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The answer is....depends on who you listen to. In my "Que's Computer
User's Dictionary," they DO use capitalized letters for some acronyms.
For example, CAD (which would look strange in lower case) and the
"Official Microsoft HTML Help Authoring Kit" consistently capitalizes
HTML. So, like most things, just find a style guide and stick with it. I
use the "Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications" and in
their acronym list in Appendix A, they also capitalize most of them.
Maybe the style guides for journalism and general writing are different
from those for technical documents.
Jane
Jane Bergen, Technical Writer
AnswerSoft, Inc.
Richardson, TX (972)997-8355
Rowena Hart wrote:
> >
> > I need some expert opinions about how to define
> > acronyms in the body of a document.
> >
> > I use the old journalism rule and don't capitalize the
> > first letter of each word in the acronym. For example:
> >
> > COM (component object model)
> > HTML (hyper text mark-up language)
(snipped)
Janice Gelb responded:
> All programmers seem to want to do this. They're wrong. Unless the
> words in the acronym or abbreviation are proper nouns (such as a
> trademarked product name), they should be lower case. One big clue
