NavList:

A few days ago in a NavList message, I wrote:
"The short form Zuben'ubi was just to make it fit on the page, like "Rigel Kent." and "Kaus Aust." in the same list. "Zubenel." would have been more consistent with those. Although many navigators read and say "Zuben'ubi" and thought that this was the name or a variant name for the star, that was never the intention, as far as I can tell.
By contrast, the name Al Na'ir was supposedly trying to indicate a glottal stop --a quick gap between the syllables."

Tonight while looking for something else, I found a few words I wrote in a message fifteen years ago:
"By the way, on the list in the Nautical Almanac, abbreviated names are marked with a period, e.g. "Kaus Aust." while the Arabic glottal stop is marked with an apostrophe, e.g. "Al Na'ir". But Zubenelgenubi is written "Zuben'ubi". This never occurred to me before... are there people who pronounce Zubenelgenubi as Zuben-STOP-ubi?"

Round and round and round we go.

Frank Reed