In the book Lord Wexmire is referred to as Lord W----. Does anyone know why this is?
Eight divided by one-half equals four squared!
A lot of books written in that period did that. It's annoying and drives me nuts. My guess is the authors don't want to be bothered to think up names, so they just put in a random letter with a bunch of dashes after it.
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"House. My room. Can't walk. My medal. My father. Father, don't!"
OmegaWolf747 is correct that several books use this technique, but it isn't laziness on the author's part. If an author doesn't want a character to have a name, he or she simply doesn't name that character. For example, an author would call a nameless boy 'the boy' or 'the lad' or 'the little fellow', rather than just placing a random letter in the middle of a book.
The names of people and places were written with dashes during this time period in order to protect real people and places that the author may be describing. In the case of Lord W---, the surname Wexmire was in all probability added by the filmmakers, and was not the original name Anna Sewell had in mind. In fact,it was probably an editor or publisher or printer who added the dashes when the book was first released, leaving filmmakers the task of giving Lord W--- a name.
(Curse words were also often written in this manner, so as not to offend the readers.)
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