As this is a proper name, is not what is `right' what the person concerned prefers (if known)?
Guessing on their behalf is not unambiguous: even if you know someone is, say, German, their surname may not be or vice versa. People have even written to me to `correct' the spelling of `Box and Muller' in my books. (Long ago a then colleague checked with Muller himself that was his preferred spelling.) On Wed, 15 Jun 2005, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote: > Spencer Graves <spencer.graves <at> pdf.com> writes: >> (This may not be relevant, but Google just gave me 788,000 hits for >> "moebius" and 750,000 for "mobius".) Perhaps one of our German >> contributors could tell us which they prefer. > > As you asked for it: The former is correct, and the second is a misspelling. > So > there is no choice but simply "right" and "wrong". > > The only alternative to the full '8-bit' spelling with an Umlaut is the > 'transcribed 7-bit' form of replacing the 'two dots over the vowel' with an > 'appended e after the vowel'. As in Maechler, or in the From: field above. > > The problem is that most of the world simply drops the dots: E.g. the > comparison > of 'Wolfgang Hardle' and 'Wolfgang Haerdle' at scholar.google.com shows that > the > correct form is (barely) leading with a narrow 227 to 220. My PhD > dissertation > is archived in the French Bibliotheque Nationale under Eddelbuttel as I opted > for the correct 8-bit form (using LaTeX) which got of course transcribed into > the > incorrect Eddelbuttel. Some lessons are learned the hard way ... > > Hope this helps, Dirk > > ______________________________________________ > [email protected] mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > -- Brian D. Ripley, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595 ______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
