Why do you spell out the names of the cities that start with “Saint”, “Fort”, and “Mount”, rather than using “St.”, “Ft.”, and “Mt.” as everyone else does?
In most cases, lists of geographic locations presented in alphabetical order place abbreviated names in the order they would appear if the full name were spelled out completely. For example, in England, “St. Albans”, “St. Austell”, and “St. Ivo” would all appear in an alphebetized list of cities before “Sale”, because the full name, with the “Saint” spelled-out precedes “Sale”. That type of sort requires an additional database field, one with the full name spelled out, to work, even though you may never see it. We do not feel that an additional database field is justified. Further, the adoption of a consistent approach to nomenclature helps us to avoid listing the same city under two different names – a real risk when dealing with so many communities in so many countries. We also feel that the convention we have adopted may be easier for the non-English speaking swimmers who use the Web site. We feel it’s better to spell everything out in consideration of our friends around the world w
