Years ago, I worked at a company that had 5 people in the same department named Tim. I couldn't stand the confusion so I changed what people called me to 'TK' and have been going by 'TK' ever since.

I did an interview with a reporter a few weeks back and as always, I introduced myself as Tim Keanini but told him that I go by 'TK'. He said "Oh, that is cool". I said "What's cool?" He said that editors have a term 'TK' which means 'information to come'; it is used as a placeholder. For example, a reporter or journalist may write something like "Spending on compliance products are likely to increase by TK% over the next 3 years". Not being familiar with the term I asked to learn more. He said that it is deeply imbedded in to their language for example he may get a voicemail from his manager saying "The TKs for the article 'Bogus Security Spending' are due, we need them now!" We did the interview and I filled in TK's TKs. :-)

I thought it was awesome that 'TK' held this particular meaning and it got me thinking about the larger context. It seems that every domain has their chosen placeholder variable name. This would be a great thesis for an ambitious anthropology major. tk, foobar, john and jane doe, stubs, these placeholders are everywhere and what a cool project to map how the names of these placeholders take a different form in categories of class, gender, ethnicity, etc

This is my 'TK' posting of the week. :-)