[derek73]

Phase 2l of #752. Closes #810.

What changes

A bracketed or quoted clause is now read as the suffix, not a nickname, in one pass when all three hold:

• it is one word from the ambiguous credential class;
• it stands after the name, behind a name word, with no name word after it;
• its spelling settles that it is a credential.

Two spellings settle it:

• A period inside the word. This is S3's evidence and holds in any case: John Smith (M.A) and JOHN SMITH (M.A) give suffix M.A.
• Capitals in a name written in mixed case. This is S6's evidence (the case signal at the suffix slot): John Smith (MA), Smith, John (MA) and Andrew Perkins (JD) give a suffix. The case is checked against the name's own words, as 2g's settled_by_case checks it.

These keep the nickname and report suffix-or-nickname:

• Title case: John Smith (Ed) and John Smith (Ma) lean to the name.
• A name in one case: JOHN SMITH (MA) and john smith (MA) settle nothing.
• A name word after the clause: Jeffrey (JD) Bricken, Jean 'JD' Smith, Jean (M.A) Smith, Smith (MA), John and John Smith (MA) Ma.
• No name word at all: Dr. (MA) and (M.A).

A suffix, a title or a maiden clause after the bracket does not count as a name word. So John Smith (MA) Ph. D., John Smith (MA) Dr. and John Smith (MA) née Jones settle.

Releases:

• John Smith (MA) and (M.A): 1.4.0 read a suffix, and 2.0.0 through 2.6.0 read a nickname.
• Andrew Perkins (JD): a nickname from 1.4.0 through 2.6.0.

How it works

• The decision. post_rules decides first, in its single pass, once every word's role is known. A settled clause becomes the suffix directly. It is not unwrapped and read bare, because since Read a surname written as two dotted initials as a name, not a credential (#864) #872 a bare M.A reads as paired initials (John Smith M.A gives family M.A).
• The report. The suffix-or-nickname report moved there from classify, so it is raised where the fork is decided. A dotted member left a nickname is now reported too.
• Cost against master (1353913), in frames: Smith, John and John Smith are unchanged. John Smith (MA) goes 214 → 210, and a name with a clause it does not settle pays 2 to 5.

Accepted (rules/S13). In one pass the rest of the name is read as if the clause were a nickname. Where that differs from the clause's twin, a bracketed unambiguous credential like (PhD) in the same place, the difference is an accepted cost:

• A lone name word: it stays N3's family name. Jack (MA) gives family Jack, while Jack (PhD) gives given Jack, reported.
• A maiden clause after the member: it stays the maiden name, where the twin's credential run takes it.
• The case is asked once: JOHN SMITH (m.a) (MA) leaves MA a nickname, where the twin settles both clauses.
• A part past a second comma: it is weighed without the member. Smith, John, X.Y.Z. (MA) reports nothing, while its twin draws comma-structure.

test_where_a_bracketed_member_reads_otherwise_than_its_twin records a census of these differences: 396 of 1,080 readings, by head. A later change that moves the count shows up there.

Docs

• New rule rules/S13 (a bracketed member settled by its writing). It reads one signal, the position, and is a hub of S1, S3 and S6, the rules it cites for the writing and for the escape from the nickname. It has a Precedence bullet against S3's paired initials.
• rules/S1: the member bullet now covers every spelling, and a new Precedence bullet names S13. The rule budget is re-recorded: S1 grows for that bullet, and S13 is new.
• decisions/S13: the measurements, the reasons and each review round. It also records what was declined: escaping every member, and the twin reading by re-parsing.
• Other decisions files: ma-do's 2026-07-17 entry is marked superseded in part. ma-do and suffix-acronym-collisions gain Elsewhere: lines, and vocabulary-model gets a Standing line and a phase 2l entry.
• Also updated: the RFC's Brackets paragraph and mechanisms.md's CLAUSE-CONTENT-OVERRULES-DELIMITER.
• User docs: a release-log bullet, plus usage.rst and customize.rst on bracketed ambiguous acronyms. AGENTS.md gains one sentence on a review lesson.

Measured against master (021028b, --base on a clean checkout; the same against 1353913)

• Committed snapshot: 3 moves, each nickname → suffix with the report gone: John Smith (MA), Andrew Perkins (JD) and John Smith PhD (MA). It also adds S13's rule examples. Every CLDR, GND, Wikidata and conventions agreement record matches.
• ctgov-officials: 3 of the 29 names holding one member alone in brackets move. Each is a capitals member in a mixed-case name, after a credential behind a comma (shapes Aa A Aa, AA (AA), Aa Aa, AaAaAa (AA), Aa Aa, Aa.AA(AA)), and each now reads as the credential it is. The other 26 are 23 Ed, 2 Ed. (already a suffix) and 1 ed.
• FEC: 6 such names, all written in one case. None moves. The design spike that checked the word's own case moved all 6, wrongly.
• tse-donors, ukec-individuals: match.
• psc-individuals: its agreement record matches.
• Dotted arm: no corpus holds a real name that uses it. It rests on the 2026-10-23 decision and on 1.4.0's reading.

Review

1. First code review. The first draft decided in group, from the following word's suffix tag. So (MA) VI, (MA) Ph. D. and (MA) Dr. stayed nicknames while (MA) III escaped, and its per-member scans were quadratic. The fix moved the decision to post_rules, and the new bracket_members benchmark row fails on the first draft.
2. Design-docs review. S1 claimed a report the parser did not make, and S13's Signal line named one signal of two.
3. The twin reading, then one pass (Derek). A draft read a settled member exactly as its (PhD) twin by folding the pipeline to a fixed point. Two review rounds found it needed hooks in four stages. Derek chose the one-pass version instead, keeping S13's single signal, and the twin differences are recorded as accepted costs.
4. Fixes kept from those rounds. A clause is the member alone only where its whole text is the member, so an emoji or zero-width character beside it leaves it a nickname, as its twin is. The draft's comma-structure fix is not needed in one pass: Smith, John, Jr. (M.A) reports nothing, as its twin does.
5. Review of the one-pass commit. A clause in a name with no name word was being settled (Dr. (MA)), which S13's When rules out, so a name word is now required before the clause. That review also added a row for a leading period ((.ma)) and an S13 example for a stray full stop after the clause (John Smith (MA)., which keeps the nickname).

Each fix has case rows that fail on the commit before it. Two low edges are recorded in decisions/S13:

• P6 after an empty-head comma (, Jones (MA) vd).
• A word read as a name after the clause, where the twin's credential run would take it.

Checks

• uv run pytest (26,854) and -n0 -m serial (43)
• --python 3.15
• mypy and ruff
• sphinx-build -b doctest (0 failures) and README doctest

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