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by delgaudm 1638 days ago
Looks up "af"
1 comments

The other problem is people not capitalizing abbreviations as they should. You see even major news organizations doing it. The entire nation of Great Britain appears to think there's a space agency called "Nasa." Ignorant AF.
I think I read somewhere that there’s a rule for abbreviations that if they’re “pronounceable” you shouldn’t use all caps. For example, you write IBM because you articulate the letters, it’s not “Ibbem”. Conversely you don’t say the letters in Nasa, but you do in NSA and so forth.
It's dependent on the organisation's style guide, so not a 'hard and fast' rule, but you're correct

Other examples like this are whether numbers are spelt out (eg one vs 1), and at what point that changes (eg spelling out "ten" but writing 1,000)

But yeah, depends on the organisation.

Check out how the New Yorker deals with the word co-operation :P

As a Swede I have unfortunately lost all my respect for the New Yorker as an authority on language since I learned about their usage of the letter ö, which I guess is what you're referring to.[1]

Having a native language where this letter is very much present and carries phonetic meaning, it completely trips me up. It annoys me almost as much as when people use the equivalent letter Ø instead of the actual ∅ for "empty set". I'd probably even choose ⦰ but of course all of these choices require some awareness that a character is "taken" as well as some measure of consideration for people other than yourself and those just like you.

End of old man rant.

[1]: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-...

Hahaha yes, that's what I was referring to and you're right to be infuriated by it. It's purely elitist horse-dust from The New Yorker to use ö rather than chucking a hyphen in there instead.
Was a little surprised by your comment - I don’t think you’re aware of usage in subcultures, it’s not about grammar.

Capitalization or lack thereof can indicates tone - e.g yelling etc.

For example - What’s up mf! (greetings) vs. What’s up MF! (fight/challenge)

Abbreviations are not capitalized but acronyms are.