Numeronyms AKA n7ms
Published
a11y? i18n? These are numeronyms—number based words—that consist of the first character, the number of characters between the first and last character, and the last character all concatenated together.
A naive implementation (in JavaScript):
const n7mify = (word) => (word.length < 4) ? (word) : (word.charAt(0) + (word.length - 2) + word.charAt(word.length - 1))
n7mify("numeronym") // n7mUsing Window.prompt to make it interactive:
prompt("Copy to clipboard", n7mify(prompt("Numeronymify?") || ""))All together in a copypastable bookmarklet (I call mine n7mify):
javascript:(function(){const n7mify=(word)=>(word.length<4)?(word):(word.charAt(0)+(word.length-2)+word.charAt(word.length-1));prompt("Copy to clipboard",n7mify(prompt("Numeronymify?")||""))})();Not explicitly blessing the use of numeronyms as “a11y” is objectively less accessible of a word than “accessibility” unless someone is already privy to the abbreviation. “hic sunt dracones”, as they say.
I love hearing from readers so please feel free to reach out.