The New York Times spells all acronyms with the periods, regardless of whether or not it’s a trademark, so I.B.M. is consistent usage within their style guide. Strictly speaking IBM is not an acronym, it is itself the company’s name and should be styled accordingly.
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As you say, I think @doctorow is trolling us, but let’s take the idea few steps further for fun. Many of these brand names not only have unusual capitalizations, but they have unusual spellings. Why should a writer shill for those corporatist pronunciations?
Just use a hyphen:
- iPhone becomes I-Phone, not Iphone /ih-phone/
- iOS becomes I-OS, not Ios /eye-ouz/
The same solution works for typical pronunciations:
- PayPal becomes Pay-Pal, not Paypal.
- ConAgra becomes Con-Agra, not Conagra
- PowerPoint becomes Power-Point, not Powerpoint
Problem solved! Everybody is happy, right? Right? Guys, where are you going?
BTW, Caleb Carr was all over this five years ago:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/magazine/29FOB-onlanguage-t.html
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In my line of work, I often edit technology presentations and proposals. Whenever I see someone has written something like ‘Ios’ or ‘Iphone,’ I correct the capitalization under the assumption that the audience may well take this as an indication that the writer doesn’t know enough about the product or technology to spell its name right.
Also, the graphic illustration doesn’t really support the point - pasting a logo graphic inline is not the same thing as what Cory wrote, which wouldn’t seem to apply to BP otherwise. While I appreciate the intent, I think the unintended consequence will be to decrease comprehension and increase confusion.
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That’s a good point. What about writing about ‘Apple’s mobile phone’ or similar deescalation of the branding speak? It’s an interesting question: I think I like some of Cory’s sentiment, but I have had little problem using the verb to google in recent years, or the verb to xerox for most of my life.
On the other hand: if corporations can use branding to change language, why can’t journalists (for example) use principled stances to change language?
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Why have a principle against it a big deal?
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If you are going to write about a product, use the name of the product. The name (however unfortunately) is what the company decides it is. If you are writing about a camera called DX30-3000K/X, you use that name because that is what the manufacturer calls it. It may suck, but that’s the name. If you decide to randomly change the name, then your article has become less accurate.
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What Cory is trying to do is put Apple users on the spot because we would have to take affirmative action to undo Apple’s correction of our typing. iPhone, iPhone, iPhone. typed differently each time.
That’s just how it comes out.
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The word “quixotic” springs to mind.
Anyway, I bet Cory accidentally forgets this guideline when it applies to stuff he happens to like (Android stuff, anything with a lot of leather and brass in it, Disneyland, etc) and yet is fastidiously adhered to when it applies to stuff he doesn’t like (Apple products, cats, unempowered “young adults”, etc).
PS: if Cory wants to stop giving commercial products/entities less free advertising, he could stop mentioning his various books, public appearances, award nominations, etc, etc, etc. Just a (free) thought.
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I love reading BoinBoing. There’s always a story about someone doing something ridiculous, and if it’s a really slow day, they’ll even pitch in themselves. 
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It could be argued that writing “Cory Doctorow” is helping to increase the page ranking of a science-fiction author, for free. Should we refer to him as Stinky Whizzleteats from now on, to avoid giving him free advertising?
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Or “Cory DoctorOw”, “DoctorOw” for short.
An incap changes a word into a logo, and has no place in journalism or commentary – it’s branding activity that colonizes everyday communications. It’s free advertising.
No. This is not a logo:
PayPal
This is a logo:
As much as I like to make fun of boing boing (capitalizing it converts it from words to a brand name) for their advertising-laden anti-consumerism rants, in all honesty, I would honestly advise against this. Why would you purposely alienate potential customers? I mean…I doubt that BP is a potential customer, but hell, I wouldn’t have thought that your website would have participated in a Ford-sponsored event, either.
I like “Dr. Ow”, personally, because it avoids giving any extra gratis page-ranking.
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I’m not sure why you include the Wikipedia entry as an example of incaps, since in the Wikipedia example you posted Boing Boing is two words.
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It instantly becomes a brand of its own
Doc O
Document Zero.
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Context is everything. It is reasonable that, for example, writing about Apple’s political clout in the mobile phone arena, need not conform to the company’s marketing terms. Presumably, it was unnecessary for either frequenters of MacDonald’s in '87 or journalists writing about their meals to use the company’s ridiculous marketing speak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5tKYOTC5QI.
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Let him try it for a year see how he likes it.
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I am 100% behind this.
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He’s not talking about misspelling words. False equivalence.
You people need a masterclass in marketing ffs. The title graphic is supposed to illustrate exactly what happens when you push this concept as far as it goes. As I said before: have fun shilling for free… you’re happily furthering people’s familiarity with branded misspellings capitalisations.
Honestly, this seems petty more than anything else.
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