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Subject:Re: Capping company names From:Matt Ion <soundy -at- MAIL -dot- BC -dot- ROGERS -dot- WAVE -dot- CA> Date:Fri, 14 Nov 1997 17:51:26 -0800
On Fri, 14 Nov 1997 12:52:34 -0600, geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA wrote:
> Jennifer Jelinek <<...was also told that everytime I use
> the name of the company in text, it should be
> capitalized.>>
>
> This is an ongoing debate on copyediting-l too. My opinion,
> having listened to the debate for several years now and
> consulted various style guides, is that you're obliged to
> spell a name correctly, whether you like the spelling or
> not: I'm "Geoff", not "geoff" or gEOff, and that's that.
> Pointe finale. So if a company chooses to call itself IBM,
> you won't get away with calling it Ibm, iBm, or ibM... the
> latter three are not the same people at all.
An interesting side-bit: this thread started regarding the use of
"zip/Zip/ZIP", referring to the archiver and related usages. The first
thing that came to my mind on seeing that subject line, however, was the
"iomega zip" drive, which I just happen to have sitting on top of my
tower, a mere 16 inches from my nose (hey, why isn't a nose twelve inches
long? because then it would be a foot! ;-)
In this case, both iomega and zip are completely lowercase, and appear to
be in a very plain font (the 'i' looks somewhat stylized, but it could
also just be the typeface used).
I don't have any paper docs handy, but oddly enough, the online docs
(readme.txt, etc.) all have Iomega capitalized. They appear to be rather
ambigous about the matter, capitalizing in ASCII text, but using the
stylized 'i' when displayed graphically.
Just thought I'd throw that into the mix. Perhaps the best thing to do
in such a quandry is to actually check with the company or holder of the
name.
Your friend and mine,
Matt
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