From: Timothy Partridge (timpart@perdix.demon.co.uk)
Date: Thu Mar 30 2006 - 13:47:10 CST
My understanding of the original system of Latin abbreviations is that a
superscript letter means some letters including this one have been omitted.
The fact that a letter is superscripted can make a difference. Petarum
(peat) becomes, with a superscript a, an abbreviation for stone.
A full stop (period) at the end of an abbreviation indicates that following
letters have been omitted. (The lack that the last letter is the last one of
the word.) Hence English Dr (Doctor) has no full stop and i.e. (id est) does.
I'm not sure what the line under the letter o is. A line over a letter
indicates an omitted n or m. Since numero has an m, I speculate that the
line has slipped under the o to stop it clashing with the line above.
MUFI are trying to standardise the most common (old) forms of abbreviation.
Tim
-- Tim Partridge. Any opinions expressed are mine only and not those of my employer
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Mar 30 2006 - 14:13:38 CST