Hacker News Reader

Comment by imzadi | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, they could reduce confusion by changing "the government" to "the UK government."

If Americans did the same it would be great

This is also a problem that exists within countries. My RSS feed is littered with Canadian independent (national) news agencies not defining what municipality article headlines relate to. E.g. "Mayor pushes back against province on xyz issue". Okay, that might be huge news for Timmins Ontario , but maybe BAU for Toronto. Even skimming the lead paragraph doesn't define the city often.

*Editting with a point: Perhaps everyone assumes a local audience.

Americans, hm? I see what you did there.

Fine, fine. North Americans.

So just the three of us up here - Mexico/US/Canada?

Good luck. Americans won't even differentiate Washington State and Washington D.C. Even the AP guidelines say that "Washington" is ubiquitous shorthand for "Washington D.C." and recommends against shortening it to "D.C."

The most hilarious thing is that I learned recently that when they applied to be a state, the people from WA requested to be the state of Columbia. But a Kentucky rep said that would be too easily confused with the District of Columbia, and Congress changed it to Washington.

> when they applied to be a state, the people from WA

Western Australia?

Yes. Little known fact, it was renamed Washington by Congress.

Americans do! If you are west of the Rockies, Washington resolves to the west. If you are east, it’s DC, and you have to say “you know, where Nirvana is from.”

Don’t get me started on east coast dumdums pronouncing Oregon as “Orry-gone.”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com