[Taxacom] italicizing names and Richard Spruce

[Fred Schueler]

Quoting Sean Edwards <sean.r.edwards at btinternet.com>:

> 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.

*  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_stop#Abbreviations_and_personal_titles_of_address

"According to the Oxford A–Z of Grammar and Punctuation, "If the  
abbreviation includes both the first and last letter of the  
abbreviated word, as in 'Mister' ["Mr"] and 'Doctor' ["Dr"], a full  
stop is not used." This does not include, for example, the standard  
abbreviations for titles such as Professor ("Prof.") or Reverend  
("Rev."), because they do not end with the last letter of the word  
they are abbreviating. Among American dialects, however, the common  
convention is to include the period after these abbreviations.

"In acronyms and initialisms, full stops are somewhat more often  
placed after each initial in American English (for example, U.S. and  
U.S.S.R.) than in British English (US and USSR), but this depends much  
upon the house style of a particular writer or publisher. The American  
Chicago Manual of Style now deprecates the use of full stops in  
acronyms."

fred.
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