<At this point a tall, thin, calm figure appeared in the room. It was our consul Filipp Ivanovich Chikirisov. He behaved in an independent fashion, and the ambassador had an attitude of respect for him. The hubbub died down straight away.

"What are the difficulties?"

The ambassador explained the situation.

"All right, I can help. I will try to talk to the owner of the Hotel Twee Staden" (Two Cities).

Ok I put it back the first way.

Even if it seems more than likely that <Twee Steden> was meant, it is still written in your source as <Twee Staden>. You cannot simply correct a possible mistake in your source just like that. I would suggest to leave it as <Twee Staden> and either indicate the problem via footnote or perhaps even introduce a [sic]. But as long as you have no proof that they made a typo (e. g. a later correction somewhere else or in a later edition), or another source with the same information but the name <Twee Steden>, I think it's doubtful to simply change the information provided by Botvinnik himself just like that.>

I think misspelling a hotel's name just because our source does is not a good idea, but if you feel we need a separate source for the correct spelling perhaps http://kranten.delpher.nl/nl/view/i... would do?

<Het Kurhaus is de vesting, waarin de schaakmeesters zich verschanst hebben, met uitzondering van de strateeg Botwinnik, die in Hotel <„De Twee Steden"> zijn hoofdkwartier heeft ingericht.>

<19 "De Tijd", 25 Mar[ch] 1948, p.2. http://kranten.delpher.nl/nl/view/i...>

Another thing. Sometimes we abbreviate months and sometimes we don't, with no logic I can spot.

<10 "American Chess Bulletin" (Jan-Feb 1948), p.11. In Winter, "Interregnum."

11 "American Chess Bulletin" (March-April 1948), p.25. In Winter, "Interregnum.">

I'm going to follow a standard American abbreviated "Above 5 letter norm" with no periods, <exactly> as used by "Skinner and Verhoeven" in their Alekhine book.

Every draft I send off to <crawfb5> from now on will have this set in the notes, very time:

Jan Feb March April May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec

##########################

<secure with>

I'm just checking "Skinner and Verhoeven" right now, and they use the abbreviations posted above *and* they also use different abbreviations than those, *and* they also type out the entire name of the month...

with no logical pattern that I can determine.

More, it appears that the "American 5 letter set" I posted may only be a norm in my imagination. I'd been doing it that way for so long I suppose I assumed it was a norm. The norm is actually a "4 letter set."

Here's the actual American norm, as noted by <Switch>. You'll note that I even got that wrong- it's the British norm that's naked, not the American:

Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec

http://www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/voc...

So that's the set we'll use from now on in the notes.

We can even footnotes the note abbreviations with the handy web link I posted.

Here is note <18> now:

I want to do another standardization. I want to write out the full names of the months in the body of our drafts, and use the British abbreviations in the notes.

1. I think written out words are much better aesthetically for the reader's experience.

2. I think it's advantageous to abbreviate the notes- to make them shorter. After all, nobody's ever going to actually read the notes, except <Switch> (long may his shadow continue to grow).

I think that there are few enough drafts that I could convince <Daniel> to "back edit" the first two in order to bring them in line with this standardization model.

<Veryone'sFavoriteProjectEditor: <secure with>

I can't find that construction anywhere in the draft? That certainly doesn't mean it's not there though.>

Brilliant...

"for," right?

And I agree with this:

<OhioChessFan: <daktari: By the way, in that case it would also need 'and himself'.> Yeah, I thought about the "and himself". It's a bit awkward and I think people can conclude he was sharing a room with the Mrs.>

Colleagues, I'm in this for the long haul. I'm not stopping until every single WCC page is rewritten.

I think we should extend "promotion examination" time to <three weeks>.

In the third week of Game Collection: WCC: FIDE WCC Tournament 1948 inspection, several serious errors were found and corrected.

I got a million of 'em.

What's the topic?

Oh, right. Promo exclam.

I'm a firm believer in the slow but sure school of editing. Anything worth writing is worth rewriting, I say.

Per the "and himself" issue, is it important to know his wife and daughter were there? We could soften the awkwardness of "and himself" by saying

< Botvinnik was eventually able to secure rooms at the Hotel De Twee Steden for his family, and seconds Viacheslav Ragozin and Salomon Flohr.>

I sort of want a comma after "seconds" but it's a different kind of comma than after the current "daughter" or my proposed "family". Maybe it should be "his seconds" in either case. Maybe a hyphen.

Anyway, here's a listing of the current and a few options:

1. Botvinnik was eventually able to secure rooms at the Hotel De Twee Steden for his wife, daughter, and seconds Viacheslav Ragozin and Salomon Flohr.

2. Botvinnik was eventually able to secure rooms at the Hotel De Twee Steden for his family, and seconds Viacheslav Ragozin and Salomon Flohr.

3. Botvinnik was eventually able to secure rooms at the Hotel De Twee Steden for his family and his seconds, Viacheslav Ragozin and Salomon Flohr.

4. Botvinnik was eventually able to secure rooms at the Hotel De Twee Steden for his wife, daughter, and his seconds-Viacheslav Ragozin and Salomon Flohr.

5. Botvinnik was eventually able to secure rooms at the Hotel De Twee Steden for his family, and his seconds, Viacheslav Ragozin and Salomon Flohr.

6. Botvinnik was eventually able to secure rooms at the Hotel De Twee Steden for his family, and his seconds-Viacheslav Ragozin and Salomon Flohr. (In this version, I don't feel as much need for the comma after family)

7. Botvinnik was eventually able to secure rooms at the Hotel De Twee Steden for his family and his seconds-Viacheslav Ragozin and Salomon Flohr.

Oh I do feel silly now.

I'd quickly checked Delpher - but only looked for Botvinnik. Which hardly turned up any articles, because his name tends to be written as Botwinnik in Dutch. Which I had of course forgotten.

<OhioMultiplechoiceFan>

I'd go for option #3. I can hear myself saying the whole " Botvinnik was eventually able to secure rooms at the Hotel De Twee Steden for his family and his seconds" with the small addendum defining the seconds which would necessitate the comma. It's an information-rich sentence already, so if you'd comma-pause after family, it'd feel a bit runny-onny.

< <By the 10th round Botvinnik led the field by a point and faced Keres.>

I know I'm obsessed with commas, and maybe we've discussed this, but I'd like a comma after "round". Have we discussed that?>