Hacker News Reader

Comment by edbaskerville | Hacker News Reader

Could you change the title to say "State of Washington"?

Here I was thinking George was up to something!

In all seriousness, this really should be updated, but somehow omitting "state of" sounds more powerful to me...although I'm not sure why I feel this way?

Perhaps because Washington alone would represent the HQ of the national government. Think of "London", "Beijing".

Which, for those who like funny Wikipedia words, is a synecdoche.

Not to be confused with Schenectady.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche,_New_York

Also not to be confused with a synecdouche (somebody who constantly overuses synecdoche hoping to impress people).

Obligatory content-related content: If I were the Attorney General, I think a suit like this, whether successful or not, would undoubtedly be one of the high points of my career.

Ha, that is interesting! I had no idea there was a word for this, I love it when HN comes through with a nugget like this! Thank you!

Wouldn't the short of Washington DC simply be DC?

Isn’t the state of Washington in Seattle? which means something else entirely.

Seattle[0] is the city in the state called Washington[1]. I was under the impression that when just 'Washington' was used, it refereed to the state. But looks like even Washington, D.C (formally District of Colombia [2]) is called just Washington[2].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_(state)

Direct Current? Joking aside, ambiguous 2 letter acronyms is not really a good way to reference a US city, since there are folks here who are not in the US.

Sometimes, other times no. Referring to the seat of the US government as "Washington" is apparently just too much fun for journalist types, so an unqualified reference to it is often ambiguous in practice.

yes, or even "The District"

To the rest if the world, no. Washington is used to refer to the whole country of the USA

or just "Washington State"

That can be also interpreted as the university though.

I'm not really familiar with people referring to Washington State University as Washignton State. WSU is common. Wazzu is common. Washington State not so much.

It’s pretty common. I think the state of Washington would be the best option here.

I was going to recommend "The State of Washington" but even that is ambiguous.

Ok.

Is anyone else getting tired of everyone playing editor on HN? In some cases its nice when clickbait headlines are reduced to their original content. However threads like this are drowning out the conversation about the subject matter.

It would be nice if such comments were hidden or filtered (with no karma penalty of course) once reviewed by a moderator.

Or at least, given a substantial visibility penalty.

Seems pretty fair.

I wouldn't bother clicking on this link if I knew it was the state. So no, I'm not tired of everyone playing editor because it benefits me in the end.

I also don't agree that such threads drown the conversation. Often they're buried. Sometimes they are a healthy part of the conversation itself. Sometimes there's a passive aggressive argument about whether or not the conversation is healthy and hey maybe even that's healthy!

I seem to be in the minority, carry on.

No. Sometimes reading the headline is enough, if the headline is correct.

Those of use that really want to know more, will read the article on its own merit, because we’re interested, not because we’re being manipulated into a deeper curiosity than warranted.

Meanwhile, complaining about aggressive journalistic tactics is not forum sliding. Keep in mind, beyond linguistic syntax, semantics and other trivial technical matters, much of HN doesn’t qualify as experts on non-technology-oriented stories, and political tripe. Some articles aren’t colored up very much by HN peanut galleries and bike shedding. This is might be one such instance.

Anyway, when we notice deceptive practices we complain about them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com