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June 5: Why Ascap? The Manual of Style and Usage entry for acronym explains: “When an acronym serves as a proper name and exceeds four letters, capitalize only the first letter: Unesco, Unicef.” But then there’s FERPA. Or is it Ferpa?
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
ASCAP, all caps
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June 5: Why Ascap? The Manual of Style and Usage entry for acronym explains: “When an acronym serves as a proper name and exceeds four letters, capitalize only the first letter: Unesco, Unicef.” But then there’s FERPA. Or is it Ferpa?
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I guess the argument could be made that Ascap is an acronym, and is pronounced as if it were a word spelled "A-s-c-a-p," whereas "BMI" is an initialism and is pronounced as the series of the names of its letters ("Bee-em-I").
That’s a neat distinction. But the Times does FEMA and NASA, for instance, in caps. On this one, the Times puzzles me.
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