The convention is to treat it as a word if it’s spoken as a word, and as letters if not spoken as a word. Hence ‘Nasa’ but ‘NSA’.
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Thank you, I was never quite clear on the discrepancy, but that makes sense (even if word-izing an acronym seems goofy to me, personally).
Laser, scuba, etc etc.
Sure, those became proper nouns over time (radar, etc etc). It’s more the word-izing of acronymmed governmental organizations that seems odd when I run across it in BBC news stories. Or things like Aids.
One’s an acronym and one’s an initialism.
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noun: proper name
a name used for an individual person, place, or organization, spelled with an initial capital letter.
Except when it specifically is explicitly meant to be spelled differently by the creators of the name.
So you’re selling me that if you met a “di Zeriga”, you would say “So, sorry, it is ‘Di Zeriga,’ buddy!”?
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I guess it depends if they are actually using it as part of a proper name (Leonardo DiCaprio, Ted DiBiase) or as a nobiliary particle that introduces their lineage (Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni).
Well, it does have ‘Apple’ in the headline, so… 
“Sorry, e.e. cummings and k.d. lang, apparently if I spell your name that way, it’s just giving you free advertising by using it as a brand name, but I’m a proud rebel against that sort of behavior, so it’s initial caps for you!”
FWIW, @doctorow said to me that he treats personal names that employ non-traditional spelling different than corporate brands… ?
I did notice that caveat that he posted (in response to your note about bell hooks) but with some people insisting that all proper nouns start with a capital letter, I thought I’d be facetious about it. In a way, the line between a brand name like iMac and an artist/band insisting their name be spelled a certain way (“e.e. cummings”, “tUnE-yArDs”, “cLOUDDEAD”) is a bit of a grey area…
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Sure… but I think his point to me was that human beings get consideration brands don’t in his view? I can take that into a consideration, because I kind of agree that being respectful of people’s choices of how they represent themselves is different from how a corporation decides to have a product represented… YMMV! 
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Haha! Touche!
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Oh totally, I understand that, and appreciate where he’s coming from as far as individual expression. I still think his take on spelling brand names wrong on purpose is a very silly little rebellion along the lines of refusing to say “tall” when ordering a small coffee at Starbucks, but hey, it’s his blog!
To be fair, I never say “tall” I always ask for a small coffee when I order at starbucks… In my defense… Foucault did argue for those small acts of disruption and believed that it was pretty much all we had to declare our opposition in the modern world, which he saw as offering us little chances for rebellion or opposition.
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