5 ms·
Is NASA no longer an acronym or something?
by bovermyer 6y ago
Is NASA no longer an acronym or something?
- abrowne 6y agoUK style, and this article is from the Guardian, is to capitalize only the first letter of acronyms that are pronounced like words, "Nasa" and "Nato" being frequent examples. When each letter is pronounced (AKA an initialism), they capitalize each letter, such as for the WHO: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52294623 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52294623
- bovermyer 6y agoAah, interesting. Thank you for clarifying!
- et2o 6y agoVery interesting, thanks for this. I find this practice very dumb. A huge amount of acronyms now have to be written like regular words.
- nkoren 6y agoEh, Americans do it too, just less consistently. When's the last time you saw LASER?
- slimginz 6y agoI'd say things like laser are no longer the acronym they once were. How many people actually realize that laser is/was an acronym in the first place? The word itself has 'genericized' to the point that it's just a word to most people now.
- viklove 6y agoAmericans do not do this, when was the last time you saw Potus?
- Pfhreak 6y agoOn the flip side, it disambiguates the pronunciation. BBC has each letter spoken individually, NASA does not.
- CodeGlitch 6y agoWhat really annoys me about the UK MSM is they'll write "COBRA", or even worse, "Cobra" for the COBR meetings.
- pbhjpbhj 6y agoCOBRA is a nickname (not an acronym) for the Civil Contingencies Committee based on the meetings being in COBR (an initialism/acronym). https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/cobr-cobra https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/cobr-co...
- CodeGlitch 6y agoEveryday is a school day. Thanks
- samizdis 6y agoIt is an acronym, but it is rendered according to the house style of any given publication. The Guardian's style guide [1] says: Use all capitals if an abbreviation is pronounced as the individual letters (an initialism): BBC, CEO, US, VAT, etc; if it is an acronym (pronounced as a word) spell out with initial capital, eg Nasa, Nato, Unicef, unless it can be considered to have entered the language as an everyday word, such as awol, laser and, more recently, asbo, pin number and sim card. Note that pdf and plc are lowercase. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-a#abbreviations%20and%20acronyms https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-a#...
- dylan604 6y agoDo people in the UK spell out VAT or say Vat? I've heard it said both ways, but I'm on the other side of the pond where we use NASA not Nasa. Maybe we should default to "What's it look like on the logo?" The NASA logo for one would look pretty dumb as Nasa.
- samizdis 6y agoWe do it both ways in speech, so say either V-A-T or vat, but it seems always to be VAT in text, according to the style guides of every publication for which I've worked, or have read for (weird) interest.
- dylan604 6y agoSo, isn't that breaking their own style guide? That was kind of my point.