# British style on acronyms **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 18, 2008, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235 "2008-11-18T03:11:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235/1 "2008-11-18T03:11:49Z")
I use the BBC News website as my homepage and I’ve noticed that they write acronyms like Nato or Eta when most Americans would use NATO or ETA. Is this a general British style for handling acronyms or is it a particular BBC rule? ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235/2 "2008-11-18T04:19:20Z")
I think it’s common when the acronym has passed into common pronunciation to just spell the word as usual: scuba and laser come to mind. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235/3 "2008-11-18T06:46:46Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > I think it’s common when the acronym has passed into common pronunciation to just spell the word as usual: scuba and laser come to mind. Those are slightly different, in that they’ve passed beyond that stage to become standard dictionary words. Although there’s no single ‘British style’, a common differentiation is between those abbreviations which are spelt out (‘IAEA’ or ‘HIV’, for instance) being fully capitalised, and ‘true’ acronyms where they are pronounced as a word, such as the OP’s examples. Or, to contrast with the example of HIV, ‘Aids’. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235/4 "2008-11-18T09:55:24Z")
This is relatively recent, though, surely—at least I remember a time when NATO was always capitalised? I’ve noticed that some print sources have also started doing this, like The Times, if I remember correctly. I think most British people would captitalise acronyms no matter how they are spoken, and that’s certainly the style I adopt. ---
**Author:** ![FRDE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e68b1a/32.png) [@FRDE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FRDE)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235/5 "2008-11-18T10:39:47Z")
Interesting, I’ve been wondering about this proper casing of acronyms for about a month now. Possibly it is a style change in the Times - possibly its because I’m decreasingly unobservant. A few days I cooked up a semi-explanation using ‘Nazi’ versus ‘NSDAP’, where pronunciation had diverged from spelling. I quite like the distinction between ETA and Eta - quite neat. ---
**Author:** ![from\_a\_to\_z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5fc32e/32.png) [@from\_a\_to\_z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/from_a_to_z)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235/6 "2008-11-18T11:00:26Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > …I remember a time when NATO was always capitalised?.. Per “The Guardian Book of English Language” (a paperback “condensed” from [_Guardian Style_](http://www.guardianbooks.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/productSearch_10401_25501_128589_100 ___10_SimpleSearch_2_1_2__ basicSearch_GUARDIAN%20STYLE) that was included with the 28 September newspaper), section “abbreviations and acronyms”, “spell out [Nato, etc.] with initial capital” if it is pronounced as a word. The section also describes several other styles for abbreviations and acronyms. Per the paperback’s intro, “What you won’t find in this book is a list of prescriptive rules…We want the language we use to be clear, contemporary and consistent…” Lest one feels too reassured, [OALD Online](http://www.oup.com/elt/catalogue/teachersites/oald7/wotm/wotm_archive/ASBO?cc=global) has NATO and NASA. And whereas TGBoEL has “asbo” (an “everyday word”, at least in England), OALD Online has “ASBO”. Whichever, it turns out to be “antisocial behaviour order” (suitable also for the SD?). Someone else is welcome to point out various threads on the differences between punctuation styles. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235/7 "2008-11-18T11:03:44Z")
Right, but at what point did The Guardian style manual switch from the likes of NATO to Nato? Surely Guardian journalists haven’t been lowercasing acronyms since the founding of the paper (I don’t read The Guardian, so wouldn’t know, but the change on the BBC is recent enough to make the habit look ridiculous to my eye)? ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235/8 "2008-11-18T11:15:00Z")
From searching the BBC’s website, it seems regional sections of the news site were still using NATO as late as 2004, whilst the main site had switched to Nato by then. After 2004, all sections of the site, including regional news, seem to use Nato. ---
**Author:** ![WotNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e19b73/32.png) [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235/9 "2008-11-18T12:14:12Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > Right, but at what point did The Guardian style manual switch from the likes of NATO to Nato? Surely Guardian journalists haven’t been lowercasing acronyms since the founding of the paper (I don’t read The Guardian, so wouldn’t know, but the change on the BBC is recent enough to make the habit look ridiculous to my eye)? I can’t answer that directly, but I have _The Times Guide To English Style And Usage_ here, dated from 1999, which gives essentially the same advice as that quoted by **from\_a\_to\_z** from the Grauniad. So I assume that pushes it back 10 years at least. The _Times_ guide does include some exceptions to the general rule (MORI, IATA, RADA, RIBA, SANE, MIND, BUPA and AXA, as well as some others in individual entries), but no indication of why they are exceptions. I can see how Sane and Mind could appear confusing in a sentence, but I’m puzzled by the others. Perhaps someone just decided that they “look funny”. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235/10 "2008-11-18T15:52:06Z")
> [@WotNot](#): > > … from the Grauniad… Heh. That misspelling joke never fails to make me chuckle. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235/11 "2008-11-18T15:53:20Z")
I’ll admit it looks unusual to my American eyes. And it doesn’t seem to follow a logical rule. I can understand something like scuba, where the words that formed the acronym aren’t capitalized themselves. But NATO seems different; it you’re going to capitalize the N that stands for North, why not the A that stands for Atlantic and so on? ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235/12 "2008-11-18T16:44:09Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I’ll admit it looks unusual to my American eyes. And it doesn’t seem to follow a logical rule. I can understand something like scuba, where the words that formed the acronym aren’t capitalized themselves. But NATO seems different; it you’re going to capitalize the N that stands for North, why not the A that stands for Atlantic and so on? Because they’re treating “nato” as a word, but “nato” is a proper noun, hence must be capitalized “Nato.” ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235/13 "2008-11-18T19:27:45Z")
> [@WotNot](#): > > The _Times_ guide does include some exceptions to the general rule (MORI, IATA, RADA, RIBA, SANE, MIND, BUPA and AXA, as well as some others in individual entries), but no indication of why they are exceptions. I can see how Sane and Mind could appear confusing in a sentence, but I’m puzzled by the others. Perhaps someone just decided that they “look funny”. Where an organisation demonstrates a particular preference, that will often be specifically followed even if it goes against the general principles laid out in a style guide - for instance, ‘easyJet’. > [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > Right, but at what point did The Guardian style manual switch from the likes of NATO to Nato? Surely Guardian journalists haven’t been lowercasing acronyms since the founding of the paper (I don’t read The Guardian, so wouldn’t know, but the change on the BBC is recent enough to make the habit look ridiculous to my eye)? A part-answer from the horse’s mouth: > [@The Guardian](#): > > Times have changed since the days of medieval manuscripts with elaborate hand-illuminated capital letters, or Victorian documents in which not just proper names, but virtually all nouns, were given initial caps (a Tradition valiantly maintained to this day by Estate Agents). > > A look through newspaper archives would show greater use of capitals the further back you went. The tendency towards lower case, which in part reflects a less formal, less deferential society, has been accelerated by the explosion of the internet: some net companies, and many email users, have dispensed with capitals altogether. > **[Guardian style guide: P](https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-style-guide-p)** > > From pace to pyrrhic victory ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235/14 "2008-11-18T19:34:50Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Heh. That misspelling joke never fails to make me chuckle. 😛 I’ve got to the point where I refer to it as that as default as do the rest of my family. ---
**Author:** ![WotNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e19b73/32.png) [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2008, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235/15 "2008-11-19T09:05:34Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > Where an organisation demonstrates a particular preference, that will often be specifically followed even if it goes against the general principles laid out in a style guide - for instance, ‘easyJet’. Oh, of course. That’ll be it, all right. Ta. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2008, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235/16 "2008-11-19T10:53:58Z")
What do they do when an acronym is sometimes pronounced “as a word” and sometimes as a sequence of letters? This is fairly rare and I don’t know any British examples, but ROTC in the US is one. It can be pronounced differently by the same person in different contexts. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2008, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235/17 "2008-11-19T11:08:44Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > What do they do when an acronym is sometimes pronounced “as a word” and sometimes as a sequence of letters? This is fairly rare and I don’t know any British examples, but ROTC in the US is one. It can be pronounced differently by the same person in different contexts. How is that pronounced as a word? 😕 Anyway, if it’s the same actual abbreviation being pronounced two different ways, I suppose they will go with the more common usage, their purpose being to communicate rather than to dictate correct style. Where there’s two different abbreviations which happen to use the same letters, one generally spelt out and the other used as a word, this can be a useful way of telling them apart. American SATs vs. British Sats is an example. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2008, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235/18 "2008-11-19T11:16:50Z")
It starts with an /r/ and rhymes with “Nazi”. I suppose you could say that’s just pronouncing the first syllable “as a word” and spelling out the last letter… but anyway, that’s how it’s done. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2008, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235/19 "2008-11-19T14:42:55Z")
> [@](#): > > How is that pronounced as a word? Rot-see. I’ve seen other American military acronyms that add a vowel to make an acronym pronouncable as a word. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2008, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235/20 "2008-11-19T15:46:20Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Heh. That misspelling joke never fails to make me chuckle. 😛 Explain? I see that he anagrammed it, but I don’t see the joke. What is a “Grauniad”? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-style-on-acronyms/473235.md?page=2)