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  Abbreviations
From: Iza & Carol Goroff goroff at idcnet.com> on 2000.05.18 at 00:45:49(4589)
A pet peeve of mine is to see a submission using "A." or "P." for the genus
where there is nowhere in the submission an explanation of which genus it is.
Arisaema? Aglaonema? Anthurium? Someone may believe that it is easy to follow a
thread, even if one enters in the middle. It isn't easy.

Iza Goroff

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From: "Eduardo Goncalves" edggon at hotmail.com> on 2000.05.19 at 02:16:43(4592)
Dear Iza,

Your question is simple but it is important. In fact, abbreviations are
for make things easier, not to improve the mistery. For latin binomials, you
only can use an abbreviation if you already put it in the long form before.
If you are discussing about five genera, all abbreviated as A. (let's
suppose, Aglaonema, Asterostigma Amorphophallus, Arum and Anthurium), you
can't use the abbreviated form. It is important to note that such
abbreviations are not absolute, but reffers to the last full generic name
cited. Let's suppose someone posted a message in aroid-l like that: "Dear
all, I am growing S. gardneri. How can I fertilize it? Cheers, J." What
species are he reffering? I have both, Spathiphyllum gardneri and
Spathicarpa gardneri growing well in my collection. Can I help him? No,
because he wasn't accurate enough in his question. (there is another
question: Is J. he or she?) It seems silly, but we see lots of abbreviated
names in aroid-l messages without the full name previously mentioned. We
usually try to discover what it should do, but sometimes we just give off
and go to the next message!

Cheers,

Eduardo.

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