Elements of Style in Descriptions,

[Mike Dallwitz]

                                                                23 June 1999

> From: Thomas Schlemmermeyer <termites at usp.br>
> To: TAXACOM

> 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.

Use the directive LINK CHARACTERS to group characters into sentences. There
is an example in the sample data supplied with the DELTA programs - see the
file 'layout'. The default separator between characters within a sentence is
semicolon. The directive REPLACE SEMICOLON BY COMMA allows some or all of
these to be replaced by commas.

> A sentence requires normally a verb in order to be a sentence.

Taxonomic descriptions usually lacking verbs.

> Should characters in descriptions be separated by commas or semicolon and
> than written with normal letter, or should they be separated by periods
> and thus be written with caps?

Taxonomists usually strive for brevity in descriptions by linking as many
characters as possible into each sentence. In my opinion, this is often
taken too far. Ambiguity can arise in determining the subject of each clause
(character). The meaning is usually clear if the subjects of all clauses are
the same, although even then is is sometimes not clear how many words of the
first clause should be taken as the shared subject. However, often the
clauses have different subjects, which are supposed to be inferred by
combining the subjects or parts of the subjects of several of the preceding
clauses.

> ... April version (is this the newest?)

The latest formal release of our DELTA programs is 25 June 1999, and there
is a later 'test' version of the Editor. Both are available on our Web site.
You can always find the date of the latest release by following the links
'Programs and documentation > Revision history'.

Mike Dallwitz

CSIRO Entomology, GPO Box 1700, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia
Phone: +61 2 6246 4075   Fax: +61 2 6246 4000
Email: md at ento.csiro.au  Internet: http://biodiversity.uno.edu/delta/