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<title>17.opml</title>
<dateCreated>Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:39:31 GMT</dateCreated>
<dateModified>Fri, 17 Aug 2007 21:38:08 GMT</dateModified>
<ownerName>Tom Morris</ownerName>
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<body><outline text="&lt;a rev=&quot;vote-for&quot; href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/aug/15/endarkenment&quot;&gt;David Colquhoun&lt;/a&gt; has a great article in &lt;em&gt;The Guardian&lt;/em&gt; on the hapless promotion of new-age tomfoolery." created="Fri, 17 Aug 2007 21:38:08 GMT"/>
<outline text="BBC editors: please abbreviate properly" created="Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:39:31 GMT"><outline text="The headline for this article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6951171.stm&quot;&gt;Hips extended to three-bed homes&lt;/a&gt; is quite incomprehensible, and quite amusing for those of us not blessed with knowledge of British property regulations.&#13;" created="Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:39:31 GMT"/><outline text="&#13;" created="Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:39:31 GMT"/><outline text="The BBC seem to have an in-house style of not capitalizing letters in abbreviations (I cannot confirm this since their style guide doesn't seem to be online). The above article would suggest that people's hips were somehow being extended, but instead the article is about the Home Information Pack Scheme - HIPS, and how the scheme is being applied to more property transactions.&#13;" created="Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:39:31 GMT"/><outline text="&#13;" created="Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:39:31 GMT"/><outline text="The BBC has a history of doing this with abbreviations and acronyms which really ought to be capitalized. We don't write &quot;Usa&quot;, we write &quot;&lt;abbr title=&quot;United States of America&quot;&gt;USA&lt;/abbr&gt;&quot;. We don't write &quot;Vat&quot;, we write &quot;&lt;abbr title=&quot;Value Added Tax&quot;&gt;VAT&lt;/abbr&gt;&quot;. &quot;&lt;abbr title=&quot;Digital Video Disc&quot;&gt;DVD&lt;/abbr&gt;&quot; not &quot;Dvd&quot;. But why, when it comes to government practice to the BBC insist on 'word-izing' them. &lt;abbr title=&quot;Anti-Social Behaviour Order&quot;&gt;ASBO&lt;/abbr&gt; becomes 'Asbo'?&#13;" created="Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:39:31 GMT"/><outline text="&#13;" created="Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:39:31 GMT"/><outline text="You cannot even argue - as some have - that it's the difference between an acronym and an initialism based on pronunciation. VAT is pronounced both as separate letters and like the word &quot;vat&quot;. That is capitalised (rightly) even though the BBC should write it as Vat to be consistent with their barmy style. The same is true for &lt;abbr title=&quot;Computer Aided Design&quot;&gt;CAD&lt;/abbr&gt;, &lt;abbr title=&quot;Document Object Model&quot;&gt;DOM&lt;/abbr&gt; (admittedly, the BBC do not discuss the Document Object Model on their news site too often), &lt;abbr title=&quot;Disk Operating System&quot;&gt;DOS&lt;/abbr&gt;, &lt;abbr title=&quot;End User Licence Agreement&quot;&gt;EULA&lt;/abbr&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4347325.stm&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; the BBC reporter notes that people pronounce it as to rhyme with &quot;fool-ya&quot;!), &lt;abbr title=&quot;First In First Out&quot;&gt;FIFO&lt;/abbr&gt;, &lt;abbr title=&quot;Free Lossless Audio Codec&quot;&gt;FLAC&lt;/abbr&gt;, &lt;abbr title=&quot;GNU Image Manipulation Program&quot;&gt;GIMP&lt;/abbr&gt;, &lt;abbr title=&quot;Graphical User Interface&quot;&gt;GUI&lt;/abbr&gt; (often pronounced &quot;gooey&quot;), &lt;abbr tilte=&quot;Joint Photographic Experts Group&quot;&gt;JPEG&lt;/abbr&gt; (&quot;jaypeg&quot;), &lt;abbr title=&quot;Local Area Network&quot;&gt;LAN&lt;/abbr&gt;, &lt;abbr title=&quot;Network Address Translation&quot;&gt;NAT&lt;/abbr&gt; and many more.&#13;" created="Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:39:31 GMT"/><outline text="&#13;" created="Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:39:31 GMT"/><outline text="The trend in British publishing towards using lower-case for all acronyms except initialisms and other exceptions is barmy. It leads to unreadable copy and we should stop it now. We don't have to get to the situation that the &lt;abbr title=&quot;New York Times&quot;&gt;N.Y.T.&lt;/abbr&gt; is in where every single acronym is water-bombed with punctuation (I mean, W.T.F.?), but when you cannot easily distinguish a government procedure for house-selling from a body part in a news headline, you know there is a problem. Upper case letters give important context for the reader, and help them distinguish between words and abbreviations. It's not like there is a shortage of capital letters. The BBC need to find their shift keys." created="Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:39:31 GMT"/></outline></body>
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