Descriptive notation abbreviated to the first letter of its name: K for king, Q for queen, R for rook, B for bishop, P for pawn. Knight begins with the same letter as king, so it is abbreviated to either "Kt" (used in older chess literature) or "N". "N" is used in this article. In 1944 "Chess Review" received many letters debating the change from Kt to N . In descriptive notation each square has two names, depending on Black's or White's viewpoint. Each is given a name corresponding with the piece that occupies the first at the start of the game. Thus
Fairy chess piece here for "initial" in the description of the different types of pawns. The letter a is used here to describe again, indicating the piece can make the move on which it is prefixed multiple times, possibly with new modifiers mentioned behind the a, which then apply to the second 'leg' of the move. Directional specifications for such a continuation step should be interpreted relative to the first step (e.g. aW is a two-step orthogonal move that can change direction; afW is a two-step orthogonal move that must continue the same direction). To handle some frequently encountered special moves, e can