Forum: Editors/Reviewers Hangout

I recently read a review that decided it was a good idea to refer to Lazlo Zalezac as LZ. I read that and thought, why is he talking about Landing Zones?

He also reviewed a story by JC.

Perhaps discussions here might be useful to other reviewers. It seems to me that unless you are a friend, or at least a correspondent with an author and he has indicated his initials are an acceptable nickname, or a famous, dead, politician like FDR, JFK or LBJ, at the very least we should use at least his first or last name, or both if they aren't unusually long. Something like Schimelpfenning cries out for an abbreviation, but Jay Cantrell doesn't. Or use Jay, if you feel it is appropriate. I am reasonably sure the site can afford the bandwidth for three or five letters instead of two, the initial Capital letters of the author's first and last names.

Edited to add information about
Schimmelpfennig Name Meaning & Schimmelpfennig Family ...

www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=schimmelpfennig

Schimmelpfennig Name Meaning German: nickname for a miser who lets his pennies become moldy, from schimmeln 'to become moldy, mildewy' (Middle High German …
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Alexander Schimmelfennig - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Schimmelfennig

Alexander Schimmelfennig (July 20, 1824 – September 5, 1865) was a German soldier and political revolutionary; then he became a Union Army general in the American ...
Early life and career ·
Civil War

He also invented a sauce combing mustard, ketchup, vinegar and salt and pepper, and may have other ingredients, that my father learned to prepare at West Point (class of 1940) and taught his children to use on hot dogs.

More information about the civil war general than you probably want to know.

"The state of Missouri was so thickly settled with German immigrants after the Revolution of 1848 that during the American Civil War, an entire Union Army Corps, the Xth, was German-speaking. There is a story that Abraham Lincoln was given a list of candidates for promotion to brigadier and selected, among others, a man named Schimmelpfennig. When it was pointed out to him that there were other officers ahead of Schimmelpfennig on in terms of seniority and merit, Lincoln replied, "Yes, but the name is worth ten thousand votes in Missouri alone!"

I thought the sauce was named for the General, but upon further review, it was invented at West Point by a cadet with that name circa 1940 "SCHIMMELPFENNIG SAUCE / SCHIMMELPFENNIG'S SAUCE : a palatable (if not savory) concoction created by combining some or all of the available CONDIMENTS so as to adequately season the meal; originated at West Point (USMA) to flavor military-style TURKEY (ie: hash) during the post-WWII era, it has since been eponymously christened to honor his resourcefulness.