Philip,
the text message abbreviations I can understand. It is not necessarily
laziness but, in my case anyway, a way of shortening the message to keep
under the 160 character limit for the message. Anything longer than that
gets sent as two, three or four messages and subsequently costs 2-4 times
more than just one.
As for names of organisms (let's go the whole hog!), as proper nouns they
should be capitalised as with names - philip veerman just doesn't have the
same ring-to-it! :-)
Long live the capital-isers and splitters for that matter!!
On 10 April 2012 15:04, Philip Veerman <> wrote:
> Hello Richard,
>
> I agree entirely on your point. However I think it overly generous of you
> to
> refer to this trend of ignoring the intelligence behind capitalisation as a
> "convention". It is hardly deserving of that title. Unless you care to call
> laziness and stupidity a "convention". Is it anything other than laziness
> and stupidity?
>
> Communication in many forms is going that way, just like the ABC news
> readers who don't know the difference between "is" and "has" or can't be
> bothered to use either word but just a useless "s" sound. Or people sending
> me text messages on my mobile phone with "UR" as intending to say "your",
> or
> was it "you are". Etc etc blah blah.
>
> Philip Veerman
> 24 Castley Circuit
> Kambah ACT 2902
>
> 02 - 62314041
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:
> On Behalf Of Richard
> Nowotny
> Sent: Tuesday, 10 April 2012 12:36 PM
> To: 'Birding Aus'
> Subject: [Birding-Aus] Publishing convention re bird-names
>
>
> I know this topic has received attention on Birding-Aus previously but my
> interest was re-awakened by reading in an ornithological book of "little
> owls" and being reminded of the futility of trying to determine whether the
> author is referring to smaller owls in general, a particular group of small
> owls, or Little Owls Athene noctua. I continue to be baffled by the
> widespread publishing convention (used by most newspapers and books) not to
> capitilise the common names of bird species (and all other biological
> species for that matter).
>
> Is anyone with publishing experience/knowledge able to explain why this
> convention has been adopted and perpetuated, in spite of its obvious
> failings in regard to clarity of meaning, particularly when the name
> includes words in everyday use such as little, common, long-toed, singing,
> etc?
>
>
>
>
>
> Richard NOWOTNY
>
> Port Melbourne, Victoria
>
> M: 0438 224 456
>
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**
*John Harris*
*Croydon, Vic*
*
Proprietor - Wildlife Experiences
Ecologist/Zoologist*
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