4 ms·

> NeXT (which is consistently mis-capitalized) In English, only the first letter of proper nouns is capitalized. "Next Inc." is technically correct. Be OS and

> NeXT (which is consistently mis-capitalized) In English, only the first letter of proper nouns is capitalized. "Next Inc." is technically correct. Be OS and Mac OS look weird but are correct because the proper name is Be or Mac, and OS is an acronym.

khedoros1 9y ago
Except that those aren't the proper capitalizations of those companies/products. NeXT Computer's would've been capitalized that way. "macOS" is actually the spelling in Apple's trademark for their OS, after the rebranding (http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4809:yupimn.8.4 http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4809:yup...). Part of the branding is the contrast against standard capitalization conventions in English.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Apple is just as free to use some fancy spelling to enhance their branding as I am to ignore that fancy spelling. As if what some marketing bozo dreams up gets to be the law of the land.
  - khedoros1 9y ago
    True, true. And I'm free to call you "Jack-o-Matt", "Fizzlepitch", "qwjehkjsaldhaeb", and so on, calling them different, but correct, stylistic representations of your name. What you want to be called isn't "the law of the land". Your opinion of the "correct" representation of your identity should hold more weight than my opinion, though. I'm not arguing ability, I'm arguing correctness.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      Yes, but my identity is a legal identity and your mis-spellings would have some interesting side effects if you for instance tried to have me served. Hint: don't try that. And whether I write ios, iOs, IOS, iOS or whatever the correct spelling is doesn't matter one little bit.
      - khedoros1 9y ago
        Heh. If you were serving an oddly-named company as a legal entity, or referring to a product of theirs in a legal document, I assume that you'd use whatever your lawyer deemed to be the least-ambiguous representation of the name, regardless of your own disdain for that representation.
        DerekL 9y ago
        That reminds me of a line from Apple's response to an ITC complaint from HTC: > Apple denies that its correct name is Apple, Inc. The correct name of Respondent is Apple Inc. http://www.fosspatents.com/2011/11/apple-to-htc-dont-you-call-me-apple-inc.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2011/11/apple-to-htc-dont-you-cal...
- brianpan 9y ago
  Not just capitalization. Yahoo! Inc includes an exclamation point.
- Angostura 9y ago
  You are under no obligation to use a companies' preferred marketing capitalisation. The house styles of quite a few journals simply say capitalise trademarks as standard English.
  - Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
    Exactly this. When editing a news-stand magazine I consistently preferred standard capitalisation over companies' own attempts to stand out via ever more creative orthography. Google could decide to call itself G00GL3!!!!*^o^o^o if it wanted and that would be their prerogative, but I guarantee you 99% of print publications would still call it 'Google'. Basically, you don't get to control what others call you.
  - khedoros1 9y ago
    Taking it further, I'm under no obligation to call anyone or anything using the nomenclature or styling that they've chosen for themselves, or had chosen for them. But that's not my argument. My argument is that whoever possesses a particular identity should be the ultimate arbiter of the "correct" way to represent it.
    - VintageCool 9y ago
      The correct way to represent any particular identity is the representation which gets you understood by your audience.
coldtea 9y ago
>In English, only the first letter of proper nouns is capitalized. That's irrelevant, as NeXT is not an english noun, but a trademarked company name, capitalization et al.
zimpenfish 9y ago
Not to nitpick your disastrously wrong post but standalone "OS" would be almost certainly be an abbreviation, not an acronym - you don't generally pronounce it as a word ("oss") but as the letters ("Oh Ess").
- memsom 9y ago
  You do in British English. * AmigaOS - amiga-oss * BeOS - bee-oss * MacOS - mack-oss or ma-koss (I hear both) * NES - ness or nez * SNES - sness, snez, or some people said sneeze. * RTOS - ar-toss In British English, we lean heavily in this direction. The influence of Youtube is making the "kids" say stuff like "bay-ta" rather than "bee-ta" and "oh ess" rather than "oss", but British English speakers still gravitate to saying the latter.
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    All of those are inclusive "OS" ("BeOS"), not standalone "OS" as the GP posted ("Be OS", for example.)
    - memsom 9y ago
      It's just the way I chose to style them. Any of them could be written with a space, Mac OS X was for a while. The point is that in the US, as you mentioned, they would be pronounced as "Oh Ess", but in the UK, it wouldn't. Just to ram home the point, people will frequently write "OS" as a stand alone, and 99% of my work colleagues here (we are all hardware engineers and programmers, UK based) would say "OSS" not "Oh Ess". I promise you. "What OS do you run on your computer?" the "OS" would be "OSS" not "Oh Ess". I would literally only say "Oh Ess" is it was written with full stops ("periods" in US usage.) So, "O.S.", as an example. The only exception I can think of is OS/2. But that is because it was heavily marketed on TV here in the 90's circa OS/2 Warp.
      - zimpenfish 9y ago
        > Any of them could be written with a space And then "Amiga OS" would be "Amiga O S". As a lifelong British UKian, I don't know many people who would say "OSS" instead of "Oh Ess" for standalone "OS". > "What OS do you run on your computer?" Literally do not know a single person who would say "What OSS" in that sentence - they'd all say "What Oh Ess". But now we've devolved into Gladwell-style anecdating and neither of us want that on our conscience, I think.

khedoros1 9y ago

Except that those aren't the proper capitalizations of those companies/products. NeXT Computer's would've been capitalized that way. "macOS" is actually the spelling in Apple's trademark for their OS, after the rebranding (http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4809:yupimn.8.4 http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4809:yup...). Part of the branding is the contrast against standard capitalization conventions in English.

jacquesm 9y ago
Apple is just as free to use some fancy spelling to enhance their branding as I am to ignore that fancy spelling. As if what some marketing bozo dreams up gets to be the law of the land.
- khedoros1 9y ago
  True, true. And I'm free to call you "Jack-o-Matt", "Fizzlepitch", "qwjehkjsaldhaeb", and so on, calling them different, but correct, stylistic representations of your name. What you want to be called isn't "the law of the land". Your opinion of the "correct" representation of your identity should hold more weight than my opinion, though. I'm not arguing ability, I'm arguing correctness.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Yes, but my identity is a legal identity and your mis-spellings would have some interesting side effects if you for instance tried to have me served. Hint: don't try that. And whether I write ios, iOs, IOS, iOS or whatever the correct spelling is doesn't matter one little bit.
    - khedoros1 9y ago
      Heh. If you were serving an oddly-named company as a legal entity, or referring to a product of theirs in a legal document, I assume that you'd use whatever your lawyer deemed to be the least-ambiguous representation of the name, regardless of your own disdain for that representation.
      - DerekL 9y ago
        That reminds me of a line from Apple's response to an ITC complaint from HTC: > Apple denies that its correct name is Apple, Inc. The correct name of Respondent is Apple Inc. http://www.fosspatents.com/2011/11/apple-to-htc-dont-you-call-me-apple-inc.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2011/11/apple-to-htc-dont-you-cal...
brianpan 9y ago
Not just capitalization. Yahoo! Inc includes an exclamation point.
Angostura 9y ago
You are under no obligation to use a companies' preferred marketing capitalisation. The house styles of quite a few journals simply say capitalise trademarks as standard English.
- Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
  Exactly this. When editing a news-stand magazine I consistently preferred standard capitalisation over companies' own attempts to stand out via ever more creative orthography. Google could decide to call itself G00GL3!!!!*^o^o^o if it wanted and that would be their prerogative, but I guarantee you 99% of print publications would still call it 'Google'. Basically, you don't get to control what others call you.
- khedoros1 9y ago
  Taking it further, I'm under no obligation to call anyone or anything using the nomenclature or styling that they've chosen for themselves, or had chosen for them. But that's not my argument. My argument is that whoever possesses a particular identity should be the ultimate arbiter of the "correct" way to represent it.
  - VintageCool 9y ago
    The correct way to represent any particular identity is the representation which gets you understood by your audience.

coldtea 9y ago

>In English, only the first letter of proper nouns is capitalized. That's irrelevant, as NeXT is not an english noun, but a trademarked company name, capitalization et al.

zimpenfish 9y ago

Not to nitpick your disastrously wrong post but standalone "OS" would be almost certainly be an abbreviation, not an acronym - you don't generally pronounce it as a word ("oss") but as the letters ("Oh Ess").

memsom 9y ago
You do in British English. * AmigaOS - amiga-oss * BeOS - bee-oss * MacOS - mack-oss or ma-koss (I hear both) * NES - ness or nez * SNES - sness, snez, or some people said sneeze. * RTOS - ar-toss In British English, we lean heavily in this direction. The influence of Youtube is making the "kids" say stuff like "bay-ta" rather than "bee-ta" and "oh ess" rather than "oss", but British English speakers still gravitate to saying the latter.
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  All of those are inclusive "OS" ("BeOS"), not standalone "OS" as the GP posted ("Be OS", for example.)
  - memsom 9y ago
    It's just the way I chose to style them. Any of them could be written with a space, Mac OS X was for a while. The point is that in the US, as you mentioned, they would be pronounced as "Oh Ess", but in the UK, it wouldn't. Just to ram home the point, people will frequently write "OS" as a stand alone, and 99% of my work colleagues here (we are all hardware engineers and programmers, UK based) would say "OSS" not "Oh Ess". I promise you. "What OS do you run on your computer?" the "OS" would be "OSS" not "Oh Ess". I would literally only say "Oh Ess" is it was written with full stops ("periods" in US usage.) So, "O.S.", as an example. The only exception I can think of is OS/2. But that is because it was heavily marketed on TV here in the 90's circa OS/2 Warp.
    - zimpenfish 9y ago
      > Any of them could be written with a space And then "Amiga OS" would be "Amiga O S". As a lifelong British UKian, I don't know many people who would say "OSS" instead of "Oh Ess" for standalone "OS". > "What OS do you run on your computer?" Literally do not know a single person who would say "What OSS" in that sentence - they'd all say "What Oh Ess". But now we've devolved into Gladwell-style anecdating and neither of us want that on our conscience, I think.