Comments on: Boomerang Cold

By: lgf

lgf — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 23:23:15 +0000

Urban legend: abbreviations are used in science citations so that the total character count is minimized, thus saving ink, paper, and cost. 19th century journals didn’t start articles on new pages — they crammed ‘em in on the same page where the previous article ended. Sometimes, saving a character meant saving a line, and saving a line meant saving a signature, and that meant one more volume before the price had to be inreased. If only modern publishers were so judicious in minimizing costs.

By: tangognat

tangognat — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 16:14:39 +0000

I’m obviously still loopy from the cold, of course people were writing notes in longhand back then

I did try WorldCat (I don’t have cataloging super-powers), but while I was finding journal titles that were close, I wasn’t finding anything that was matching up for time period of this particular title. I ended up finding a likely candidate though, I think the abbreviation was for a French physics journal.

By: Tanuki

Tanuki — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 15:14:44 +0000

P.s. re: cold — Tiger Balm. Rub a little along the sides of your throat and in the hollow, i.e. that v-shape around the Adam’s apple, the moment you feel even vaguely sniffly. Really does help.

By: Tanuki

Tanuki — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 15:12:57 +0000

Yes, I know you’re simply kvetching, mostly tongue in cheekly, and boy howdy do I sympathize, but …

“Was it scientists whose time was too valuable to type out the full name of the journal?”

Ummm … type out? These abbreviations originated when you took your notes LONGHAND. I say hurrah! for abbreviations, especially standardized ones. Although I did cheat while dissertating: I used a little home-printing set for the journal titles I used most, just stamped out ten, twenty index cards at a time, all I then had to do is fill in the page numbers. (It’s not only scientists who use abbreviations!)

And for printed citations, using the abbreviation saves a lot of ink and space, especially when it comes to the standard journals everyone cites over and over.

“And doesn’t is suck when the journal may be in a different language, so ann. may mean annals or annales or annalen?”

No OCLC terminal handy? I just ran a keyword search on the abbreviations of five of the journal titles I’m cataloguing, and they all popped up in very short hit lists. In any case, the abbreviation for the rest of the title should let you know what the language is, so you’d know which one is meant.

Good luck on your cold. Nasty things, colds!

Tanuki

By: tangognat

tangognat — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 12:50:27 +0000

Next time I’ll try to remember to take cold meds!

By: meredutangognat

meredutangognat — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 12:20:13 +0000

I am not surprized that, with your finely honed Commando Librarian skills, you are able to answer two questions at once, similar to the way the action movies show the hero punching and kicking two different enemies. If you also had a Vitamin C lozenge tucked in your cheek, you’d be fighting the cold too!