First American pope elected and will be known as Pope Leo XIV

This is such petty semantics, most of the world understands that is is a shortening of The United States of America. In fact most everyone uses some version of “Americans” [1]. 96% of the world refers to America as a continent and I’m sure 96% refer to the US as America too. It’s all about context. I don’t think anyone is genuinely confused most of the time.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonyms_for_the_United_Stat...

You are an editor on CNN.

A person from the US has been elected as the Pope, you have to come up with a title for this news piece.

You have these two options:

A) First American Pope elected ...

B) First US Pope elected ...

A is ambiguous because "American" means a country for 4% of the world and a continent for 96% of the world. Also, the pope that just died happened to be from Argentina, and also happened to be the "First American Pope" for 96% of the world, adding to the ambiguity.

B does not have any issues and is correct from whichever angle you want to approach it.

Which one do you choose?

But “US” is not an adjective? It’d be like saying “First Brazil Pope elected”

"US Citizens"

"US Economy"

"US Job Market"

"US Military"

"US Policy"

And many other examples ...

But now that I read about it, when you use it as adjective you have to write as "U.S.".

If you want to throw the whole argument to the trash because it's missing two dots, well ... up to you.

Well I don’t think much of the OP’s argument. “America”, whether we like it or not, has come to be popularly synonymous with “United States” among English-speaking audience. There’s little risk for ambiguity because Western news agencies almost never use “America” alone when referring to the region or continent — they would say “American continent” or “North/South America”

In 50 years, when the U.S. has decided to call itself something else, then yes, this CNN breaking news headline will be ambiguous. But breaking news writes headlines for its current audience, it’s not meant to be a taxonomically accurate index.

"American" means from the country USA for most of the world.

Ask foreign speakers if you don't believe it.