[OSM-talk] Apostrophist corrects punctuation on street signs

David Lynch djlynch at gmail.com
Wed Nov 11 16:58:11 GMT 2009


On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 10:23, David Earl <david at frankieandshadow.com> wrote:
> On 11/11/2009 16:17, Andy Robinson (blackadder-lists) wrote:
>> and other punctuation (eg St. to St as an abbreviation for
>> Saint).
>
> St. is wrong anyway - strictly speaking there should only be a period
> after an abbreviation where letters are omitted, hence

Depends on which variant of English you're using. In the USA, the
formal rule is to put a period after any abbreviation comprised of the
first and last letter of a word, but US Postal Service fiat is that
abbreviations can have no punctuation other than hyphens and that has
generally been copied into most maps. Thus, Saint Elmo Road is "St.
Elmo Rd." in a newspaper, but "St Elmo Rd" on an envelope or in TIGER
data.

I tend to cringe at the signs on a street named William Cannon
locally. There are a lot of places where "WM. CANNON" got replaced
with "W. M. Cannon" when they last renewed the signs and switched from
all-caps to mixed case.

-- 
David J. Lynch
djlynch at gmail.com




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