The SSSOM Pronunciation Alignment Chart

SSSOM is the Simple Standard for Sharing Ontological Mappings, a proposed standard to, well, represent, store, and share semantic mappings.

I wrote a full Java implementation of the standard, and I happen to also have had a hand in the finalisation of the standard itself.

But somehow, it seems that my most remarkable contribution to the whole SSSOM saga is the chart below, which I made as a joke shortly after the 16th Annual Biocuration Conference in Padua, Italy, in April 2023.

The chart aims to address one of the most frequently asked questions about SSSOM: How on Earth are you supposed to pronounce SSSOM?

The chart

A Dungeon & Dragons-style alignment chart where alignment is decided by how you pronounce the acronym SSSOM; “triple S-O-M” is Lawful Good; ”S-S-some” is Neutral Good; “sessom” is Chaotic Good; “somm” is Lawful Neutral; “S-S-S-O-M” is True Neutral; “sesame” is Chaotic Neutral; “S-three O-M” is Lawful Evil; as the French word “son” is Neutral Evil; and “threesome” is Chaotic Evil.

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PNG file

Source SVG file

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Lawful Good	Neutral Good	Chaotic Good
“triple S-O-M”	“S-S-some”	“sessom”
Lawful Neutral	True Neutral	Chaotic Neutral
“somm”	“S-S-S-O-M”	“sesame”
Lawful Evil	Neutral Evil	Chaotic Evil
“S-three O-M”	as the French word “son”	“threesome”

8 April 2025

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