IBM = International Business Machines Corporation
Big Blue still goes by the name ‘International Business Machines Corporation’, so how is IBM not an acronym?
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I fear I too have to opine that this is an ill-considered resolution.
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.
Seems to me an incap changes a word into a proper noun, a name, rather than into a logo. The accompanying illustration with the BP logos peppered throughout the text, now that’s a different story. That would be nearer “free advertising.” Just using a company’s or product’s name (not in the corporate-preferred font or color scheme, but just as the same text style as the rest of one’s writing) is no closer to shilling than referring to actual people’s names wherein the capital letters fall elsewhere than solely in front. When referring to the convenience store chain, one could call it 7-11 or Seven Eleven or 7/11, and people would probably get what you’re talking about, but the company’s name is 7-Eleven. Its feelings won’t get hurt if you spell its name incorrectly as 7-11 simply because it’s faster to type, but spelling it that way is simply as incorrect as leaving off the exclamation mark for Yahoo! or including an apostrophe when referring to the grocery chain Ralphs. Honestly, nobody who doesn’t work for Yahoo gives shit one about their exclamation mark (especially since it adds two keystrokes, damn them to hell), but when a name makes itself comfortable within the lexicon, it’s quixotic at best (if not running the risk of seeming overly precious) to mess with the name as We The People have come to know it. It is proper to capitalize Dumpster, especially when referring to the actual, non-generic Dempster Dumpster, but who does that anymore? Similarly, the lower-case i in front of iPhone and iMac and iPad is how we’ve come to know these things… yes, because of branding, but why not? They are, after all, products, not naturally-occurring vegetables or something. Time was, referring to a Chevrolet as a “Chevy” was an informal, familiar, noncorporate way of referring to that marque, but of course, for the last five decades (at least) “Chevy” has been a protected trademark just as “Chevrolet” is. Does that mean using it is tantamount to free advertising? It’s still just a name.
There are limits. Writing TOYOTA in all caps ain’t never gonna catch on; it’ll make every paragraph look like a tailgate, and nobody’s gonna climb aboard that bus. And only trueblood Apple fanboys will refer to the Apple ][ rather than the Apple II. But even though I’m prescriptivist to the bone when it comes to my own pet hobbyhorses, and I have a healthy disdain for the stylings of the unlettered multitudes, this is a situation where I think following the crowd is most useful. A name is a fairly specific form of identifying a person, place, or thing to one’s audience, and using terms of consensus seems to promote clarity at relatively small risk of corporate shillery.
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Cause they gotta pay like the rest of the shills to advertise on BoingBoing.
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I’ve decided to leave a unicorn chaser here.
http://media.egotvonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/unicorn.jpg?41ed4f
I dunno. I once insisted that Cory call Anonymous an anonymous group of people we call anonymous, and who refer to themselves as Anonymous.
That was pretty dumb in retrospect… though at the time I feared a witchhunt was brewing amongst everyone ever loosely associated with anonymous or 4chan (the source of lolcats… back before they weren’t funny.) and didn’t want anyone contributing to the idea that Anonymous was anything more than a joke about the default name images were posted to that board under.
Hah… like the government would ever know everyone who had ever looked at 4chan.
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As part of my job, I make sure that people’s names are spelled correctly in the credits of the TV show for which I work. Certain people’s credits include a reference to their guild or professional organization. Our Casting Directors belong to the Casting Society of America, and their names are followed by the post-nominal letters “C.S.A.” Our post-production sound mixers belong to the Cinema Audio Society; they get “C.A.S.” And one of our directors of photography belongs to the American Society of Cinematographers, and his name is followed by “ASC” with no periods. Some shows include the periods, but I have been told (by the former president of the ASC, as it happens) that that is not correct.
Well, who am I to put in extra punctuation where it’s not wanted?
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I don’t get it. Why would this post be more suitable on May 1st?
oops my bad
An acronym can be pronounced as a word. Like NATO, SCUBA, RADAR. IBM is an initialism.
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Heh, I learned something… 
Long time BoingBoing reader, first time caller here…
You are trolling us, right? If not, this may be the most asinine post I have ever read on this site, so add my name to the chorus of people who are urging you to reconsider… I agree with much of what has already been said by other commenters. Almost any time Apple’s products are discussed in the press, the company receives free advertising. But that shouldn’t stop journalists and reviewers from covering Apple’s products, should it?
The title of your post is not exactly the model of clarity. Why did you resolve to “avoid” using InCaps rather than simply pledging that you would no longer use them to refer to products? Did you phrase it that way so as to give yourself wiggle room (the freedom to refer to a product by its actual name whenever you happen to approve of said product or the company that sells it?)
with every style question, the primary goal is clarity
Really? They’re called “style” rules for a reason. I can think of plenty of style rules that are primarily NOT about adding clarify to one’s language. The term “African-Americans,” for example, is obviously preferable to “blacks” or “negroes” for many reasons, but clarity is not one of them. Just ask the Oscar winning, South African-American (white) actress Charlize Theron!
(I realize I just gave both Ms. Theron and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences some free advertising there, but it really was for the sake of clarity.)
If clear communication was your goal, should we assume that all other BoingBoing contributors will be joining you in “avoiding” InCaps in 2014? It would be extremely confusing to read a post from Doctorow discussing the latest “Ipad” only to read another post on the same page from Xeni discussing a neat new app she has found for her “iPad.”
Please tell me you were just kidding. I hate Apple sometimes too, but this is petty, stupid, and counterproductive.
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I’m surprised to be one of the few people supporting this decision. It is, after all, a perfect extension of the journalistic ideal of integrity and not bending to pressure from big and powerful entities. Give them a finger and they’ll bite off your whole hand; corporations insisting that you write their “text logo” in some sort of funnyCapS is one step from forcing you to bold it and include a trade mark symbol™, like they do in their own press releases. All of this happens, by the way. Enfoced crazy capitalization is just one of many, many things corporate marketing departments try to get media organisations to relent to them on, lots of “must always be referred tos” and so on, a constant stream of pressuring, lobbying, threatening, cajoling. It’s vital to nip it in the bud at this basic level, before it’s even started.
It’s also, of course, extremely disruptive to reading experience with all of these kRaZyCAP words. The fact that Apple® Inc. has sufficient leverage over media orgiansations that people here are used to reading about “iPhones” etc. doesn’t change the fact that every time a new word like this is introduced, it forces readers to pause and re-read every time, until they get used to it. Again, better to nip it in the bud. (Since IOS is an initialism I’d probably write it in all-caps, but that’s just me.)
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Cleaned a few of the off topic posts. Reminder to stay on topic and civil.
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So I guess TV is right out, then?
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I’m with Cory when he sez we should stick it to these corporate incappers.
The problem, though, is that his resolution is a tad hypocritical. He kisses up to Disneyland on a regular basis, and Boing Boing has cosied up to Ford and various other corporate sponsors. Are we to infer Boing Boing refuses sponsorship from companies that use incaps? Hardly. Ford uses MyFord, FordParts and AdChoices on its website. If he’s so against corporate incappers, then let’s see some action instead of just talk.
The icing on this fumblebuck cake is that his own wife co-founded and is the CEO of a company called MakieLab, which Cory has continually promoted on Boing Boing. Save English, change it to Makie Lab.
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I’m not sure how, but it seems many have missed the point.
Doctorow, it seems to me, has resolved to try and avoid direct duplication of style guidelines for large brands for no other purpose than to disrupt the operable means by which the function “InCaps”, as a web application? can replace those words with graphical logos instead of the plain text it was written in.
I’ve never encountered it, but the example provided is clear, & his deliberate disruption is not in any way a declaration that “Branding Evil” & thereby a path for you to claim him hypocritical for the fact that most of us, including this blog, engage in branding.
It is perfectly reasonable to not want a large out-sized brand logo to appear everywhere that previously the brand-name appeared in any particular block of text on the internet.
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As anyone can see, plenty of criticism is published in this thread: stop acting like a child, and all of yours will be too.
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Is it April 1st, not January 1st?
What a pointless, petty stance to take. How are you even going to refer to companies like BP and IBM? Bp and Ibm? bp and ibm? Why make an exception for things that are named after proper names like McDonald when the act of naming a company or a product makes it a proper noun by definition.
boing boing and cory doctorow have been going down in my estimation for a while. This is just the comical icing on the cake. If you don’t want to give free column inches to products, don’t write about them (including makie dolls). Then boing boing’s page will become even more overrun with paid content than it is currently - is that what you’re aiming for? No mention of your company unless you pay me. Good luck with that.
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Gang: here’s a complete accounting of what’s been deleted in this thread.
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A post by Sabado Domingo that was all just dumb insults. Falcor ate this user.
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A post by PhasmaFelis, going over the top (protip: we don’t want to hear about the editor’s asshole). PhasmaFelis remains in good standing.
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Gprimosch, a reply to (2). Gprimosch remains in good standing.
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A post from Teapot, for using foul language directed at you. Teapot remains in good standing.
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(and a short chain of replies) The back and forth between you and Teapot discussing the fact that you are apparently supposed to be banned already. Thanks for telling us about that!
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A post by Grimloki, who used entirely inappropriate language in defense of Cory’s post. Grimloki remains in good standing.
According to policy, you’d be rebanned merely for admitting to firing up new accounts to circumvent a ban. However…
simple honesty would be a much better New Year’s resolution …And Cory, I’d like to remind you (before you press the delete button again) that silencing those who are politely critical of your tendency toward sensationalism is also intellectually dishonest.
Banned for fantasizing about being banned by Cory. Your dream came true today!
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I have accepted the style difference of using hyphen-names in HTML classes, ID’s and attributes, and camelCase in JavaScript objects, methods, and so on. Not quite sold on using the dollar sign, but I am not against it either.
In any case, my code will often have lines like var thisWidget = $(‘#this-widget’) and from that, I can see what part is in JavaScript and what part is in HTML/CSS.
// End GeekMode
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