[Taxacom] italicizing names and Richard Spruce

[Sean Edwards]

Robin, here is an interesting aside on your Mr, Dr, etc..

The great Victorian bryologist Richard Spruce left a legacy of hundreds 
of handwritten letters, dating from 13 March 1880, to 20 September 1893. 
These are held at The Manchester Museum, and I had the privilege of 
transcribing all 60,870 words.

Spruce regularly abbreviated words by substituting the last part with a 
point. With other words he abbreviated a word by omitting the central 
part and terminating the word with the last letter(s) written 
superscript over a point. As an easy transcription convention for the 
latter, I used a point preceding the last letter(s) typed in normal 
size. Examples include Rich.d, Jun.r., spec.ns, espec.y., faithf.y, 
Cha.s (Charles), and of course M.r though not consistently. Spruce 
underlined specific names, a handwriting convention to indicate italics. 
I'm sure that these conventions were normal then.

My understanding -- rightly or wrongly -- is that the convention was to 
represent an omission with a point in more-or-less the appropriate 
place. So if a word was 'gutted' as in Mister, the point under a 
superscripted terminal letter was awkward and in due course omitted. But 
if the word was truncated -- as in /Hyp./ or /H./ for /Hypnum/ -- then 
the point remained.

This seems logical, and so Dr, Mr, etc. should never have been 
terminated by a point? I could be wrong, and would welcome comments from 
anybody with a more literary background than myself -- not difficult!

And lastly, the contents of Spruce's letters are of far greater interest 
-- bryological, political (he was a staunch Liberal) and social -- than 
where he placed the point.

Sean

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sean Edwards, Thursley, UK
email:sean.r.edwards at btinternet.com


On 08/05/2015 16:32, Robin Leech wrote:
> Hi Brian,
>
> [.....]
> We used to put Dr., Mr., Mrs., but no more (for at least 25 years).  They are now Dr, Mr, and Mrs.
> [.....]
>
> Robin