I asked this question in the naming conventions area, but nobody replied, so I'm hoping somebody can come up with a response here.
When we're referring to places that begin with Saint, Mount, Fort, etc., do we spell the whole word out? We have instances of [[Saint Louis, Missouri]] and [[St. Paul, Minnesota]], if I remember correctly.
Zoe
Hum - There is an unwritten naming convention in wikipedia for Christian saints to have the word "saint" proceed the person's name. So for the saint example I would tend not to use the spelled out word for geographic places such as cities.
However, I do often see places such as St. Louis and St. Paul with "saint" spelled out. Same for the other examples. I therefore would be hesitant on establishing a specific naming convention on this (I don't think you were suggesting this though).
But, if we go with widest useage with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity (which /is/ a central part of our naming conventions) then the abbreviated saint, mount and even fort will probably win the day in almost every case. Just do a Google search to compare. I would suggest not using a period after the appreciation --- we have been working hard on obliterating them from acronyms and I don't see a need to have them for abbreviations either.
--maveric149