At 12:17 28/10/01 +0000, David Gray wrote: >Surely the GRO could provide the definitive answer to this question? They >must hold the records of the instructions issued to their transcribers as >to the format they should use when compiling the indexes, where to place >full stops, commas etc. and the reasons for doing so. If only life were that simple! Instructions may have been issued from time to time - I would hazard a guess that one was issued in the late 1960's or early 70's not to include the abbreviation stop after titles and initials in typed copy as an efficiency measure, and that prior to that time GRO (or OPCS as it became) did so. But even in the Civil Service things are not always well documented but more a matter of custom and practice, and anyway - people don't always follow the rules! Ask our project leaders. Nine times out of ten things only get written down because people are not being consistent, and even then someone will either forget, decide that it should not apply in that case, or fail to read it in the first place (see most of the Discuss list over the past week or two, or consider what most of us were doing about the +PAGE rule). Remember too that we are talking of a very long period over which custom and practice will have evolved. Andrew Hingston <http://www.amhinja.demon.co.uk>