Talk:id

id, the computing abbreviation

Yes, it's an abbreviation and no it's not necessarly capitalized. Sure, it's capitalized when a copy editor gets to it, but not so much by the people who program. Try searching the linux kernel mailing list for "id" and notice the ratios. I would not be heartbroken if it was moved, but it was a deliberate choice on my part to do it this way. --kop 04:51, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that in chat rooms, Usenet, programming comments, IRC, mailing lists, email, and SMS messages, we often avoid all punctuation, capitalization, and even full spelling consciously - which is a special case and I'm not sure how to tell the difference between these and a spelling/casing which is sense-dependent. I'm also not sure what the best way to deal with them on Wiktionary might be. — Hippietrail 18:51, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I think the general problem will go away in about 50 years when most people will be illiterate. They won't need to be literate because all the media will be available in auditory form and voice will subsume text. Sadly, already only 1/3rd of U.S. college graduates can read at a level that allows them to compare the viewpoints of two editorials. (See: wikipedia:literacy and The National Center for Education Statistics "A First Look at the Literacy of America’s Adults in the 21st Century".) Meanwhile, I don't know what to do either.

On second thought, if every definition has a reference of first instance like the OED then the problem solves itself. You can tell right away if the word arose last week.

Regardless, I don't think id falls into the 'butchered word' category. IMO it's a legitimate shift in the the venacular -- from abbreviation to word. Once upon a time, years ago, I used to capitalize it but gave up long ago and nobody blinks. The IT profession uses it too much. Its of the same vein as data being both singluar and plural [1]. Having said that, I don't have a proposal for what to do with words in transition either. --kop 02:11, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I also almost always write id' though sometimes I think about it and my decision depends on whom I expect to be reading. Collins and Encarta online both give only ID for the identification sense - Encarta even specifically gives it for the verb sense. — Hippietrail 02:26, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm a little muzzy here but it seems to me that the IT usage means identifier, which is a little different from identification, isn't it? That would mean that we're talking about a different sense than Collins and Encarta. Or is that cheating?

How about this. We get rid of it as an abbreviation and simply call it a noun, another word for identifier. Then we make a usage note that says something useful, like maybe this is a new usage, acceptable in the IT field but perhaps not elsewhere. --kop 04:15, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Would be good to actually get a description of id, rather than just say it's one of three parts of the personality...?

Swedish

NB this discussion of the Swedish term. — Beobach 05:14, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

RFC discussion: December 2007–December 2010

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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id#Swedish

This may prove to be a tricky rfc... some background first: the first two Swedish senses of this word ("effort" and "work", respectively) was entered by a user who has attracted my attention more than once before, so as I didn't recognize them, I looked them up. Yes, they exist...ed. Sort of. They are described in SAOB - the not-yet-finished Swedish version of OED - as having been mentioned as "föråldrade" (='archaic' or 'obsolete') in a 1807 dictionary - then they continue by claiming that the word was "resurrected" during the 19:th century through literature. I'm fairly confident though that these senses didn't survive far into the 20:th century.

Well, the problem then, is that the definitions given in SAOB seems to me to be a *bit* of a stretch from these presently given in our article, but as said, I'm not familiar enough with the words to know how to define them instead, and neither can I find these senses in other dictionaries I have at hand. Hence this is a call to any other Swedish-speakers to try to come up with better definitions... \Mike 17:24, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

NE's dictionary defines it as "träget arbete", i.e. something like "strenuous work", and lists it as archaic. The examples given in SAOB either refers to labourious work or occupation, activity etc. Both definitions are marked as "numera bl. i högre stil l. arkaiserande" ("nowadays only in archaizing or higher style"), and that part of SAOB was printed 1933. I would say that the word in that sense is unknown by a vast majority of the Swedish population, and if it has any place in Wiktionary, it must be clearly noted that it's largely dated and effectively unusable today. The verb "att idas" however exists in some dialects today and I assume that it's related to the word "id", since it means something like "being (physically or mentally) able to undertake a task" (i.e. orka, gita etc). HannesP 19:01, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Seems to have been dealt with. — Beobach 05:09, 5 December 2010 (UTC)