[Milsurplus] Acronym Nitpicking

[Sheldon Daitch]

Kind of depends.

Some styleguides use the idea that if the acronym is pronounced as a word,
such as NASA, it should be printed as Nasa.

OF course, the Guardian isn't a US based publication, but styles vary.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/styleguide/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."

So, looks like their guidance isn't very uniform.

VAT - value added tax, we've used the term as a word, well, vat.

SIM card and PIN - just doesn't look right at sim and pin.



-----Original Message-----
From: milsurplus-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:milsurplus-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of J. Forster
Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2013 11:25 PM
To: ArmyRadios at yahoogroups.com
Cc: ARC5 at mailman.QTH.net; Milsurplus at mailman.QTH.net
Subject: [Milsurplus] Acronym Nitpicking



Assume, Upper/Lower text is being used.

Should it be WILCO or Wilco or WilCo or what?

Generally, an acronym is all Upper case:

NASA
DOD
YMMV, BTW, AFAIK, etc.

But in some cases Upper/Lower is used:

SCotUS

And some have morphed with time:

RADAR has become Radar or radar

So, what is wilco???

Puzzled,

-John