They only did that with us once - and that was an oral exam, without warning...
Part II
(Had to be continued to prevent my not getting my next paycheck either, for reasons unrelated to alphabetism.
)
Alphabetism may well rob many a person of the acclaim they deserve. Recently, for instance, a landmark paper on bird phylogeny was published, and the authors given as "Hackett
et al", the "et al" being none fewer than seventeen other participants. The group had three leaders, including Hackett herself, who were acknowledged in the paper as equal participants. However, as few who cite the study are likely to go into such details, the other two are getting much less exposure, for the sole reason that their names are lower down in the alphabet.
I suspect that alphabetism may also affect people whose surnames start with very common or very rare letters. I've seen people with surnames starting with rare initials (among English speakers, at least) such as I, Q, U, X and Z left out of "Who's who" lists because compilers probably simply skipped those letters. On the other hand, the name of a Scottish Mac or Dutch Van may get lost in the crowd.
