Re: Why is "spp." an abbreviation of plural "species"? (Biology/Latin Q)

[Marc Adler]

On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 6:44 AM, Shinya Suzuki <CXP0...@nifty.ne.jp> wrote:

Question: Why is "spp." an abbreviation of the plural of "species"? (Why
two p's?)

By analogy with "pp" for pages? In fact, there's probably something historical going on here. In Spanish, "US" (as in USA) is "EEUU," even though it's only "Estados Unidos," so they're doubling both letters to indicate a plurality of states, as it were.

Ah, yes, here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbreviation

In Latin, and continuing to the derivative forms in European languages as well as English, single-letter abbreviations had the plural being a doubling of the letter, e.g. for footnotes.

• d. didot — dd. didots (typography)
• h. hand — hh. hands (horse height)
• l. line — ll. lines
• p. page — pp. pages
• P. pope — PP. popes
• v. volume — vv. volumes

Whether that's actually the case for "species" or not, I'm not sure.

--
Marc Adler
www.adlerpacific.com

[Alan Siegrist]

Shinya Suzuki writes:

> Question: Why is "spp." an abbreviation of the plural of "species"? (Why
> two p's?)

I don't know why, but this convention is also used for other abbreviations.
For example, p. is the abbreviation for "page" in the singular while pp. is
"pages" in the plural. There are probably other examples.

Perhaps it is the replication of letters that suggests to the reader that
the abbreviation is plural.

Regards,

Alan Siegrist
Orinda, CA, USA

[Alan Siegrist]

I wrote:

> For example, p. is the abbreviation for "page" in the singular while pp.
> is "pages" in the plural.

N.B. Japanese authors often use the abbreviations p. or pp. in
bibliographical citations, but many seem to be ignorant of the singular
versus plural convention, so when translating from Japanese to English, I
constantly find myself changing pp. to p. (or vice versa) to match the
number of pages cited.

It is a heavy burden, I know, but someone must bear it.

[Mark Spahn]

Why use abbreviations at all? 

The abbreviation "spp." (4 characters) is not much shorter than

the full plural "species" (7 characters).  Possibly the answer is

that "species" is one of those relatively rare words whose plural

form is identical to its singular form.  So you can't know whether

"species" is singular or plural.  But between "sp." and "spp.",

you can tell which is the plural.  Here, the abbreviations are

more informative than the fully spelled-out word.

-- Mark Spahn  (West Seneca, NY)

 

[Shinya Suzuki]

Thanks to Marc, Alan and Mark for the explanations.

Marc Adler wrote:

> - d. didot — dd. didots (typography)
> - h. hand — hh. hands (horse height)
> - l. line — ll. lines
> - p. page — pp. pages
> - P. pope — PP. popes
> - v. volume — vv. volumes

All except pp. are new to me.

Shinya Suzuki