People write it in shorthand because they are too lazy or there’s not enough room / time to write ‘for example”!
But… it is a good question because you would think we should write ex… but it actually comes from the latin phrase “exempli gratia” which means “for example”.
Kate has got it. Somehow people like using Latin (or Latin-based) phrases in English — lawyers are the worst: they must think it makes them sound impressive or something.
Two common traps to avoid:
1. Because ‘e.g.’ is the phrase ‘FOR example’, NOT the example itself, you can’t write things like ‘Some e.g.s are x, y, z.’
2. ‘e.g.’ is different to ‘i.e.’, which means ‘that is’.
Hi bek156 and court0371
People write it in shorthand because they are too lazy or there’s not enough room / time to write ‘for example”!
But… it is a good question because you would think we should write ex… but it actually comes from the latin phrase “exempli gratia” which means “for example”.
🙂
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Kate has got it. Somehow people like using Latin (or Latin-based) phrases in English — lawyers are the worst: they must think it makes them sound impressive or something.
Two common traps to avoid:
1. Because ‘e.g.’ is the phrase ‘FOR example’, NOT the example itself, you can’t write things like ‘Some e.g.s are x, y, z.’
2. ‘e.g.’ is different to ‘i.e.’, which means ‘that is’.
0