People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 November 1893 — ABBREVIATION OF NAMES. [ARTICLE]

ABBREVIATION OF NAMES.

Good Taste Demands the Use of the Full Christian Name When Possible. The newspapers note a marked tendency toward the use of the full Christian name in books and standard publications, and in social matters. One now seldom sees the name of an author on the title page of a new book with the mere initials. Ralph Waldo Emerson practically began this in the United States, and even Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s later books have followed this plan of signature. The full name is. impracticable in newspaper work, especially when there are two or more; but in cases where there is but one single Christian name, both on account of the appearance and for the sake of certainty, it is highly important that it should be given in full. Nobody with a good eye or ear can be satisfied to see or hear such a name as C. Sharp or J. Jones, not to mention J. Smith, and the number of names that appear in this slipshod manner in the newspapers is something surprising. The explanation is that reporters find it next to an impossibility to obtain names correctly, because everybody has a large number of acquaintances concerning whom no occasion has arisen for learning the full and correct names. An intolerable abomination also is the abbreviation of such names as John, James, Joseph and Charles intoJno., Jas., Jos. and Chas. Not less distressing is the habit of mentioning in print the familiar names of elderly people with the prefix of “uncle,” “aunt," “grandfather,"“grandmother,” “squire,” and the like. This class of people may be deferentially mentioned as Mr. or Mrs., followed by the correct initials, where there are two or more, or with the first Christian name always spelled out where there is but one and preferably so if there are two.