A 03:44 98-10-23 -0700, Marion Gunn a écrit :
>How very, very interesting, Alain! In Ireland we are beset by a habit
>foreign newspapers (unfortunately often copied by local) have, of
>wrongly writing names such as "de Bhaldraithe" and "de Valera" with a
>capital letter d (which they should only be given at the beginning of a
>sentence). I am copying this to two of our discussion lists, for their
>information.
[Alain] :
Thanks very much, you're very kind.
I forgot a "not" though and if everybody might have at least found my
sentence fuzzy, the last paragraph should read:
>> "de Tocqueville", if of noble origin, then never takes an upper case, and
>> it is less clear that the "d" is part of the name itself. Usage is fuzzy.
>> As there is also a rule that says that the first letter of a sentence is a
>> capital letter, it is not clear also that the "d" would not be capitalized
>> in this case. I would personaly avoid the problem in not using the "de" in
>> this case, for example, in order *NOT* to introduce confusion on this
>> information about the noble origin, although nowadays this is purely
>> cosmetic when nobility has been abolished in most French-speaking
>> countries.
Alain
Tel Aviv
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