[swift-evolution] Analysis of case conventions for initialisms

[Jessy Catterwaul]

The following two are the same thing. We pronounce the letters “ID”; this is represented by two capital letters. The terminology for what that is, is not important. Just that the letters are capitalized, in English.

customerID
customerIdentification

This, however, is the id of a customer, not their ID.
customerId

 
This is an instance of a computer that is OK:
oKComputer

This is a computer that is the hypothetical adjective “ok”, which might be a way to describe that something is like an ox.
okComputer

Dealing with “OK” is moot, though. Its origin has faded into obscurity, so it should always appear as “okay”. 


> On Feb 12, 2016, at 1:33 PM, Carlos Parada via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
> Acronyms vs. abbreviations is my own way of understanding it, but the actual .NET guidelines list “Id" under “Compound Words and Common Terms”. The guidelines are here:
> 
> https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229043(v=vs.110).aspx
> 
> “Ok” and “Pi” are other ones listed under “Compound Words and Common Terms".
> 
> — Carlos Parada
> 
> 
>> On Feb 12, 2016, at 10:11 AM, Xiaodi Wu via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>> 
>> 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
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