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
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.
Tihi
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.
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.
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)