Subject: CCL:Spelling of v(V?)an der Waals('?)

From: "Leslie Glasser" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 09:12:22 GMT + 2:00

Dear Colleagues:
Huang Tang (below) has it right.  Native language speakers work on 
(often faulty) instinct!  The apostrophe indicates possession, 
and should be reserved for the "possessor" of the entity.  
Furthermore, a singular ending "s" takes " 's ", as in Charles's Law 
(except in special cases which we need not go pursue here).

>  However, I personally believe that "van der Waals'
>parameters" is a bad usage, unless the parameters were actually
>discovered/derived by van der Waals and named after him (obviously 
>not), as in the said equation.  With or without an apostrophe, as in
>"Washington apple" and "Washington's apple", carries different
>connotations associated with it, at least to my ears (I might as well 
>be wrong,  because I'm not a native English speaker).  

>Huang Tang

On the capitalisation issue; in Dutch and related Germanic languages 
(and vdW was Dutch), the initial letter of multi-worded names is not 
capitalised: Ludwig von Beethoven, not Ludwig Von Beethoven, for 
example.  Hence, vdW should only be capitalised at the start of a 
sentence.

Leslie ==============================================================
(Prof.) Leslie Glasser                     Dept. of Chemistry    
E-mail: [email-masked]      Univ. of Witwatersrand     
Tel: Intl + 27 11 716-2070                 P. O. WITS 2050            
Fax: Intl + 27 11 339-7967                 South Africa               
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From: Patrick Bultinck <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 10:36:04 +0100 (MET)

Van der Waals.

In Belgium (northern Dutch speaking part) we do use capitals for the 
first letter ! (contrary to an earlier post by somebody from South 
Africa).
Looking at the phonebook of my lab here I see e.g. :

Van Driessche
Van Eename
Van der Kelen
Van de Vondel
Van Thuyne etc. etc.

I always use the term Van der Waals radii written with capital V !
I happen to be reading in a book by I and M Hatgittai on symmetry, and I 
see e.g. on page 114 the term van der Waals radii, and on p.115 Van 
der Waals radii... I believe that it should be Van der Waals radii, I see 
no reason to start changing peoples names when used as an adjective, so 
Van der Waals radii.

Patrick

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From: [email-masked] (Nick Blom)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 95 10:09:09 -0500

> example.  Hence, vdW should only be capitalised at the start of a

But, if you leave out his initials: 'v' then becomes 'V' to indicate that a
proper noun starts and the 'van' is not something in the middle of a sentence.
So in your example Ludwig von Beethoven becomes Von Beethoven without Ludwig,
and J.H. van der Waals becomes Van der Waals without J.H.

So Pieter Stouten was right.

Nick
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Dr. Nick Blom			    Tel  : +1-514-3436111 ext 5352
Departement de Biochimie	    Fax  : +1-514-3432210
Universite de Montreal		    Email: [email-masked]
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