Another Reason to Drop IE » Mike Industries (original) (raw)

I was at a bar this weekend telling a couple of friends how I’ve reflexively stopped using the grammatical device “i.e.” lately because of the industry I’m in. Whenever I have the urge to use it in a sentence, I’ve begun using “e.g.” instead. It’s really quite silly but I just can’t help it.

This sparked a bit of a dorky discussion (see: chick repellant) about what the two abbreviations really mean. “i.e.” seems the most common, but I’ve always assumed they were just two interchangeable ways to say “for example”. Turns out they aren’t, and friend #1 lost twenty bucks to friend #2 because of it.

According to the dictionary, “i.e.” means “that is to say” while “e.g.” means “for example”. So the difference would be as such:

“There are many ways to lose a race (i.e. there are a lot of obstacles to winning).”

“There are many ways to lose a race (e.g. disqualification, injury, sickness).”

So it turns out that by reducing my use of I.E., I am actually a more grammatically correct person now.

E.G. is the new I.E.