THE STANDARDISING OF ABBREVIATIONS.
[TO TUE EDITOR Or TUE "SPECTATOR.")
SIE,—This is an age of abbreviations and symbols, and as our books more and more abound with them, it would save the student much time and labour, and some mistakes,. if an approach to uniformity could be attained in their use. It may not matter much that an ambiguous " P.C." should lead us to mistake a Privy Councillor for a police-constable, but it matters a good deal that in the new Hebrew Lexicon edited by Dr. Francis Brown, the Septuagint Version, for which we had already two abbreviations in common use (" Sept." and " LXX."), should be referred to by the German letter " G."; and that " Jer." which one has been accustomed to asso elate with the prophet Jeremiah, should stand for St Jerome, while the name of the prophet is reduced to " Je." Why, moreover, should . the Consonantal . Text of the Hebrew Bible have two different symbols (" H. T." and the German " H."), and the word ride two different abbreviations, allotted to them even in this one book ? The English Version of the Bible completed in A.D. 1611 is usually cited as " A. V.," but in Alford's Greek Testament its symbol is " E. V."; and the Revised Version, commonly cited as " R. V.," is referred to in the Variorum Bible as " R." In the Century Dictionary " D." stands for Dutch, and "Dan." for Danish ; while in the New English Dictionary edited by Dr. Murray and Mr. Bradley these languages are represented by " Du." and " Da." The imperative mood is marked in the last-mentioned Dictionary by " imp.," in the Hebrew Lexicon already mentioned by " Imv." (although both these works are being published at the same time by the Clarendon Press), and in the Century Dictionary by " impv." Citations from the Bible are indicated in all sorts of ways, according to the fancy of the different authors who make them, so that, to take but one instance, one feels quite uncertain whether "Ea." stands for Ezra or Ezekiel. I could give numerous other instances of confusing variations, but I forbear. In the column headed " Books and Bookmen " in the Manchester Guardian of the 18th inst. the writer men- tions an effort which is now being made, particularly by the Clarendon Press, to establish standard rules for printing and punctuating. Cannot something be done to standardise abbreviations P—I am, Sir, &S., Bowdon, Cheshire.
CHAS. W.
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