Subject: Four-letter abbreviations
Date: Dec 31 19:49:21 1996
From: Denny Granstrand - osprey at nwinfo.net


Tweeters,

I am having trouble with the four-letter abbreviations some of you use. I
feel they are appropriate in only a few instances:

1) in a letter, e-mial or article in which a species is mentioned
many times the abbreviation could be used to save space and the time of
typing the longer name;
2) I can't actually think of another use.

When a person mentions a species only one or twice in an e-mail, it is
redundant to show the four-letter abbreviation. "Varied Thrush (VATH)" has
no more meaning to a reader than "Varied Thrush" except to highlight the
efforts of the writer to look scholarly. In a forum such as this, the
pomposity of appearing scholarly is quite unneccesary.

Denny Granstrand
Yakima, WA