> I'm sure this has been covered before but I want to get this right...
> 
> I'm putting together a ranma 1/2 information page (I know it's been done 
> but
> it's just giving me something to do <g>) and wanted to get this straight.
> Spelling. The way I see it the commercial spelling of most names in Ranma
> seems to be just 'o' for names like Ryoga, Ukyo and Kuno while a lot of
> people here seem to prefer Ryouga, Ukyou and Kunou. 

There's no single correct way to romanize Japanese text, there are
three major systems formally defined, and a lot of variations in use
even in relatively authoritative places like textbooks and dictionaries. 

The way that Viz does it is problematic because it doesn't distingush
long vowels at all.  

The use of "ou" for long "o" is popular on the net, because (1) it works 
in plain US-ASCII with no diacritical marks to cause character-encoding 
incompatablities (2) it is analogous to the way hiragana represents 
the long "o" sound. (There are similar conventions based on the
other hiragana long vowels, the details are a bit messy.)

Native speakers tend to be more casual about romanization, because
they know the original language, so the people who tend to care
the most about precise romanization are people learning the language.

To learn more, read:

"Kanji and Kana: A Handbook of the Japanese Writing System", Revised
Edition by Wolfgang Hadamitzky and Mark Spahn, ISBN 0-8048-2077

"Japan Style Sheet: The SWET Guide for Writers, Editors and Translators"
ISBN 1-880656-30-2

--
    Albert Lunde          Albert-Lunde@northwestern.edu (new address)
                          Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu (old address)