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Should Doe, Jane PhD vd Ma report that vd Ma could be credentials? #578
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- added a commit that references this issue
on Oct 2, 2026 Decided in #580: the current reading stays, and it stays silent.
Doe, Jane PhD vd Mareads givenJane, middlevd Ma, familyDoe, suffixPhD, with no report. That follows from a rule that already existed. S2 says a particle in front of a member takes the member out of the given part's trailing slot, and a name word behind the particle joins it.vdreads asvandoes:Doe, Jane PhD van Magives the same reading, as does S2's own example,Doe, John van Ma.The writing is malformed whichever reading the writer meant. A reader would probably lean suffix, since both words follow a known credential, but that's a guess about the writer's mistake rather than a convention the writing carries.
Two alternatives were declined:
- A suffix reading would need code that cuts against P2 (a particle joins the word after it) and Should a particle that is also a credential (
vd,mc) count in a credential run after a comma? #554 (vdspeaks for nothing behind it). - A report would need a new emitter on the family-comma path for input nobody reads with confidence.
Where the writing does give a signal, the parser already follows it:
Doe, Jane PhD vd MAreads suffixPhD vd MAand reports (#573).The record is in
docs/design/decisions.md, under S2 (2026-10-02, #578). The case rowa_particle_after_a_credential_heads_a_title_case_namepins the reading.- A suffix reading would need code that cuts against P2 (a particle joins the word after it) and Should a particle that is also a credential (
After a family comma,
Doe, Jane PhD vd Mareads middlevd Maand reports nothing. The same words without the comma do report:Jan vd Mareads familyvd Mawithsuffix-or-name. The difference is where the report would come from. The particle chain makes the call, and it runs before assign knows which read the part will get, so the family-comma path stays silent.Left open by #573, which fixed the uniform-case shapes of the same word (
SMITH VD MA, JOHN,DOE, JANE PHD VD MA,SMITH, VD MA) and recorded this one as not decided (docs/design/decisions.md, P6 section, 2026-10-02).Would a reader hesitate here (A1's test)? If so, which stage should emit the report?