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Pedantic, but NASA is an acronym. Am I unaware of a British English composition rule that permits writing it "Nasa"?
by ixtli 12y ago
Pedantic, but NASA is an acronym. Am I unaware of a British English composition rule that permits writing it "Nasa"?
- jchesters 12y agoThis is why I changed it for the link title on here
- milliams 12y agoNo, but I've seen the BBC do this extensively. They turn CERN in Cern all the time. Perhaps Wired UK are just copying this style. I've never seen the BBC call the BBC the Bbc though...
- pbhjpbhj 12y agoCERN is an acronym and BBC is only an initialism. There is a linguistic trend to using title-case for acronyms; particularly companies seem to be turning their acronyms in to the company name. Perhaps using "Cern" is simply following that trend.
- dragonwriter 12y agoBritish publications have been using titlecase for acronyms for a very long time, its not a recent trend.
- jarin 12y agoThat's because BBC is an initialism (each letter is pronounced separately) rather than an acronym (pronounced as if it were a word).
- IvyMike 12y agoThe Guardian/Observer style guide specifically uses Nasa as an example: http://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-a http://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-a > 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.
- ixtli 12y agoThat's really interesting. Thanks for the clarification.
- troymc 12y agoI've never heard of that way of handling acronyms before. The site is WIRED UK. Maybe it's a UK thing? My first reaction was, "That's not how you write NASA; This author/editor is an idiot. How can I trust anything they've written here?" I doubt that's the reaction they want. Now I just feel sorry for the author whose writing is forced to look weird to many readers. Over time, maybe people will just come to recognize it as "a British thing" just like they recognize aluminium as the British spelling.
- lotsofcows 12y agoI feel sorry for USAian authors whose writing is forced to look weird to many readers...
- deciplex 12y agoYet 'USAian' looks weird everywhere.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoThat's probably down to the brightly coloured shorts.
- Crito 12y agoDoes "NASA" actually look weird to anybody? That's how NASA themselves write it... so do you Brits think that everything NASA publishes with their name on it looks weird? I say defer to however the organization in question writes it. That should surely lead to the least confusion and weirdness. It would certainly help UK news organizations with consistency: * "CARE International": http://www.theguardian.com/lend-with-care/entrepreneurs-seeking-a-hand-up http://www.theguardian.com/lend-with-care/entrepreneurs-seek... * "Care" _and_ "CARE": http://www.theguardian.com/lend-with-care/tackling-the-root-causes-of-poverty http://www.theguardian.com/lend-with-care/tackling-the-root-... * "Nasa" _and_ "NASA" (But "Ladee" rather than "LADEE"): http://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2013/sep/07/nasa-launch-moon-probe-ladee-video http://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2013/sep/07/nasa-la...
- ctdonath 12y agoProbably the same thing that turned "L.A.S.E.R." into "laser".
- louthy 12y agoThe A in laser (Amplification) really should be an O for Oscillation. You can work out the rest...
- lotsofmangos 12y agoYou prefer light oscillation to stimulate emissions?