Re: Strategic Reserve.

[Alan Hamilton <alanh@primenet.com>]

On Wed, 01 Sep 1999 21:00:20 GMT, Christopher Vernell
<cvernell@home.com> wrote:

>But as Roger Traviss mentioned, what people commonly mean by "America" is the
>U.S.A.
>Which is why I change all references in news wire copy from "America" to United
>States or North America, depending on whether the subject is strictly U.S. or
>has a wider application.
>A picky point, but for those of us in the shadow of the elephant, a real point.

To be truly picky, the full name of the country to the south of the
USA is "United States of Mexico".  So "United States" is also
ambiguous.

The main problem is that "United States of America" is a mouthful, but
it's hard to uniquely abbreviate it.  Hence [United States of]
America, since there's no other country with that word in its name, if
not unique among continents.  And if you're referring to North and
South America collectively, they're called "the Americas", not
"America".

And what do you change "American" to?  United Statesian?  USAer?
Running capitalist dog?
-- 
      /
  /  *  /  Alan Hamilton
 *     *   alanh@primenet.com