Majuscules and minuscules

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:15 PM -0500 11/18/09, 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æ-‰å
-·奥巴马 (I hope this shows up right!).
>
>Unfortunately, not for me, with my primitive
>Eudora email program.

Curiously, the characters did come through fine
on my own relatively antiquated Eudora 6.2--in
Tony's original message, but not in yours.  Joel,
can your version really be older than 6.2?  I
thought I was the Ludditiest subscriber here, but
I may have to relinquish the title.

LH

>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
>>>  > >
>>>  >
>>>  >------------------------------------------------------------
>>>  >The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org