Disputatio:Lien (Italia)

Opaque footnote

Where in the world should a reader go to check the attestation described as "Nomi d'Italia - AAVV, De Agostini"? IacobusAmor (disputatio) 12:29, 8 Maii 2023 (UTC)

I have added the ISBN now (9788851109837). It is listed in WorldCat. --Grufo (disputatio) 17:19, 8 Maii 2023 (UTC)

It's not unlikely that the same problem arises in hundreds or even thousands of articles on Italian localities produced by the same author. Can they all be fixed? And can the style of the citation be made more understandable? Why a spaced hyphen? What does AAVV mean? Is the De in the author's name correct? Why is the author's name not the first part of the citation? If it's a publication, what were the place & year of publication? On which page does the attestation occur? &c. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 20:20, 8 Maii 2023 (UTC)

AAVV is an abbreviation only used in Italian and Spanish bibliographies. When converting to other languages, including ours, it should simply be deleted. It's actually Latin of course ("auctores varii") but in bibliographies in the rest of the world one doesn't say that: either one files under the name of the first author "et al." or, if no author is prominently credited, one files under the title.

I think "De Agostini" is correct as name of publisher.

This source might possibly be available and searchable on line (I haven't checked fully). If it is, and given that Nuada bequeathed us all these citations, it might be reasonable as a first step to convert them all so as to incorporate a link. In any case, eventually, we need verified and precise citations: Nuada sometimes slanted the evidence.

Lots of outstanding work, but at least Nuada looked for Latin names ... Meanwhile in the case of French communes and those of some other countries, Helveticus Montanus didn't even look for the Latin names which very often exist. Several of us have had a go at these extremely short pages, but 20,000 or many more remain. Vicipaedia is a work in progress :) Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 08:54, 9 Maii 2023 (UTC)

I have removed “auctores varii” (“AA. VV.”) from this specific case because there is the name of the editor (Renzo Ambrogio). As for the abbreviation in general, en:Various authors tells us that both Aa.Vv. and Vv.Aa. are valid Latin abbreviations, although English speakers usually don't recognize them. However the English Wikipedia discusses about using Aa.Vv. and Vv.Aa. in English books; this is Latin Wikipedia, it should not be a problem if English speakers don't recognize a Latin abbreviation. --Grufo (disputatio) 11:40, 9 Maii 2023 (UTC)

I'm glad, of course, that en:Various authors agrees with me that the abbreviation is Latin. Thanks for checking :) I've never seen it in a published English book, but, exactly as en:wiki suggests, I have occasionally (as a peer-reviewer) seen it used by Italian and Spanish scholars attempting to transfer their own style rules into other languages. It would be removed at the copy-editing stage. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:45, 9 Maii 2023 (UTC)

«It's actually Latin of course ("auctores varii")»: I'd figured that out but was asking (as they say) rhetorically; et al. is far more widely understood while still being perfectly good Latin, but it's always attached to an author's or editor's name—which makes De Agostini (see below) problematic. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:05, 9 Maii 2023 (UTC)

[The "(see below)" above was referring to something that was below but is now above, thanks to a reorganization of the page.] IacobusAmor (disputatio) 18:58, 9 Maii 2023 (UTC)

Usually Aa. Vv. is used if there are no “main” authors credited, otherwise, as you correctly said, you would write Xxxx et al. In this case De Agostini is the publisher and Ambrogio is the editor, so we cannot say “De Agostini et al.”, nor “Ambrogio et al.” (unless Ambrogio is also one of the authors). Usually when you have only an editor credited you don't need to mention also that there are various authors, it is quite implicit (which is why Aa. Vv. is rarely used, because collective works normally do have a person that takes care of giving them their final form). However, there are cases in which you only have a publisher mentioned but no editors and the work has many authors: there is where you can use Aa. Vv. or Vv. Aa. --Grufo (disputatio) 18:42, 9 Maii 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, but I won't, and I don't advise others to. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 20:27, 9 Maii 2023 (UTC)

En passant, here A.A.V.V. is mentioned as the proper Latin abbreviation (Auctores Varii), whereas Spanish would use VV.AA. instead (Varios Autores). --Grufo (disputatio) 00:12, 10 Maii 2023 (UTC)

Is "plexoft.com" likely to be accepted as a reliable source? Not if one may judge by this entry :) Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:25, 10 Maii 2023 (UTC)

It might not be the list of abbreviations from the Oxford Classical Dictionary, but it is used on Wikipedia (#1, #2) – I actually discovered it through the en:Various author page.

Also not a reliable source :) Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 17:45, 10 Maii 2023 (UTC)

We shall then refer to something more reliable :-) --Grufo (disputatio) 22:37, 10 Maii 2023 (UTC)

There we see no dots at all, in that or any other abbreviations. As an editorial convention in that book, it makes good sense: note the introduction, p. xiv, "All foreign accents and most punctuation have been eliminated". That book is helping the reader find the meaning of abbreviations via the simplest alphabetical arrangement, it isn't prescribing a form to authors or copy-editors.

In terms of copy-editing, in Latin, the most normal and acceptable forms are Aa. Vv. or Aa. vv. If I were writing an article about the abbreviation, one of those would be my chosen pagename and lemma: I'd then look for a good source in Latin to back it. Various less Latin-literate forms, likely to be found embedded in non-Latin text, don't need to be in our first sentence but might be gathered in footnotes or in a later sentence. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:26, 11 Maii 2023 (UTC)

My guess is that the actual form in which one writes Aa. Vv. will be coherent to the form in which other abbreviations are written in that specific book, more than to a general rule on how to write Aa. Vv. For instance, if spaces are regularly removed after dots (e.g. “Adorno, T.W.”) then the same book might write “Aa.Vv.” (without spaces). The opposite should apply too. Or if doubling a consonant to express a plural keeps the second letter capital, that will be applied to this specific case too (hence AA. VV.). --Grufo (disputatio) 14:40, 11 Maii 2023 (UTC)

---

I can't speak for Iacobus -- we've been known to disagree totally -- but my opinion is that the place to discuss such a topic, if we need to, could be Disputatio:Domus editoria. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 08:02, 11 Maii 2023 (UTC)

If @IacobusAmor agrees we can already move the discussion that arose from “Postilla de falsis amicis” there (we have {{Excepta}} and {{Accepta}} for it), independently of whether the discussion will further develop or not. --Grufo (disputatio) 14:42, 11 Maii 2023 (UTC)

Postilla de falsis amicis. [paragraphus exceptus]

Pars excepta, nunc apud: Disputatio:Domus editoria § De vocabulo editoris, Anglice et Latine – Vide supra --Grufo