this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2025
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I wonder why ASCII is written as “Ascii.”
They probably have a style guide, as most media outlets do, that says pronounceable acronyms/initialisms are to be written like a name and the rest as everyone expects.
So you get Ascii, Unix and Nasa alongside IBM and PCMCIA.
Thanks, I hate it
Tihi
Me too.
People learn from reading that kind of thing. Aside from it being unnecessary and confusing, there's going to be a percentage of people who'll think "Ascii" (or whatever) is a name rather than an abbreviation.
That's more a British style I think. I've definitely noticed a shift in software strings. If I had to guess, I'd say that the increase in software developers from India and other South Asian countries means more of that style being inherited.
Possibly, on both counts. I know the Guardian and BBC News style guides use that convention.
Yet there's this regarding the AP Style Guide:
https://grammarmill.com/ap-style-rule-for-acronyms/
It mentions odd rules like "if an acronym is longer than 5 characters" and such.
Either way, my money's on an internal style guide that Microsoft (in OP's example) requires its staff to use.
America great, the other things not ;)
What does that have to do with it?
If this is supposed to be a “gottem” moment because it appears I’m hating on the British style, please know I didn’t know that until others chimed in (hence my question). And actually, I prefer the British way of writing some acronyms without the dots to the American style, but writing ASCII like it’s a word (Ascii) looks really bad.
ASCII is short for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. And as another commenter already pointed out, only the A for America is capitalized. It was just a joke playing on the way it's written (and the fact that there's the MAGA movement)
It's joking about A, which in ASCII stands for America, being the only letter capitalized.
Ah, gotcha. I knew what it stood for but I’m also an idiot.