Ricahrd lightfoot wrote:
>>'I would add a third type of standard: 'syntax standards'.'
Richards point is an important one. A convention that FISHEN have adopted
for terminology standards that they have created for other units of
information is to use lower case, to exclude abbreviations, and to use
singular terms e.g. 'scheduled ancient monument' rather than 'shcheduled
ancient monuments' (This contravenes practice in many standard vocabularies,
but has become so prevalent in heritage sector vocabularies as to be
difficult to change). However, of course, this is not appropriate for place
and personal names. The general feeling for place-names is that upper case
reduces the problems asscoiated with standardisation, although it does not
look attractive on reports etc. The English Heritage NMR systems currently
therefore use upper case for place names.
Syntax would be an issue for time period terms. Traditionally these are
given capitals ('Roman', 'Palaeolithic'etc) though the rule seems to break
down for more recent periods (e.g. post- medieval: also, what do we do about
hyphens?). Any comments?
Edmund
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