Multiple \sc acceptable?

[James Crippen]

Is it acceptable to have multiple \sc (Scientific Name) fields for a
single lexeme? I ask because the language I'm working on has one word
which refers to two different species of trees, Alnus crispa and A.
tenuifolia. It doesn't refer to all Alnus spp. however, since there is
another word for a different species.

At the moment I'm only using one \sc field with a space-semicolon-
space separating the two species names. But I think it would be
clearer if there were separate fields for each. So I'm wondering if
MDF handles this well, or if I'd need to do some surgery to make it
work.

Thanks,
James

[Crockett]

I've used multiple \sc with no problem in Toolbox. I use Lexique Pro to view
the data, not MDF, but Lexique Pro is similar.

[ToolboxSupport]

Thanks, Crockett, for sharing your experience.

One way to be sure about MDF is to change the \sc in a single record.
Then export and check the results. If you don't like it, you haven't
committed a lot effort to changing the markers.

Toolbox Support

> James- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Ian Scales]

Alternatively, don't use \sc at all. I work on ethnobotany, and never
use \sc because it is too limited.

Entries often need to be able to say more, like "shrub, Butterfly
tree, fi:Messerschmidia_argentea (syn. fi:Tournefortia_argentea)
(Boraginaceae).". Then you get occasions where you have to free gloss
like this: "herb, various herbs with milky sap from the Spurge family.
These include probably fi:Chamaesyce_hirta found in villages, probably
fi:Chamaesyce_atoto (syn. fi:Euphorbia_atoto) found on seashore and
probably fi:Euphorbia_heterophylla found in gardens (Euphorbiaceae)."

The point is 1) often a vernacular name refers to more than one
species, 2) you aren't always totally sure of the species unless
you're working with a herbarium, so you qualify with 'probably' or
'possibly', and 3) you often need to note synonyms. You can't get a
satisfactory result from \sc for any of these cases, which is to say
it is usually not useful.

However, \re is obviously useful to create an index, and typically for
a plant with dodgy identification, might look like: "\re Heterospathe
sp.(?) ; palm ; unidentified" (the entry shows up in three places in
the index).

Cheers