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This is completely off-topic, but did you mean to call it l'hospital as opposed to L'Hôpital? I remember even my calculus book had similar errors, and I always wondered if it was just because the two looked so similar (or if there was any more reasoning behind it). didn't mean to nitpick, your comment just triggered a repressed train of thought :)

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His original name was actually Guillaume de l'Hospital; French spelling reforms later did away with a number of cases of silent 's' (which had been silent for a long time already), replacing it with a circumflex over the preceding vowel.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_the_circumflex_in_French...

and: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_de_l%27H%C3%B4pital#c...

ah, thanks - I had a feeling it was something like that! I figured a Calculus book would probably get it right :)

It's not an error. The french changed their spelling to replace a silent 's' after some letters with a circumflex over those letters. Using the silent s instead of a circumflex is considered correct when transcribing into English.

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