[swift-evolution] Analysis of case conventions for initialisms

[Dave Abrahams]

on Fri Feb 12 2016, Charles Kissinger <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:

>> On Feb 12, 2016, at 2:45 PM, Jordan Rose via swift-evolution
>> <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On Feb 12, 2016, at 8:58, Dave Abrahams via swift-evolution
>
>>> <swift-evolution at swift.org
>>> <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> on Fri Feb 12 2016, David Waite
>>> <swift-evolution at swift.org
>>> <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Just to make things more complex, I’d like to point out I’ve used yet
>>>> another style myself in the past, #2 with elements of #1 which I’ll
>>>> refer to as #4 for the purposes of this mail. (2 << 1). Note that I
>>>> have bad grammar, thus I may mess up initialism vs acronym 
>>> 
>>> The only reason the initialism/acronym distinction is important is that
>>> the former are much more common and the latter don't have the
>>> “mispronounced as a word instead of spelled out” problem.
>> 
>> I maintain that this is not relevant. Pronouncing "URL" as "erl",
>> "OS" as "oss", "SQL" as "sequel", "PNG" as "ping", or "GIF" as
>> "?iff" doesn't affect how they're spelled, capitalized, lowercased,
>> or uppercased. "Radar" and "scuba" show that it might matter after
>> long exposure, but it doesn't change the rules now. And then there
>> are mixes, like "JPEG" (pronounced "jay-peg", not "j'peg").
>
> It’s perhaps worth pointing out that the capitalization conventions
> for acronyms differ in different parts of the English-speaking
> world. For instance, I believe most British publications refer to Nasa
> and Nato (if their style guides are to be believed anyway), while
> Americans generally only use NASA and NATO.
>
> And just to add to the confusion, the all-lowercase form of ‘pdf’ has
> already entered common use even though it’s an initialism:
> http://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-a

As with html; that happens as soon as it becomes a common file
extension.

-- 
-Dave