Talk:Mac and Mc together

Current state of the article
I have added tags for out of date as disputed here, in accordance with my discussion of this at a user talk page.

The actual situation is much more complicated, and a very wide range of uses would need to be documented to give a balanced presentation; almost everything possible has been done, in tha past, and a great deal of inconsistency remains. (and we're just considering English language practice). The material also does not explain the divergence between UK and Us cataloging practices, which until the 60s and to a considerable extent beyond were not compatible--not to mention the thoroughly different standards used in other languages.

In particular, the discussion of how to handle umlauts would require a quite lengthy comparative article. The various languages that use them have different conventions, and the best known, the German umlaut, has a long history of changing practices in its own country. It is first, not explained here as being in large part a question of spelling conventions to accommodate the pronunciation, and it is further confused here with the general question of how to handle accented letters.

The concept of combining different language spelling and different forms in a single alphabetic list was quite popular before WWII, when the number of titles was so much smaller, and people could be expected to remember. I have spent so much time over the years helping students decipher the confusing lists generated by such practices that I think a much fuller explanation is called for, and I do not relish the thought of having to do so accurately in writing so many years after I thought the problem had been made obsolete by the searching capabilities of computers.

Which of course brings up the problem of the sorting of computer files, and coded character sets--another very complicated question with wide temporal variation. It was so simple in the start when there was only the basic ascii capitals. There's whole books on this, and some WP articles also.

And I can't say I'm happy having to cope with a article based on a now misleading chapter in an obsolete textbook, and a guide for beginning writers that seems ignorant about libraries.  DGG ( talk ) 03:42, 26 June 2012 (UTC)


 * The remark to the effect that "almost everything possible has been done, in the past" accords with my intuition about the history. I'd be grateful for any further references that should be incorporated.


 * The comment "now misleading chapter in an obsolete textbook" seems to me harsh. I'm not a subject expert, but I have started to research this topic in the time-honoured way of actually looking for sources. WP can record obsolete practices without recommending them, if that point really has to be made. There is clearly a timeline, and it seems to start in the 1870s, as far as I can see. A fuller timeline is desirable. The article could be called a stub, if necessary. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:31, 26 June 2012 (UTC)


 * This PDF seems interesting: Rule 2 is a longer list of Mac-type prefixes than I have seen elsewhere. It is currently in use at Dartmouth, apparently, judging from the "18 Filing Rules" link on http://www.dartmouth.edu/~library/recmgmt/forms.html. NB that the domain filemate.com is now something else. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:07, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

st/saint
See also how phone books (at least in Australia) have often collated St/Saint. See also https://libguides.ala.org/filing-rules which mentions same. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.14.131.60 (talk) 00:22, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Obsolete inappropriate
Rules of 1918 may be said older, but not obsolete if the page mentions the same rules much later. The rule seems to be still in use today in some libraries. The title "Obsolete filing rules" should be changed. Maybe this section (Canada and USA) could be merged with the following (UK) under a more general title of Older views… I give this a try. Dominique Meeùs (talk) 11:37, 24 December 2022 (UTC)