 'tt' button might work.  Put the formula inside that should be a work around the problem AND it shows the reader that you are saying something outside normal speaking (like a formula)  

this is what tt text looks like

and this is what the code looks like when you write your post.  Note you have to have "BB Code enabled" (which is the default setting) for it to work.
[tt]this is what tt text looks like[/tt]

Just today, someone wrote a grow report to me about their garden in DFW. So I got to try to decipher that:

Democratic Federation of ???
Dutch Federacy of ???
District Five in Wales

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:
Just today, someone wrote a grow report to me about their garden in DFW. So I got to try to decipher that:

Democratic Federation of ???
Dutch Federacy of ???
District Five in Wales

DFW=Damn Frigging Weeds! (LOL) :-)

All I see is Delta, Foxtrot, Whiskey which my brain tells me is an airport in or near Texas.  I would have to google to find out what else it could mean.  

It is a Texas thing . Dallas Fort Worth

DFW Dallas/Ft Worth, TX, USA - Dallas Ft Worth International (Airport Code)
DFW Dallas Ft. Worth (Texas)
DFW Department of Fish and Wildlife
DFW Downtown Fort Worth (Texas)
DFW David Foster Wallace (author)
DFW Dubai Fashion Week (United Arab Emirates)
DFW Designed for Winter (Canada)
DFW Dutch Filmworks (est. 1998; Netherlands)
DFW Designed for Windows
DFW Drug-Free Workplace
DFW Division for Women (various locations)
DFW Down For Whatever (song by Pretty Young Things)
DFW Duty Free World (UK)
DFW Diagnostics for Windows (software)
DFW Drop, Fail, Withdraw (academics)
DFW Definable Feature of Work
DFW Diffusion Welding
DFW Diamond-Fist Werny (band)
DFW Don't Fool With
DFW DataEase For Windows
DFW David Fouquère Webdesigner (France)
DFW Disk File Write
DFW Diesel Fresh Water cooling
DFW Dielectric Filled Waveguide
DFW Dead Freaking Wrong (polite form)
DFW Doesn't Freaking Work (polite form)

from here.

I think Travis got the best translation.  

Sebastian Köln wrote:Current = (Voltage_generator - Voltage_battery) / (Resistance_wire + Resistance_generator + Resistance_battery)
vs.
I = (V_gen - V_bat) / (R_w + R_gen + R_bat)      [ideally this would be a fraction]

Yes, writing out in a normal post is the better idea, but occasionally using symbols is advantageous for various reason (shorter, easier to read, doesn't span multiple lines).
And when I do use symbols I always introduce them first (especially if there isn't an established set of symbols).

I feel your pain as an engineer. It is hard to express yourself without symbols. With all due respect, the problem is not abbriviation but symbols (and equations). Current is I. Voltage is V or Ｕ. Voltage_generator = V_gen (here V is symbol and gen is abbriviated- ideally it will be Ｕgen).

paul wheaton wrote:
It is worthwhile to explore ideas so that we can all get what we want.  Possibly some small change in the software.   In this case, what might that be?

It will be ideal but very complicated to make a symbol/equation program available such as mathtype. Maybe a simple symbol box next to youtube-vimeo-book-table boxes (in the reply page) would do the trick (similar to what microsoft office offers but much simpler). Those symbols can be clickable so it will send you directly to the related wikipedia page. For example Ｕ to Wikipedia - voltage. So everyone will know what it means when the lick is clicked.

An engineer died and reported to the Pearly Gates. An intern angel, filling in for St Peter, checked his dossier and grimly said, “Ah, you’re an engineer. You’re in the wrong place.”

So the engineer was cast down to the gates of hell and was let in. Pretty soon, the engineer became gravely dissatisfied with the level of comfort in hell, and began designing and building improvements. After a while, the underworld had air conditioning, flush toilets, and escalators, and the engineer was becoming a pretty popular guy among the demons.

One day, God called Satan up on the telephone and asked with a sneer, “So, how’s it going down there in hell?”

Satan laughed and replied, “Hey, things are going great. We’ve got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and there’s no telling what this engineer is going to come up with next.”

God’s face clouded over and he exploded, “What? You’ve got an engineer? That’s a mistake. He should never have been sent down there. Send him up here.”

Satan shook his head, “No way. I like having an engineer on the staff, and I’m keeping him.”

God was as mad as he had ever been, “This is not the way things are supposed to work and you know it. Send him back up here or I’ll sue.”

Satan laughed uproariously, “Yeah, right. And just where are you going to get a lawyer?”

Did anyone not-staff want to test the 'tt' function to see if it will let you do equations?  

I = (V_gen - V_bat) / (R_w + R_gen + R_bat)

Ｕ is used for Voltage



Testing TT.

The the forbidden letter was placed here and gave me the error that I needed to use "you"

It seems that using tt doesn't work if you use the letter for "you" by itself between the tt's.  If it is used in conjunction with other letters between and

Trying the letter you alone...

....

Doesn't work for it alone.

texting formula

        (V_gen - V_bat)
I =   ____________________
        (R_w + R_gen + R_bat)

testing the letter 'you' inside tt brackets next

icup

and with capital letters

2YUR2YUB, ICUR2Y4ME

no, cannot do it without error.  code tag work orkay

texting formula [tt]         (V_gen - V_bat) I =   ____________________         (R_w + R_gen + R_bat) [/tt] testing the letter 'you' inside tt brackets next [tt]i c u p[/tt] and with capital letters [tt]2Y U R 2Y U B, I C U R 2Y 4 ME[/tt]

ray Bunbury wrote:

2YUR2YUB, ICUR2Y4ME

Too funny!

Sorry it didn't work.  Thanks for testing it guys!

But it looks like Ray used code tags and it worked in there.  Code tags make it hard to read and probably aren't best for this situation.  

paul wheaton wrote:
It is worthwhile to explore ideas so that we can all get what we want.  Possibly some small change in the software.   In this case, what might that be?

Making 'Ｕ' work in [tt]u[/tt] would be a good first step. I also would not mind removing the whole limitation.

s. ayalp wrote:
It will be ideal but very complicated to make a symbol/equation program available such as mathtype. Maybe a simple symbol box next to youtube-vimeo-book-table boxes (in the reply page) would do the trick (similar to what microsoft office offers but much simpler). Those symbols can be clickable so it will send you directly to the related wikipedia page. For example Ｕ to Wikipedia - voltage. So everyone will know what it means when the lick is clicked.

embedding mathematical symbols would be nice indeed. There are tools (MathJax, ReX, tex2svg) to render them into SVG.
Actually this gives me an idea… setting up a server that turns URLs into SVG or PNG. Then the forum software only needs to turn

[tex]I = \frac{V_\mathrm{gen} - V_\mathrm{bat}}{R_\mathrm{wire} + R_\mathrm{gen} + R_\mathrm{bat}}[/tex]
into  base 64 encoded URL paramter:
<img src="https://tex.example.com/render?tex=SSA9IFxmcmFje1ZfXG1hdGhybXtnZW59IC0gVl9cbWF0aHJte2JhdH19e1JfXG1hdGhybXt3aXJlfSArIFJfXG1hdGhybXtnZW59ICsgUl9cbWF0aHJte2JhdH19Cg==&type=png&size=12pt" />
A predefined mapping of symbols to meanings isn't really practicable, as they vary between fields and authors.

It sounds like, for now, the "U" thing will work inside of code tags.  I'll look into getting "U" to work inside of tt tags.

I'd have just used V instead

Testing embedding the formula as an SVG image:


EDIT: you can generate the image-url here (hacked together).

Sebastian Köln wrote:Testing embedding the formula as an SVG image:


EDIT: you can generate the image-url here (hacked together).

Nice! I see some boxes with crosses on my mobile though. I assume I need to install something to make it work on mobile.
Edit: What did you write in TeX part :)

Just add a fully functional TeX editor

*ducks for cover*

s. ayalp wrote: Nice! I see some boxes with crosses on my mobile though. I assume I need to install something to make it work on mobile.

I assume your mobile doesn't know how to deal with SVG. I just added a conversion to PNG:

However, now I need to decide to send SVG to those that support it and PNG to the others.

the TeX code was:
I = \frac{V_\mathrm{gen} - V_\mathrm{bat}}{R_\mathrm{bat} + R_\mathrm{wire} + R_\mathrm{gen}}

You can play with it here. You may need to press return to get it to start. Input is at the bottom.