title tattle

Although no longer active in Sherlock Holmes fan circles, as a holdover from those days I find I instinctively use the four-letter abbreviations (as devised by Jay Finley Christ) when writing about them (so DANC for 'The Dancing Men' and so on). I suppose this makes sense as I find I write about them a lot. But why then do I not apply the same naming convention to, say, HP Lovecraft or Fleming, even when I write (or will be writing) about them more or less as frequently? Is it just a 'Sherlockian' (ughh!) affectation?

Would this work with the Bond novels? There are perils and pitfalls:

CASI
LIVE
MOON
DIAM
FROM
DRNO
GOLD
FORY
THUN

So far so good (though 'FORY' for 'For Your Eyes Only' reads a little ungainly). But now we hit problems:

THES
(for 'The Spy Who Loved Me') seems odd; yet SPYW seems odder and LOVE, skipping ahead a few words in the title, feels like cheating)

Then we have
OHMS
Again, this just doesn't feel right - the wordplay in the title depends on the insertion of 'Secret' into 'Secret Service' and for decades 'OHMSS' has been the accepted shorthand - would anyone deny the insertion of a 5th letter into the abbreviations?)

YOUO (ungainly again)
MANW (ditto! - seeing as 'GOLD' is already taken!)

OCTO works well - but what if you just want to discuss the second half of that book, 'The Living Daylights'? Which poses a related question - should abbreviations be used for the individual short stories (comprising 'For Your Eyes Only', 'Octopussy and The Living Daylights' or more recently the collected edition 'Quantum of Solace: The Collected James Bond Short Stories')?

On reflection, abbreviations for any Bond novel or story doesn't seem to feel right, with the notable exception of OHM(S)S. Lovecraft? Perhaps I'll consider that in a future post....

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