Over at A Roguish Chrestomathy, q_pheevr takes issue with the views of Bill Poser and SC on the ethics and etiquette of onomastic orthography. Q (or should I say q_?) establishes empirically that "it is not true that the English writing system leaves no scope for individual choice in the capitalization of names" (consider Flora MacDonald vs. Sir John A. Macdonald, or the likes of ffoulkes and ffolliott), and implies that SC is being snobbish for not offering to Laveranues Coles the courtesy routinely afforded to the Marquess of Cholmondeley. But the best part is the jokes, especially the one about Malcolm X and Prince Faisal. The html <abbr> tag is used to flag some of these, but you won't be able to see that if you're one of the 92.7% of the browsing public that still uses Internet Explorer. With or without <abbr>, read the whole thing!
Posted by Mark Liberman at January 22, 2005 01:05 PM