Did anyone else read all 11 pages of the Q&A w/ the Times' lead copyeditor? This "ask the editors" is one of my favorite features of the newly reader-friendly Times.
Merrill Perlman -- Talk to the Newsroom -- Reader Questions and Answers.
Q. Why does The Times and most everybody else use the acronym Nafta rather than NAFTA? It's the only case I've ever seen where all caps were not used for an acronym. — Edwin Gardner, Charleston, S.C.
Q. Could you explain the distinction between the punctuation in H.I.V. and in AIDS, and maybe generalize your policy to words like scuba. — Jim Greenwood, Newtown, Conn.
A. Oh, boy! A chance to show how illogical logic can be.
H.I.V., AIDS, Nafta and scuba really have only a few things in common, at least as far as New York Times style is concerned. (New York Times style, by the way, is largely based on the consensus for standard English usage among major American dictionaries, particularly the one we prefer, Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition. We're not just making it up.)
H.I.V. is an initialism, an abbreviated form consisting of the first letter of each word in the expression (Human Immunodeficiency Virus). F.B.I. is another. The Times uses periods between the initials so you don't try to pronounce it as a word. (Some people do say “FEE-bee,” but it’s not anywhere close to common usage.) An initialism is not the same as an abbreviation, like Dr., which is just a shortened version of one word, doctor. But Ph.D. really isn't an initialism, since the Ph. represents one word and the D. another. (And it’s not really English, but that's another matter.)
AIDS is an acronym (for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), which is an initialism that is pronounced as a word. So is NATO.
Nafta is an acronym, too, but because it has more than four letters, The Times capitalizes only the first letter. (That style is a British import.) The cutoff is somewhat arbitrary, but is based on the belief that all-capitalized words jump off of a page, and they get less height with four or fewer letters. In a sentence about NAFTA and UNESCO calling upon UNICEF to work with the N.A.A.C.P. to stop AIDS, a reader's eye may alight upon those capital letters, giving them greater weight than the words around them, even subtly. In other words, it looks ugly. As a result, we tend to avoid using initialisms and abbreviatons too frequently, preferring to say "the virus,” “the agency,” etc. when we can.
Scuba is indeed an acronym (for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus), as is radar (well, mostly; it stands for RAdio Detecting And Ranging), but because they include no proper names, they are customarily rendered in all lowercase letters. (I added the capitals in the full versions to show the source of the acronym, not just to throw you off.)
My absolute favorite style change they've made is throwing out the (possessive) apostrophe in decades in numerical form (e.g., 1930's) and capitalized title words (e.g., DVD's). God, I hated that! Every time I saw it, I'd reach for a pen to correct it. Brrrr. Apparently, your humble pedant isn't the only one (see pg. 3 of the article).
P.S. It is so nice to have the chance to sit and read. It's been a hectic as all get out week, and I feel like I've been gunning for the moon (I have). db and I just spent all day in the yard -- whither the lush and orderly paradise?? sigh. -- and normally we would be too pooped to pop, but soon we'll be sharing a nice meal w/ our pal JM at db's new fave pizza place. Mmm.
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