I mentioned earlier a review of Mark Chancey's recent book and it gives me the opportunity to make a minor gripe. The reviewer begins "Mark Chancey (hereafter C.) . . ." and then for the rest of the review it is "C. says" etc. Is it just me or do others find this unnecessary abbreviation, even of authors' names, rather annoying? Does it really take so much longer to write "Chancey" than to write "C."? If one is annoyed by having to write that each time, one could easily write a little macro, or do a find and replace or similar. It certainly doesn't take any longer to read "Chancey" than "C."; in fact to read the actual name is quicker because you don't keep stopping to think, "Now who is the author again?" I take this review just as an example of this bizarre bit of contemporary style; it's now pretty common. Much too common for my liking.
Update (Wednesday, 20.55): See several useful comments on this post and especially Brandon Wason's remark that it is apparently obligatory for the BMCR, which I had forgotten. All the more reason for one to complain about it, of course. To encapsulate what I think is problematic and surprising about this usage: it is note form creeping into published prose, remarkable in an electronic era where one does not even need physically to type out every common word. This kind of thing should be becoming less common now and not more.
5 comments:
Yes, Mark, this is irritating. The increased use of abbreviations is as odious as the increased use of nouns as verbs (like "to dialogue").
Don't blame the author; some journals make this mandatory. For instance, CBQ used to, perhaps still does.
Mark,
I thought the same thing. Abbreviating book names, esp. NTPG is one thing, but I think abbreviating author names like "Chancey" is a bit needless. Of course, if you have a Greek author like Schiaviopompopolis the temptation could become very real.
I think that abbreviating the author's name is mandatory for the BMCR. Though I agree, it causes more work on the reader to try to remember the person's name.
It seems to be a holdover from the old printing on paper days. Late-nineteenth especially and early-twentieth century reviews to a lesser extent (but not articles) were often quite thrify in their smaller font size, an almost telegraphic verbal syntax, and many abbreviations. Browse through JSTOR sometime.
It's completely inane nowadays of course, as there's no need for such skimping.
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