Henke 2022p

COTUS: Mr. Lundahl’s Undefined Abbreviations Cause More Senselessly Bad Communication and Confusion

Kevin R. Henke

September 15, 2022

As I mentioned in Henke (2022b), proper communication requires defining any abbreviations that might be used. Mr. Lundahl doesn’t care about doing this. For example, Lundahl (2022f) uses the abbreviation COTUS without defining it:

“Mormons thought there were 5th C. AD Mormons on later COTUS territory.”

So, what is a COTUS territory? I recognized from the context that COTUS had something to do with some sort of American territory. But what? Non-Americans that are unfamiliar with American geography would probably have an even greater problem figured out what COTUS means. All of this unnecessary confusion results because Mr. Lundahl won’t take a little time to define his abbreviations. After seeing how Mr. Lundahl messes up the meanings and spellings of common English words and phrases like “career” and “not decisive”, I didn’t want to try to guess what COTUS meant.

After I complained about his undefined abbreviations in Henke (2022b), Lundahl (2022h) ridicules me with the following statements:

“POTUS = President Of The United States

COTUS = COntinuous Territory (of the) United States

I thought a US American were supposed to know this!”

No, Mr. Lundahl, the definition of COTUS is not that simple. I did some quick searching on Google to see if a typical reader could readily locate Mr. Lundahl’s definition of COTUS. Doing this search, I could not find COTUS defined as the “COntinuous Territory (of the) United States.” Instead, I only got these results:

COTUS = Constitution Of The United States

COTUS = Congress Of The United States

COTUS = Citizen Of The United States

Of course, none of these definitions of COTUS have anything to do with American geography. Furthermore, a rapid scan in Google demonstrates that the term “continuous territory” of the United States is rarely used and it’s not abbreviated “COTUS.” The lower 48 states are typically called the “lower 48”, the contiguous United States or the conterminous United States.

C ??????? Of the United States could mean a number of things. When Mr. Lundahl fails to define his abbreviations or to even use the correct geographical terms, he demonstrates that he really doesn’t care about our readers, especially non-American readers that are unfamiliar with US geography. Mr. Lundahl needs to define his abbreviations and use proper terms rather than him rudely expecting his readers to guess what he means!