Subject: Re: CCL:Spelling of v(V?)an der Waals('?)

From: [email-masked] (Nick Blom)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 95 10:09:09 -0500

On Mar 15,  9:12am, Leslie Glasser wrote:
> On the capitalisation issue; in Dutch and related Germanic languages
> (and vdW was Dutch), the initial letter of multi-worded names is not
> capitalised: Ludwig von Beethoven, not Ludwig Von Beethoven, for
> example.  Hence, vdW should only be capitalised at the start of a
> sentence.
>

But, if you leave out his initials: 'v' then becomes 'V' to indicate that a
proper noun starts and the 'van' is not something in the middle of a sentence.
So in your example Ludwig von Beethoven becomes Von Beethoven without Ludwig,
and J.H. van der Waals becomes Van der Waals without J.H.

So Pieter Stouten was right.

Nick
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