Dear Leslie,

It certainly would be great if you could document 
all of this when time permits.

Intuition and admittedly enfeebled recollection 
lead me to believe the use of lower case for the 
initial letters of vernacular names has a more 
deep-seated origin/philosophy than mere simplicity of keyboard operation.

Harry

PS: POV must mean point of view - and AFS American Fisheries Society. HGL


At 08:51 PM 11/10/2016, Leslie Crnkovic wrote:
>Hello Susan,
>
>To provide a historical perspective...
>Going back to the 1988 1st edition of the AFS 
>Common and Scientific Names of Mollusca... Turgeon et al
>
>When working on a research paper some 12 to 14 
>years ago, I actually interviewed Turgeon on the matter.
>The reasoning at that time (consider the state 
>of the PC and Typewriter of the late 80s), the 
>POV of the AFS was that it was extra effort to 
>make sure that each word was capitalized and to 
>assure consistency they standardized all lower 
>case.  Note, they were doing Fish and Crustacea also.
>
>R. Tucker Abbott was deeply involved in the 
>original debate, and ultimately lost the battle 
>to capitalize these 'formal' names.  Abbott 
>wrote several articles on the topic (don’t 
>have access to the references at the moment), in 
>one article I remember was him referencing an 
>article he wrote called "Non-Capps Poops" but it 
>that appears to have never been published.  Best 
>guess is it was submitted to Astronaut Trail Shell Club.
>
>Hope that helps,
>
>Leslie Crnkovic
>San Jacinto College
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Conchologists List 
>[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Susan J. Hewitt
>Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2016 12:51 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: [CONCH-L] Common names and capital letters
>
>I am currently helping put together a marine 
>field guide for a small Dutch Caribbean 
>island.  The guide will be in British English, 
>and it will include fish and a whole range of 
>invertebrate phyla as well as marine plants. The 
>marine mollusks (spelled molluscs) are one 
>chapter. For each species covered, the common 
>name will be listed first, and then the scientific name.
>
>I see that "Names of marine mollusks" by Turgeon 
>et al, 1998, stated that common names in text 
>should be used without capital letters, except 
>where a proper noun is part of the common name.
>
>However, that opinion seems to have changed. On the fisheries.org website,
>
>http://fisheries.org/docs/pub_style10.pdf
>
>The text states:
>
>"Most common names of fishes are now capitalized 
>(see section 9.7 for further information)."
>
>Section 9.7 clearly states:
>
>"Following the usage in the 7th edition of 
>Common and Scientific Names of Fishes from the 
>United States, Canada, and Mexico (AFS Special 
>Publication 34; 2013), new rules apply to the capitalization of species names.
>Capitalize the common names of all fish species, 
>including those not in Common and Scientific 
>Names and other AFS taxonomic publications."
>
>The field guide we are preparing must use a 
>unified system for the common names of all 
>phyla, so I am planning to recommend that in the 
>text we capitalize both parts of the common name 
>(or where applicable all three parts) for all of 
>the phyla including mollusks. So it would read 
>like this "The Chestnut Turban is a common species in this area."
>
>Any comments?
>
>Personally I find that capitalization makes the 
>common name stand out more clearly from the 
>surrounding words, so I am quite happy to do this.
>
>I will be grateful for any feedback.
>
>Susan J. Hewitt

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