I've noticed that older newspapers would often replace the first c in names such as McCarthy with an apostrophe in headlines like M'Carthy. Two specific examples from the 1860s and 1950s are of George McClellan (M'clellan) and Joe McCarthy. I've never seen this done in other contexts and am curious as to what kind of typographical standard this practice would have come from and when it fell out of favor. Was it just to save type space?
Further, was this an American style or did it originate in Britain or Ireland?
Thanks!
Originally, the apostrophe would have been an inverted comma. In British English convention, that's the opening punctuation for a quotation; for Americans, it would be half a quotation mark. This is curved in the opposite direction of an apostrophe and resembles a "C" shape. It used to be common to use a superscript letter to abbreviate part of a word, and so Mc- and Mac- names were often written with a "c" in superscript. Not all printers had a superscript "c" in their set of lettering (or "fount"), but an inverted comma is the same shape and occupies the same position, so was used as a substitute. Eventually some printers began substituting an apostrophe, although this was by no means consistent. Source.
Notably, the apostrophe/inverted comma convention was common in the printed reporters for court decisions in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, which is one place where the apostrophe persists. There are many landmark cases that are still referred to using the convention used by the printer, despite how the party spelled his own name.
One of the most famous cases, from Britain, is M'Naghten's Case (1843), which introduced the insanity defense and used an inverted comma instead of a "c." Today, his name is generally written with an apostrophe, although that is almost certainly not how he spelled it (the correct spelling appears to be up for debate). In the U.S., the case of Johnson v. M'Intosh (1823) established that private citizens could not purchase land from Native Americans, only the federal government. It also used the inverted comma and is commonly referred to with an apostrophe, despite the party in the case spelling his name McIntosh.
But some cases have escaped that fate. In 1819, McColloch v. Maryland, which established that the federal laws were supreme over state laws, was printed with the inverted comma, but is nonetheless commonly referred to by the correct name of the party. My own theory is that since McColloch was a government official and possibly notable in his own right, his actual name prevailed over the printed convention. And as mentioned, some printers used a plain old apostrophe, even fairly early on. So there were not really hard and fast rules on the matter.
It's suggested that this fell out of favor in the U.S. with the influx of immigrants from Scotland and Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century and increasing understanding of/sensitivity to Gaelic names. It seems to have persisted, however, in headlines, where space is at a premium and an apostrophe vs. a "c" might make or break the typesetting. For example, it appears that the N.Y. Times has used an apostrophe in headlines for Mc- and Mac- names through at least the 1990s. It accords with the modern English convention to use an apostrophe in the place of omitted letters (e.g., I am -> I'm), so it's certainly intelligible even if it doesn't follow the original logic.
I can't answer the general question about typographical standards but I have one historic example which might be relevant to answering some of the sub-questions here regarding the history of this practice. My expertise is more in history of psychology and there's one example from the history of mental illness which can shed light on this question.
Quick summary: The example below shows that the apostrophe was present in England in the mid 1800s but was quite inconsistent. This example traces a name which changed spelling with some dates about when the change happened.
The M'Naghten rule is a legal precedent based on the 1843 case of Daniel M'Naghten (or Mcnaughton or several other spellings, see below), who suffered from paranoid delusions and killed a civil servant, Edward Drummond, because he mistakenly thought the servant was the prime minister. The legal idea here was whether suffering from delusions was ipso facto enough to lead to a defense due to insanity.
Regarding the question, the M'Naghten rule has a long history of spelling and alterations, as summarized by this article by Diamond: https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811/68477/OSLJ_V25N1_0084.pdfhttps://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811/68477/OSLJ_V25N1_0084.pdf
The most relevant part shows that it is possible that M'Naghten spelled his name himself as McNaughten (through a signature in the linked article), but it is unclear since the signature is a bit hard to read. However, other sources indicate that he signed his name as M'Naghten during the trial. Either way, it was quite variable how the name was spelled and I think that Diamond makes a good case that he did not use the apostrophe in his name.
However, through the trial and reports in the English (and eventually American legal tradition), the spelling changed. To quote a letter written by Sir. William J. Haley, Editor of the London Times to Justice Felix Frankfurter:
trial-M'Naughten (as reported in The Times).
The State Trials-Macnaughton.
Clark and Finelly-M'Naghten.
Archbold, 1938 edition-Macnaughton
1927 edition-Macnaughten
Index -Macnaghten
later editions-Macnaghten
later editions-M'Naughten
lVcNaughten, and several other spellings.
Encyclopaedia Britannica-different spellings in different articles.
Royal Commission on Capital Punishment, 1949, instructed by its Chairman, Sir Ernest Gower sM'Naghten.
After all that I do not quite know what
Point 2 indicates that M'Naughten spelled his own name with an apostrophe according to a contemporary news source in England which argues that this practice was in English writing at the time
Point 7 refers to Halsbury which is a The later additions of Halsbury in the quote date to around 1933 and is an English legal text. This also indicates that the apostrophe is not just an Americanization but was present in English writing too.
To summarize, the M'Naghten spelling is most common today with some variation.