siu.cen.buap.mx, and if appropriate I'll publish a summary,
rebuttals, etc. in due course. Thank you for not initializing, and for
insisting that publishers not do it to you.
SWAK
Jim Fidelholtz (James L. Fidelholtz)Editor for this issue: <>
udlapvms.pue.udlap.mx>Content-Length: 10752 This note is an attempt to argue against the widespread practice of reducing authors' names in bibliographies to initials. Since I am a library freak of long standing, I sometimes actually try to look for references in articles I read; I also have experience compiling several extensive bibliographies intended to be as complete as possible. The immediate impetus for this note was doing a translation into Spanish of the excellent article 'Maturational constraints on language development' by Michael H. Long for a book on neurolinguistics that I am compiling. The original article appears in _Studies in second language acquisition_ 12.251-285, a leading journal in the field published by Cambridge University Press (which, incidentally, is the world's oldest publishing house). I will not talk about normal translation difficulties, but rather will focus on the practice which Cambridge University Press, most other European publishers, and an apparently growing number of American publishers, journals, etc., (as well as some individuals, apparently including Mike Long) have of reducing all names except the surname to initials in the bibliography or list of references. (To judge by some recent Cambridge University Press books, Cambridge only encourages this practice, since some articles in those books do not follow this practice.) This process I will refer to as 'initialization'. My purpose is to present strong arguments against initialization, as well as against such arguments in favor of the practice as have occurred to me, to urge others to complain to publishers that maintain this outrageously elitist and anti-intellectual practice, and to diligently and conscientiously seek any decent arguments in favor of this practice, so they can be duly demolished and this practice hopefully squelched before any other publishers or individuals decide to hop on the bandwagon. I apologize in advance to Mike and to Cambridge University Press for abusing their patience and kindness, but, as will be seen, they have abused mine. The apologies, however, are for singling them out when they are really just two among a sea of offenders (and in the case of C. U. P., not even the worst one), a sea which I hope to convince the reader is worth parting. (In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm a lifelong quijotesque optimist.) I start from the premise that bibliographies for articles serve several purposes, among them helping to specify the philosophical, methodological and 'scientific' background of the author of the article or book, as well as the immediate sources of the ideas presented in the work. Another important purpose, however, is to point the reader toward other related works in the area, in case they would like to pursue similar ideas further, either in their reading or their research. Having pursued such goals in the past, and looked up references in large and medium libraries, I would like to point out some of the pitfalls inherent in initialization. This practice is pernicious, in that it often makes it difficult or impossible to find a particular reference in a medium-sized or larger library, sometimes especially causing a tremendous loss of time if the reference is NOT there. The arguments in favor of this practice (I assume that the principal one is that it tends to save space in the printing) are wrong-headed, since such savings are exiguous and relative, on the one hand; and on the other hand, it may make the occasional and inevitable error unrecoverable. For example, an error like 'Long, Nichael' is almost self- correcting, while 'Long, N.' would in many cases make it impossible to find other references by the same author, or possibly even the reference in question. In the article cited above, several real examples occur: one author is given as 'Schmid, E.' I accidentally discovered that the person's name is 'Beata', but one can imagine how impossible it would have been to look up other articles by this author, and even the article in question was made quite difficult to encounter. Compare this impossibility to the relative ease if the reference had been 'Schmid, Eeata', where the error would have been easy to detect and correct in the proof stage. There is no earthly a priori reason, however, to question 'Schmid, E.', barring very specific knowledge of the person. The author of another collection is given as 'A. Locke'. It turns out that the author is 'Andrew Lock' (no 'e'), and that the title was somewhat butchered as well, thus giving the reader several false trails to pursue. One author of an article is given as 'S. Cohen'. In fact it turns out to be 'Edmund S. Cohen'. I admit that my objections are on principle, and that I did not expect to find so many examples of the bad effects that can occur from this practice in one article. The facts, however, speak for themselves. It appears to me that if saving space seems so important, it would be preferable to eliminate completely all the references, rather than give altered references which are often only any good to those 'elites' who already know the authors (and articles) in question. This practice sometimes reaches almost unimaginable heights, as when in certain admittedly informal texts an author, for example, who is referred to in the bibliography as 'S. C. Oyama' is mentioned as 'Sue Oyama', when the name she publishes under is 'Susan C. Oyama'. Now this particular case in this field is unlikely to cause serious problems, both because the author is well-known and frequently referred to, and because the surname is relatively uncommon. But the surname does not have to be Smith to be likely to cause problems, since in a library of any size even names like J. Thompson, C. Hall, E. Schmid or S. Cohen can make for unnecessary difficulties (especially when, as in the last two cases, the initial or name is erroneous). The use of nicknames in the text, even in very informal texts, is a disservice to readers, as it will confuse them further, and make the finding of references more difficult still, unless precise uninitialized names are given in the bibliography. It is also important to clarify what I am not complaining about: I do not propose to 'de-initialize' authors who use initials professionally, whether to avoid sexist judgments as much as possible, for example; because of personal taste; or for any other reason, except in those cases where the surname is common and the first name is known to the person making up the bibliography, in which case the remainder of the name may be placed in square brackets. (I would, of course, encourage such authors to use names instead of initials, so as to receive the proper credit for their work, instead of some more famous person with similar initials and the same surname receiving credit for others' work.) What I do object to is placing impediments in the way of those who may want to look up references. On this point, if the motive for the objectionable practice is to save space, then why does Cambridge U. Press, for example, seem to encourage authors such as Long in the (I would say very beneficial) practice of writing the page numbers completely (that is, '119-153' instead of '119-53')? I claim this practice is also good, because it helps to make the inevitable errors more likely to be self-correctable, and in much the same way as the illustration above. If there are other supposedly good motives for initialization, I would be pleased to hear about them, and will attempt to argue against them. If no more such arguments are forthcoming, and publishers wish to be taken seriously by researchers, they should stop this practice as soon as possible. Since I feel so strongly on this point, I have taken the (considerable) trouble of 'deinitializing' the authors of the article I am translating, unless the author uses initials professionally. So far, using obvious and available sources in a quite modest library (by US standards), and with a good bit of help from some of the librarians there, I have been able to deinitialize all but 28 of 254 references initialized in the original article (some of them repeated). It can be done, but it shouldn't have to be. The point is for the original author to do everything in his power to make it easy for someone else to come along and prove him wrong. (Hey! this is supposed to be science we're doing here!) This includes making their search for references as easy as possible. Send comments, counterarguments, etc. to me at jfidelMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue