why is the BBC calling NATO Nato? I had to internet search to figure out what they were talking about
> Use the abbreviated form of a title without explanation only if there is no chance of any misunderstanding (eg UN, Nato, IRA, BBC). Otherwise, spell it out in full at first reference, or introduce a label (eg the public sector union Unite).
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> Where you would normally say the abbreviation as a string of letters - an initialism - use all capitals with no full stops or spaces (eg FA, UNHCR, NUT). However, our style is to use lower case with an initial cap for acronyms, where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word (eg Aids, Farc, Eta, Nafta, Nasa, Opec, Apec).
For the average reader, I would argue there is little chance of misinterpretation, and BBC certainly agrees. Besides that, because "NATO" is pronounced "nay-toh", they spell it with an initial cap.
EDIT: Actually the fact that their rule is followed by a list of exceptions, because NICE -> Nice, SAD -> Sad would be confusing shows why this style might be not so good after all. Also, whereas N.A.T.O. -> NATO is really just a style change in some sense, because NATO can be still interpreted only as abbreviation, NATO -> Nato feels like stealing a part of the identity from the subject. NATO emphasizes some meaning behind the letters, whereas Nato resigns on that origin.
> Use all capitals if an abbreviation is pronounced as the individual letters (an initialism): BBC, CEO, US, VAT, etc; if it is an acronym (pronounced as a word) spell out with initial capital, eg Nasa, Nato, Unicef, unless it can be considered to have entered the language as an everyday word, such as awol, laser and, more recently, asbo, pin number and sim card. Note that pdf and plc are lowercase.
https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-a
It appears they are doing the equivalent of considering pronounced acronyms to be proper nouns. Despite the style ambiguity, it makes a bit of sense if you read the text aloud, as the style gives some indication of how to say the word.
I don't know if I'm an average reader or not. I wonder what that even means in this context: I imagine the average reader is probably expecting consistency with other media outlets.
It's especially odd when an organization always insists on capitalizing its own abbreviated title (NATO, NASA, OPEC, etc.) but the BBC refuses to do it. Seems like an instance of esthetics getting in the way of clarity.
Like many minor typographical issues, this one evokes an unnecessarily powerful reaction.
[1]: http://www.isof.se/sprak/namn/samverkan-inom-namnvard-och-na...
E.g.: Eon instead of E.ON, Ebay instead of eBay, Iphone instead of iPhone.
It’s the house style to avoid too many capitals in prose.
Remember how people used to write N.A.T.O. decades ago but then simplified to NATO? Now they’re simplifying to Nato.
I wouldn't call it "simplifying": capitalizing it has the same number of characters and is less ambiguous. I was already somewhat aware of BBC's style, but I still mis-parsed the headline and and thought "Nato" was the name or nickname of a natural person.
If I write an article about how 'France is having a heatwave' do you get confused and think 'France' must be referring to a natural person?
"We retain the middle cap in YouTube and MySpace because we think it prevents readers being confused by a word they are used to seeing in a particular way."
I'm used to seeing NATO, and thought Nato might have been a political figure I hadn't heard of.
At least for me, the confusion was cleared up immediately after looking at the article, but that doesn't mean this style of headline isn't any less confusing. After all, lots of places (like HN) only display the headline.
oh how interesting, ive never seen this debate before. I guess it confused because, internally, i dont treat acronyms as words. I dont think of NASA as Nasa or NATO as Nato, i find this counter-intuitive.
to think out loud, this seems antithetical to what an acronym is in the first place. NASA is a pointer, not an object. creating a new object Nasa templated from the pointer NASA (not the object the pointer is referencing) makes my head hurt.
the Bbc ( :-D ) does it, so apparently im the exception and not the normal.
I assume the smiley indicates that you're aware that 'BBC' would actually be correct, and that 'Bbc' is not appropriate (because we say 'Bee Bee See', not 'Bubk'), unlike NATO/Nato ('Nay toe')
Also, I prefer NATO over Nato personally. NATO reads 'Nay toe', while Nato reads 'Nat oh' in my head.
The BBC blog about their decision to use Nato (instead of NATO)[0] is from 2013, a month after their decision to make that change, and starts with:
> Barely a week goes by without at least one BBC News website reader asking why acronyms are in lower case: ‘it should be NASA, not Nasa.’
I disagree that this is a British thing generally, and rather it's a conscious stylistic choice made by the BBC. If it was a British thing generally, it holds that there wouldn't have been a need for the blog post at all.
I also don't think 7 years is enough time to bastardise a language (unless you're talking about a dialect, at which point it doesn't always take very long to literally destroy the meaning of words)
[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/collegeofjournalism/entries/8f7c...