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Browsing the checklist at Dipterist Forum I came across things like this:


I understand the reason for the parentheses (..) around the authority, but what do the square brackets [..] around the date signify?

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The date was arbitrarily fixed as the earliest certain date of publication. For example, a three issue volume has the date of publication on the frontispiece that was issued with the third issue as 1800. There is evidence that the first issue was published in 1790, but there is no evidence when the second issue was published. The earliest certain date is then set as the same tdate the third issue was published and the dat may then be given as [1800].

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Thanks Paul, I thought it might be something along those lines.