Yesterday I noticed something for the very first time in the Watchtower. ALL of the scriptures in the study article are spelled out in full. (e.g. 1 Timothy instead of 1 Tim or 1 Ti). This is true even when there is a string of scriptures.
I browsed through the CD-Rom and discovered that as of Jan 1, 1982 this appears to be the format adopted (without any hint of reason or why that I could uncover.)
Does anyone know the reason for this change?
Did the Society feel that the friends (or the public) was unfamiliar with the abbreviated forms?
Was it for better readability?
Is it because this makes the scriptures more prominent and thus sends a strong message that the info is "Bible Based?"
Over time I guess the accumulated "space saved" (that the Society didn't have to fill with info) to be millions of pages by citing the scriptures in full.
Along these same lines it appears like there was no real standard form of abbreviation used by the Society before. The Reference Bible has a whole table of abbreviated forms on the Bible Books page but none of these forms seem to be used in the magazines or publications and the forms used in these varies almost from work to work and sometimes even in the same article.
Was there any rhyme or reason to this? Was this the unintended effect of having different authors work on the same piece or writing by committee?
curious,
Eduardo