Majuscules and minuscules

[Benjamin Barrett]

It didn't show up the first time for me, but it does show up in the
response. BB

On Nov 18, 2009, at 5:15 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> At 11/18/2009 07:11 PM, Tony Au wrote:
>
>> This doesn't cover all proper nouns, but in Chinese, a centered dot
>> is used
>> to distinguish between parts of a foreign transliterated name. For
>> example,
>> Barack Obama is 贝拉克·奥巴马 (I hope this shows up right!).
>
> Unfortunately, not for me, with my primitive
> Eudora email program.  Can you resend this with
> the syllables (or is it Latin letters?) in Latin
> script?  I assume the tone numbers could be
> omitted, and I *can* see a centered dot properly
> -- the 8-bit "Latin 1" code set seems to include it.
>
> Thanks,
> Joel
>
>
>> Tony
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 6:13 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>>> Subject:      Re: Majuscules and minuscules
>>>
>>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> Mark, questions, the first few serious:
>>>
>>> When you say you "know of one", does that mean you know of no more
>>> than
>>> one?
>>>
>>> Does "name" mean place or thing as well as person?
>>>
>>> How does one know when a multi-word "name" ends, or is each word of
>>> it preceded by the centered dot?  (And including words of a name,
>>> such as of a book, that would otherwise not be capitalized -- e.g.
>>> House of the Seven Gables?)
>>>
>>> Are book titles, etc. italicized?  What is the equivalent of CMS or
>>> MLA for Shavian?
>>>
>>> Joel
>>>
>>> Joel
>>>
>>> At 11/18/2009 03:50 PM, Mark Mandel wrote:
>>>
>>>> Offhand I know of one, and an artificial one at that. In Shavian,
>>>> names
>>> are
>>>> preceded by a centered dot.
>>>>
>>>> m a m
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 4:47 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> In Latin-based scripts and a few others, majuscules are used to
>>>>> indicate proper nouns (people, places, organizations, etc.)
>>>>>
>>>>> Are there any scripts where a different technique is used to
>>>>> distinguish proper from common nouns?  A kind of diacritical
>>>>> marking?  An additional word or particle?  Etc.
>>>>>
>>>>> Joel
>>>>>

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