Deliberately changing the capitalization of product / company names to suit your own agenda is inconsistent with the stated goal of clarity.
24 Likes
Which was the letter that broke the camelBack?
11 Likes
Cory isnât protesting against initialism, so Iâm sure heâs OK with the capitalization of EFF, FBI, CIA, NSA, etc.
1 Like
If you donât want to be giving these products free marketing then donât write about them. If youâre going to write about them then do so in a way that is recognisable. Iphone over iPhone is petty and detracts from the clarity of the sentence.
15 Likes
Yes, I think Cory missed the real story here.
Where exactly do we need to go in order to send presents to whores?
3 Likes
[quote=âadonai, post:25, topic:18196, full:trueâ]Yes, I think Cory missed the real story here.
Where exactly do we need to go in order to send presents to whores?[/quote]
I know⌠first PenisLand.net, and now WhorePresents.com ⌠why are these companies taking perfectly normal website names and using them for something weird?
4 Likes
To me, Iphone seems weird not because weâre used to iPhone - but because it appears to be the sentence âI phone.â with an omitted space.
I agree that purposefully misspelling corporate brand names doesnât serve to limit free advertising for them, but only to confuse the reader and appear to be a typo. Names of products as proper names should be capitalized as intended, the same way that you wouldnât insist on recapitalizing MacDonald as Macdonald because you didnât want to do any free advertising for his farm, or condone his excessive use of vowels.
7 Likes
Why would you do this? It makes the text much harder to read, because, for example, âIosâ is ambiguous, where âiOSâ is not. âIphoneâ is less ambiguous, but looks like a typo, and distracts the reader, because they have to wonder whatâs going on, and why Boingboingâs copyediting has gone to hell. And when they figure it out, itâs not going to reflect well on you, because it simply looks petty on your part. What do you expect to gain by this?
I mean, do you spell Android, âAndroyd,â simply because you prefer the letter y to i, and youâre not going to be told how to write by evil corporations? That makes about as much sense. It makes you seem semi-literate. It distracts from the actual importance of your message and shows a huge amount of disrespect toward your readers, because their time is valuable and youâre wasting it by forcing them to process issues of astounding triviality alongside your main thrust. Donât do it, cOreydoctoroe.
24 Likes
Cory this has to be the dumbest stance anyone has ever taken on anything.
38 Likes
I remember thinking how stupid âiPodâ sounded when it was first announced. I also remember the 24 hours where the Internet made fun of the name âiPadâ when it was announced. Now those words are as ordinary as âKleenexâ, which I imagine people thought was a weird word when it was announced.
3 Likes
Of course, this doesnât extend to the names of people that traditionally take an incap, like âMcDonaldâ; nor to companies that are named for people, like âMcDonaldâs.â
Hi Cory, please let us know how we should spell/capitalize products, brands, and names that fall within the naming conventions established by names that traditionally use an InCap, and in the following situations:
McChicken, McRib, Chicken McNugget
LucasFilm and LucasArts
Wu-Tang Clan
e e cummings
deYoung Museum
Please advise ASAP/Asap. TIA/Tia.
12 Likes
This sounds like an iPrankâŚbut iCould bWrong.
1 Like
I.B.M. is archaic usage, but historically justifiable. Does the NYT spell EFF as E.F.F.?
2 Likes
PerHaps a bEtter alTernaTive is simPly to Add RAndOM inCaps to alL words, tHus preSERving the CoRect spelLing Of branD nAMES likE PayPal and iPhone, buT enSuring that theY dOnâT lEAp OfF ThE paGe.
6 Likes
I kind of agree with the rest of the folks here - it does not promote clarity, and as others have stated it comes off as petty. In regards to it being free advertising, if you donât want to give companies like Apple/etc free advertising, then you should start by not writing articles about them, not by arbitrarily deciding that Iphone is the way to spell it.
22 Likes
I kinda think you should use the trademark correctly. Also, how do you tell iOS from IOS (Apple vs Cisco) otherwise? Or structure your writing in a way that avoids using the trademarks, such as âthe operating system for Applesâs new phoneâ.
And stop using âisâ. This column will change your life: To be or not to be⌠| Psychology | The Guardian
4 Likes
I can somewhat see the point (especially for disruptively-capitalized names, like âTOYOTAâ or ânVIDIAâ), but itâs also a little silly. If youâre talking about someoneâs products in a context where the product is important (i.e., âiPhoneâ vs. âsmartphoneâ or plain old âphoneâ), youâre already giving them free advertising â writing it âproperlyâ isnât going to do more advertising than youâre doing already.
Iâd say, honestly, write however best doesnât disrupt the flow of a sentence. Capitalizing one extra character, or shifting the capitalization over one character doesnât read as disruptive to me â but capitalizing an entire word certainly is, or that absurd image of an actual logo replacing a word.
2 Likes
I donât know, spelling iPhone as Iphone sounds awfully like people who insists on calling Macintosh computer a âMACâ instead of Mac or Microsoft as M$ instead of MS. Itâs fine to dislike something out of principle, but if someone comes across something like âIphoneâ it may come off as ignorance about the subject rather than defiance to marketing machinery.
Of course, you may not care, and thatâs OK too.
I forgot to add: in programming language, CamelCasing is a well-accepted convention which has nothing to do with branding. Language like Java uses lowerCamelCase style for methods and references. Maybe we should rebel against CamelCase conventions and go with pythonic âi_phoneâ.
8 Likes
Yeah, I fail to see how writing an article about the iPhone is free advertising while writing one about the Iphone is not.
Would a book review of a book by bell hooks magically also become an advertisement if it used the authorâs preferred spelling of her name? Would insisting on incorrectly calling the author âBell Hooksâ magically preserve journalistic objectivity and distance?
5 Likes
