NA Full Form

What is the full form of NA?

In tables and lists, the acronym "NA" is frequently used to indicate “Not Applicable”, “ Not Available”. “ Assessed” Or “No Answer”. It indicates that a table cell's contents are missing, either because the information is unavailable or because it doesn't apply to the particular case. Forms of all kinds can use this style of notation. The notation came into use in the early 1920s. A 1925 manual for conducting community surveys included the following instructions to individuals who were asking the survey's questions:

Of course, not all of the questions on the card will always be relevant. For instance, a home with two widowed sisters that exists solely on their income lacks a wage earner. In place of such questions, the survey director should request that the letters "NA" ("not applicable") be written. There should be no empty spaces. The guidance continues by saying that every blank should be filled, even if it's just to say that it doesn't apply so that the people processing the surveys can see that it was noticed. The U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Mines stated in an information circular from the same year that it used "NA" to denote "not available" information and "NAp" to denote "Not applicable" information for categories.

NA in computer

In the early days of computer programming, computerised forms with necessary fields for completion could become problematic if a field asked a question for which certain people filling out the form would have no acceptable response. Before programmers discover a problem with a specific field, users might fill it in with a word like this, which the program processing the form would read as an intention to deliver the needed information. For instance, if a form asked for a middle name and the user entered "N/A," the computer would read this as the user's middle name, which could lead to the recipient receiving mail from the company that created the form with "N/A" where a middle name should be. So, this became a problem for the programmers because while feeling forms, people are used to fill “N/A”, but while processing, the computer takes it as entity.

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