On Mar 31, 2011, at 5:31 PM, Neil Johannsen wrote:

> I engaged my old dear buddy Robert Michael Pyle about the capitalization discussion ? I know most of you know Bob?s magnificent books (14 books published now on natural history subjects) and he said this, a bit out of context from his email to me, but clear to understand:
>
> There is also the real problem of saying "rufous-backed robin"--description, or name?--especially for non-birder readers. So in B'flies of Cascadia, I capitalize species' common names. However, it is not an issue in Mariposa Road or indeed any of my Houghton Mifflin Harcourt books, as their immutable policy is lower case, except with proper names (Wilson's warbler, Boisduval's blue, but orange-crowned warbler, arrowhead blue).
>
> -Robert Michael Pyle

Oh, the irony of Houghton Mifflin, publisher of Peterson's field guides, sticking to their immutable rule of not capitalizing species names. What did they do in the field guides? They set common names in all caps. What a finesse!

It also means they have to check the origin of every species name: is that arrowhead blue or Arrowhead blue (after Mount Arrowhead or Arrowhead, NV or Prof Arrowhead)? Seems like a lot of extra work.

So I take back a little of what was said in an earlier post about Mariposa Road: the capitalization is not Bob's fault. And he did let keep hyphens in adjectival phrases in the "specific" names but bumped them out of the "genus" names (which does cause confusion, at least to me).

I was reading another chapter at lunch and "purplish washed panoquin" stood out (along with a few others). That's a another species name not a nice description.
--
Kevin Purcell (Capitol Hill, Seattle, WA)
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