[swift-evolution] Analysis of case conventions for initialisms

Xiaodi Wu xiaodi.wu at gmail.com
Fri Feb 12 12:11:29 CST 2016


Oy. Distinguishing acronyms and abbreviations: this can't lead to
anything good. Reminds me of the seemingly endless attempt at
distinguishing <abbr> from <acronym> in HTML (until the standard
standardized on the former). For one, there's no agreed-upon
definition of the distinction between the two:
http://data.grammarbook.com/blog/abbreviations/abbreviations-acronyms-and-initialisms-revisited/

If we use a commonly used distinction--that acronyms are "pronounced
as words" but abbreviations are not--neither "ID" nor "IO" are
pronounced "as words."


On Fri, Feb 12, 2016 at 12:04 PM, Carlos Parada <carlosparada at mac.com> wrote:
> I’ve used the .NET frameworks and conventions extensibly and while some of them didn’t look quite right initially, they grew up on me, and now I prefer them.
>
> They do seem to use uppercase for two letter acronyms, but not for abbreviations though. When I started doing .NET I was so used to typing ID (as in identifier), but their convention is to type Id, as in CustomerId, or idForObject. It makes sense, just as you would use Ptr for Pointer, or Int for Integer.
>
> — Carlos Parada


More information about the swift-evolution mailing list