_A_b_b_r_e_v_i_a_t_e _S_t_r_i_n_g_s
	
	     abbreviate(names.arg, minlength=4, use.classes=TRUE,
	             dot=FALSE)
	
	_A_r_g_u_m_e_n_t_s:
	
	   names.arg : a vector of names to be abbreviated.
	
	   minlength : the minimum length of the abbreviations.
	
	 use.classes : a flag which is ignored by R.
	
	         dot : a flag indicating whether to postpend a dot.
	
	_V_a_l_u_e:
	
	     A character vector containing abbreviations for the
	     strings in its first argument.  Duplicates in the ori-
	     ginal names.arg will be given identical abbreviations.
	     If any non-duplicated elements have the same minlength
	     abbreviations then minlength is incremented by one and
	     new abbreviations are found for those elements only.
	     This process is repeated until all unique elements of
	     names.arg have unique abbreviations.
	
	     The character version of names.arg is attached to the
	     returned value as a names argument.
	
	     The algorithm used is similar to that of S.  First
	     spaces at the beginning of the word are stripped.  Then
	     any other spaces are stripped.  Next lower case vowels
	     are removed followed by lower case consonants.  Finally
	     if the abbreviation is still longer than minlength
	     upper case letters are stripped.  Letters are always
	     stripped from the end of the word first.  If an element
	     of names.arg contains more than one word (words are
	     separted by space) then at least one letter from each
	     word will be retained.  If a single string is passed it
	     is abbreviated in the same manner as a vector of
	     strings.
	
	     If use.classes is FALSE then the only distinction is to
	     be between letters and space. This has NOT been imple-
	     mented.
	
	_S_e_e _A_l_s_o:
	
	     substr.
	
	_E_x_a_m_p_l_e_s:
	
	     x <- c("abcd","efgh","abce")
	     abbreviate(x,2)