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From: ken@csis.dit.csiro.au (Ken Yap)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Capitalization & programming language names
Message-ID: <1991Jan13.231540.3218@csis.dit.csiro.au>
Date: 13 Jan 91 23:15:40 GMT
References: <3561@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU> <14834@goofy.megatest.UUCP> <1991Jan11.203246.12599@nixtdc.uucp>
Organization: CSIRO Division of Information Technology
Lines: 13

>If you look at common English usage, you'll find that
>acronyms are *not* always written in all caps.
>Consider "laser", "radar", and "scuba", for instance.
>
>The names of languages (eg, English, Fortran, Basic) are proper names,
>and thus should be given an initial capital.  If the name is an acronym
>that is pronounced by sounding out each letter, then you should use all caps
>(eg, IBM, APL, JCL).  There is no good reason for spelling acronyms
>like Basic or laser with all caps; furthermore, it is ugly and hard to read.

A dissenting point of view is that you should spell computer language
names just as the defining documents specified them. Thus FORTRAN,
BASIC, but Pascal and TeX.