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RE: [HAPS-L] Disease/Syndrome names



It never made sense to me to add the apostrophe since Alzheimer, for example, apparently neither had the condition nor did he own it. I believe the trend is away from the use of the mark.


From: HAPS-L-owner@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:HAPS-L-owner@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carey Carpenter
Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2007 2:29 AM
To: HAPS-L@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [HAPS-L] Disease/Syndrome names

Google does not truncate when words are placed in quotes, and:

"Parkinson's disease"  1,760,000 hits
"Parkinson disease"   
3,690,000

"Alzheimer's disease" 
5,060,000
"Alzheimer disease"    2,810,000

"Addison's disease"      
625,000
"Addison disease"         662,000

"Cushing's disease"     
280,000
"Cushing disease"        306,000

 "Huntington's disease"
1,040,000
 " Huntington disease"  1,020,000

I think whether or not the apostrophe is retained is a function of the relative ease of the resulting pronunciation, as subtle as the differences may be. In any event, formal rules seem irrelevant.





On 2/14/07, Alan Magid <amagid@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I can rationalize part of that, Judith.

Google automatically truncates nouns to the singular or non-possessive.
Therefore, after correcting, the totals are

Net Parkinson = 2,150,000 - 1,630,000 = 520,000
Net Parkinson's = 1,630,000

Mesh I think always truncates but doesn't report both. Of course these are
very different data bases.

-Alan


> From: Judith Gibber < jrg43@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Reply-To: <HAPS-L@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2007 13:03:09 -0500 (EST)
> To: < HAPS-L@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: [HAPS-L] Disease/Syndrome names
>
> Using the authority of Google, I'd say that there's no rhyme or reason!
> For example:
>
> Parkinson disease: 1,630,000 hits
> Parkinson's disease: 2,150,000 hits


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