C21st

[Gregory {Greg} Downing]

At 01:29 PM 7/2/99 -0400, you wrote:
>Greg,
>Good point.  I looked for C19th, and found a number of pages with that
>usage.  Interestingly, at least to me, the majority of the early
>search-engine listings are from either non-US sites or are commenting on
>non-US topics.  About the same for C20th.
>
>George S. Cole   gscole at ark.ship.edu
>Shippensburg University
>

Yes, I have always been ignorant but a little curious about these kinds of
abbreviations, which are used a lot by academics and students, of course.
Are they more European than American? I don't know! I've seen 19C, C19, 19th
c., 19th C., C19th, etc. What are their origins and "distributions"?
Obviously, they are basically driven by convenience. I picked them up and
started using them as a note-taking undergrad. I have seen them used in
formal academic journals in various fields, but on the other hand I once
used one of these abbreviations in a footnote to an article for a humanities
journal, and was "asked" by a peer-reviewer to spell out the wording.
Actually, s/he soberly claimed never to have seen such abbreviations outside
of informal notetaking. (So I changed it, obviously. Who needs the
agita/acido?) But I *have* seen such abbreviations used in journals --
perhaps in more social-sciency journals....

Any enlightenment?


Greg Downing/NYU, at greg.downing at nyu.edu or gd2 at is2.nyu.edu