In AP wire reports I read AIDS.
On the financial station I see Nasdaq.
Does Bubba take in the NASCAR or the Nascar race?
Is there a rule of thumb or is half the world writing it wrong?
As best as I can recall from memory:
In American English, acronyms are all-caps: AIDS, NASDAQ, NASCAR, NASA, etc. The exception is laser, which has become a word in its own right.
In British English, acronyms are treated as proper nouns, so Aids, Nasdaq, Nascar, Nasa (which I’ve seen in The Register). El Reg don’t tend to be very good about editing though, so maybe I’m extrapolating based on one foul-up. Anyone from the other side of the pond care to fill us in?
I’d rather wondered about this as well, having run across the British usage on occasion–but I assumed it was a malfunctioning auto-correct feature in the author’s word-processing software. I know Word tends to do that to me on funky techie things like “kN” (kilonewton).
Well, if the acronyms LASER and MASER have become the nouns laser and maser, that makes sense. This might have been accelerated because they could be pronounced as words. Maybe NASDAQ is on the same road–except that it’s the proper name of an institution, so it’s capitalised?
This is not an American/British distinction. It all depends on what style guide you are following.
Then what about “radar” and “scuba”? Those are also acronyms.
Torgo, it’s up to you and what style guide you choose to follow.
The Columbia Guide says nothing about capitalization. Furthermore, one of its examples is “PhyEd,” spelled just as you see it here.
Capitalization rules may vary depending on which style you use (AP, Chicago, etc.).
kN (kilonewtons) comes from the SI system for units and prefixes which have their own rules for whether a prefix is captialized or not; for example mN would be a millinewton, but MN would be meganewtons.
I’d that British English uses both ways as I’d always write SI not Si; RSPCA, not Rspca; DVLA, not Dvla; etc, though I probably would write Aids instead of AIDS. It’s probably the case that when the orginal words of the acronym are more obscure than the acronym itself that the acronym is treated as proper noun.
Actually, MC, the examples given here seem to indicate that the general rule may be that if it is an acronym (i.e., read as a word), then it gets only an initial cap; if it’s just an initialization that’s not an acronym, then it gets all caps.
What about NASA? MADD? OPEC?
On today’s AP wire I found AIDS and Nasdaq. Here we have a singular style doing it both ways. Oh, this Nasdaq thing really chaps my hide because in the adjoining column I found NYSE!! If the Associated Press can’t be consistent in this matter what hope is there for the rest of us? I may start an IMHO thread about this. Or is it Imho?..
Poor examples by me, but RADA or DEFRA are both generally capitailized acronyms.
Here’s the rule: If it’s an acronym every letter is capitalised (e.g. AIDS), especially if the letters are spoken individually (e.g. FBI), unless it has been assimilated into the spoken language as a single word (e.g. laser), unless it is a name (e.g. NASA), unless it is a name that is in the process of becoming a proper noun and not an acronym at all (e.g. Nasdaq).
IMNSHO.
To answer the OP, it’s largely a matter of style, although I think a pretty strong case can be made for using all caps nearly all the time. Some publications may opt for an apparently non-standard usage like Nasdaq because it is pronounced as a word, where NYSE is generally not. To always put it in all caps, especially in a publication that refers to it a lot, would be obnoxiously obtrusive.
Just a couple of weeks ago I had occasion to use the word SCUBA in my publication or the first time, and I chose to set it in all caps, a choice my associate editor did not question or even comment on.
Here’s another similar, but not precisely analogous, case: my publication covers the Imax Corporation. (IMAX is *not * an acronym or abbreviation, just a coined word that suggests “image” and “maximum.”) Imax Corp’s official style policy is that the word IMAX should always be set all caps. They say IMAX Corporation. But I don’t do that. I use all caps to signify IMAX theaters, IMAX projectors, etc. But I use “Imax” to refer to the company. It is a style decision that I think makes a useful distinction between the company and its products. (Using two versions was the company’s official policy when we started publishing. They changed their style a few years ago, and we decided not to go along.)
[nitpick] If it is pronounced as a word, it’s an acronym. If not, it’s just an abbreviation. FBI is an abbreviation, not an acronym. NASCAR is is an acronym. [/nitpick]
You can use that style if you like; other people won’t and they’d be right too.
The use of Aids instead of AIDS has become much more frequent in magazines these days, and I sometimes see Nasa as well. The big magazines and newspapers have their own internal style guides - which are sometimes ignored, forgotten about or deliberately flouted, as William Safire has been known to note when he carps about style usage in The New York Times.
The only real rule - other than once you start using a style stick with it - seems to be that individually spelled out acronyms* like FBI and CIA are always capped.
And even then, you run into the ones that people use both ways - earl vs. you are ell for URL. In the movie Twelve O’clock High, Gregory Peck refers to the raff, and I always had thought it was the are ay eff for RAF (Royal Air Force). I don’t know which is “right” in either of these cases, and that’s why style guides are so critical.
- nitpick for commasense: in common usage acronym is correct here, and I always use it that way. It’s my style.
Those simply weren’t the first ones I thought of 
Though in my defense I’ve seen cases where SCUBA was preferred. Radar’s always treated as a word, like you said.
Gah. “Always” as in “as long as I can remember”. Because nothing before the late 70s counts.
radar is different because not all the letters represent words - it’s Radio Detection And Ranging
Here is a FAQ (capitalized!) from acronymsearch.com
It confirms that generally you capitalize unless the acronym has become a word.
We can argue about what “standard” means, but I hardly think the AP Stylebook can be called “non-standard.”
I was referring to the patterns that MC was describing in British usage.
Speaking personally, I don’t like capitalizing words that aren’t proper nouns, so I find LASER and SCUBA rather disturbing. If it has become a word, then treat it as a word. Also, if it’s an abbreviation, I belive it should keep the periods, so I prefer F.B.I. to FBI.
So, personally, I’d go with –
aids (not a proper name, no caps needed)
Nascar
Nasdaq
Nasa
laser
maser
radar
scuba
S.I.
R.S.P.C.A.
I think you’ll find that many acronyms and abbreviations are inconsistent with regard to whether each letter represents a different word. I don’t think it’s usually taken into consideration.