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Exactly. They are using the BBC News style guide here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/en/collections/news-style-guide https://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/en/collection

by garg 8y ago

Exactly. They are using the BBC News style guide here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/en/collections/news-style-guide https://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/en/collections/news-style-guid... And here are articles that address NASA vs Nasa: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/collegeofjournalism/entries/8f7cf269-9ee1-341b-81a8-1ebfe73c80a0 http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/collegeofjournalism/entries/8f7cf... https://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/en/articles/art20130702112133530 https://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/en/articles/art201307021121335... "our style is to use lower case with an initial cap for acronyms, where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word (eg Aids, Farc, Eta, Nafta, Nasa, Opec, Apec)."

milesward 8y ago
Cool, then they can call it the Bbc. Oops, they never do that. #consistencyisrad
- krapht 8y ago
  ? Most people say Bee-Bee-See, so BBC is consistent.
- Rebelgecko 8y ago
  They still capitalize each letter for initialisms (acronyms where each letter is pronounced such as B-B-C)
  - philipov 8y ago
    I just realized that the reason we fully capitalize acronyms in the US is because we don't know the difference between acronyms and initialisms.
    - magduf 8y ago
      No, it's because we see them as mostly the same thing. It's only when we no longer really care about what it stands for, and that it's become an actual word (rather than a name), where we stop capitalizing it, and then we don't even use titlecase. Examples are "laser" and "snafu". NASA isn't a word, it's a proper name, and the agency itself uses all-caps when referring to itself. The proper spelling is therefore "NASA". It's just like this for any proper name: there's a correct way to spell and capitalize it, and any other way is wrong. An example here would be any company which uses CamelCase in their name, and officially spells their company name that way. If you decide you don't like camelcase and only use titlecase, then you're spelling their name wrong; you don't get to decide how to spell someone else's name. This is just another example of British English being wrong-headed, just as they do with referring to corporate entities with plural. American English isn't perfect by any means, but modern-day British English seems to go to great lengths to be different for no good reason.

by garg 8y ago

milesward 8y ago

Cool, then they can call it the Bbc. Oops, they never do that. #consistencyisrad

krapht 8y ago
? Most people say Bee-Bee-See, so BBC is consistent.
Rebelgecko 8y ago
They still capitalize each letter for initialisms (acronyms where each letter is pronounced such as B-B-C)
- philipov 8y ago
  I just realized that the reason we fully capitalize acronyms in the US is because we don't know the difference between acronyms and initialisms.
  - magduf 8y ago
    No, it's because we see them as mostly the same thing. It's only when we no longer really care about what it stands for, and that it's become an actual word (rather than a name), where we stop capitalizing it, and then we don't even use titlecase. Examples are "laser" and "snafu". NASA isn't a word, it's a proper name, and the agency itself uses all-caps when referring to itself. The proper spelling is therefore "NASA". It's just like this for any proper name: there's a correct way to spell and capitalize it, and any other way is wrong. An example here would be any company which uses CamelCase in their name, and officially spells their company name that way. If you decide you don't like camelcase and only use titlecase, then you're spelling their name wrong; you don't get to decide how to spell someone else's name. This is just another example of British English being wrong-headed, just as they do with referring to corporate entities with plural. American English isn't perfect by any means, but modern-day British English seems to go to great lengths to be different for no good reason.