Descriptive Notation

Descriptive notation is a notation for recording chess games, and at one time was the most popular notation in English-speaking and Spanish-speaking countries (Brace 1977:79–80), (Sunnucks 1970:325). It was used in Europe until it was superseded by abbreviated algebraic notation, which was introduced by Philipp Stamma in 1737. Algebraic notation is more concise and requires less effort to avoid ambiguity; however much older literature uses descriptive notation. Descriptive notation exists in many language-based variants, the most prevalent being English descriptive notation and Spanish descriptive notation. Howard Staunton, in The Chess-Player's Handbook (1847), uses a cumbersome early version, viz., "P. to K's 4th." (later written P-K4). Notably, in the back of the book he offers brief descriptions of long algebraic notation, which he calls that adopted by "Alexandre, Jaenisch, the 'Handbuch,' and in Germany generally", (Staunton 1847:500–502) and of ICCF numeric notation, which he calls "Koch's Notation" (Staunton 1847:502–3). FIDE stopped recognizing descriptive notation in 1981 (Golombek 1977:216).