4 ms·
Why do so many chess experts, practitioners and commenters, with varying degrees of familiarity with the chess world, misspell Elo?
by teo_zero 3y ago
Why do so many chess experts, practitioners and commenters, with varying degrees of familiarity with the chess world, misspell Elo?
- gwern 3y agoBecause it is so often capitalized, lowercasing it looks like a mistake, it looks exactly like an acronym, Elo was not nearly as famous for anything else, 'ELO' exists as a real acronym for many other things (eg. Electric Light Orchestra), and you can even easily define pseudo-definitions for it as a backronym - 'expected logistic odds', just off the top of my head. I host a copy of his book and I still struggle every time to not type 'ELO' instead.
- teo_zero 3y agoYeah, I think we've been flooded by three-letter acronyms for so long that we see them everywhere. It doesn't happen with four letters: you wouldn't write VOLT or WATT.
- lupire 3y agoSpecifically a 2 syllable 3 letter word that doesn't fit a common English pattern (as it's not an English name).
- soegaard 3y agoAnd why do they use Elo to refer to rating on chess.com and lichess? [They use Glicko/Glicko2].
- latency-guy2 3y agoMost likely reason is because it doesn't matter, "Elo" stopped being a person long ago, similar to many named streets, cities, states, etc. throughout the world ELO is just as accurate as Elo when referring to the rating system.
- lupire 3y agoHow many of those cities and states became acronyms?
- latency-guy2 3y agoProbably quite a few, I refer to some cities as their acronyms only such as NY, DC, ATL, SF, etc. - admittedly they still have their old name, but ELO and Elo still have their name as well
- lupire 3y agoThey aren't misspelling, they are capitalizing on the name.