Talk:ALCON

RFV discussion
Lots of false positives for alcon, so I tried "to alcon re" for no hits on Google except one on the Web. Perhaps there's a better collocation to search for: I'm unaware of how this is used if it is, not having seen it before. &#x200b;—msh210℠ 20:21, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Never heard of it, I too expect that if it is used, it's in a specific context, not just in general use. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:50, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah the only Web hit for "to alcon from" (there are, again, no other useful Google hits) show it's military, probably naval. (The U.S. Navy uses similar acronyms a lot.) The Google Books search for alcon captain yields nothing and for "to alcon" ship yields precisely two possibly relevant results, both snippets I can't make much of:, . &#x200b;—msh210℠ 21:08, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
 * This appears abundantly in non-durably archived glossaries, this downloadable PDF (apparently of a print document) and in a few OneLook glossaries. "Netlingo" reports it as online jargon. It must be used in rather limited contexts: in the Royal Navy there was (is?) a ship named after the Greek hero Alcon and in the US there seem to be perhaps two defense suppliers named "Alcon". The use of the abbreviation would be concentrated in telegraphic communications to ships where brevity had historically been required. As our standards for including abbreviations are virtually non-existent and our practice has been inclusive, we would be breaking new ground by excluding this.
 * Has anyone ever seen this in text-messaging contexts? DCDuring TALK 11:43, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I too suspect military use. I work as a government contractor and I was seeing this a lot in e-mails... enough that I was curious.  I had trouble finding out the meaning, so when I did, I figured I'd add it to Wiktionary (which I'd previously used to find out what v/r meant in the closing of some of those same e-mails).  I'm still trying to figure out "r/s."  I suppose I could ask the sender, although that might prove embarrassing.  Tckma 15:38, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Texting and IMing may be bringing about a revival of old-time telegraphic abbreviations of all kinds.
 * In the context you mention, I'd bet on "respectfully submitted" for r/s. Unfortunately, the only source of online communication that we use for attestation is Usenet in which "respectful submission" seems, umm, uncommon. Also, punctuation is hard to search for on Google. DCDuring TALK 16:01, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Cited IMHO. I'm not sure about the capitalization, though: my approach was to visit (for example) and use Firefox to scan the page for all-caps "ALCON". It worked, in that I did manage, with some effort to track down more than three uses; but all but one of them are in all-caps contexts, and even that one is from a source with a lot of all-caps-isms (such as "1ST LT" for "First Lieutenant"). So, I think the capitalization is plausible, but it's also possible that "alcon" would be used in some contexts. —Ruakh TALK 14:42, 18 August 2010 (UTC)


 * RFV passed. —Ruakh TALK 00:57, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

to ALCON is usually accepted as meaning "To All Concerned" in the military. Also, the assumption above for r/s is correct. V/R, navydoc