Bon Jour everyone. Recently, I attended a three day pharmaceutical conference at Ahmedabad. Conferences are events which always teach me about the venue rather than the scientific communication. During the meet, I met people of all shapes and sizes and established great rapport. After the conference there were excellent choices for the delegates to visit the city.
Ahmedabad is the city of bridges and considered as a pharmaceutical hub of India. During the visit, I reminisced apocryphal story which goes as— A teacher asked a student where he was born. The boy replied, "Vishakhapatnam". He was asked to spell it. The student fumbled and replied, "I was actually born in Leh." This story captivates the need of shorter names for cities, roads, stations, yada yada.
I came back with this thought and did literature fact finding on this issue. There are numerous instances where the names are too long to pronounce, forget the memory. The next step is to abbreviate the long names. If I consider Los Angeles, the actual name of the city is El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula. The shortened version is Los Angeles or even further, just LA.
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, a Welsh town on the island of Anglesey, currently has the prestige of having the is only known due to the fact that it has a very long name, and is the longest railway station name in Britain, and probably the longest domain name in the world. Similar situation was observed during my visit to conferences and symposia. Naming roads and bridges, too with such long names is not justified. In Delhi, the story has a new dimension—the names of the roads are not only long but in four different languages. Gosh, it took me sometime to write those names. T
The parallel effect can be visualized while writing a scientific paper. If we had long names like the emperors and the viceroys, we definitely would make the editor ripple. As a scientist and a tourist, the experience was engaging and fulfilling. I guess we should anchor the brevity issue in publication house too.
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