Elements of Style in Descriptions,

[Thomas Schlemmermeyer]

Dear Taxaconauts,

Mike Dallwitz´ april version (Mike, is this the newest?) finally made a small
dream come true for me:
Use the comfortable DELTA editor, write everything in it, transform it
afterwards within a few seconds in a NEXUS, Hennig or Natural Language File.

This question deals with Natural Language in desriptions:

I was taught that descriptions have to be written without paragraphs, tabs and
so on and characters have to be separated by comma or semicolon.

After I run the first "To natural language" directive in Delta, I noticed that
the directive put a period after every character and its state in the taxon
described.
Incidentally, this punctuation scheme fits well into my first still
"germanized" tentative to write the character list, i.e. starting every
character with caps.

A period, however, can only be put at the end of a sentence. And a sentence
requires normally a verb in order to be a sentence.

So, summarized simply: Should characters in descriptions be separated by commes
or semicolon and than written with normal letter, or should they be separated
by periods and thus be written with caps?














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Thomas Schlemmermeyer
Museu de Zoologia, Universidade de São Paulo
Caixa Postal 42694
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São Paulo, SP, Brasil

Residência:
Thomas Schlemmermeyer
Caixa Postal 00276
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Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brasil

Fone, Fax: 016 6371999
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