IHL

[Mark A. Mandel]

In a thread on the American Name Society mailing list about British versus
American usage of "college" and "university", someone wrote:

#Or with one of the IHLs in our nation's capital -- as a British friend did
#not long ago, asking if I might be able to check a book for him in the Univ
#of Washington library.

I asked:
>"IHL"?

The other answered off-list:
#Well, the I stands for Institutions ...
        [That is, "institution(s) of higher learning". If we were being
extremely picky we would have an example of double pluralization here, but
heck, this is conversation. --MAM]

and added:

#I'd probably never seen it until I wrote it -- but I didn't think it would
#be difficult to decipher.  The term, after all, is widely used even if not
#abbreviated as I chose to do.
#
#Maybe subconsciously I picked the term because it gets around all the recent
#discussion (much of it rather fine-pointed IMHO) about college/university
#and whether and when a "the" is necessary ...

-- Mark A. Mandel
[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]