Descriptive notation

Descriptive notation is a notation for recording chess games, and at one time was the most popular notation in English- and Spanish-speaking countries (Brace 1977:79–80) (Sunnucks 1970:325). It was used in Europe until it was superseded by algebraic notation, introduced by Philipp Stamma in 1737. Algebraic notation is more concise and requires less effort to avoid ambiguity, but 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. Natural language was generally used to describe moves in early chess literature, and is the ultimate source of all forms of descriptive notation. Over time abbreviations became common and a system of notation gradually evolved. By the time of Howard Staunton's The Chess-Player's Handbook (1847) a common first move for White was recorded as "P. to K's 4th."; this was later reduced to "P-K4". Notably, in the back of the book Staunton offers brief descriptions of long algebraic notation, noting its adoption by "Alexandre, Jaenisch, the 'Handbuch,' and in Germany generally" (Staunton 1847:500–502), and of "Koch's Notation" (Staunton 1847:502–3), now generally known as ICCF numeric notation.