intro sentence @ www.rockbox.org - suggestion

[Chronon]

I have no problem with the capitalization.  I also write "laser" instead of LASER and "scuba" instead of SCUBA.

[GodEater]

Although both of those are acronyms and not abbreviations

How entertaining this thread has become!

[wintermute23]

They're acronyms which have become words in their own right.

AIDS and NATO are an acronyms, but writing "aids" or "Nato" would be incorrect.

[TexasRockbox]

I think it should read:

"Rockbox is an open source firmware for Vorbis players"   

[wintermute23]

How about "Rockbox is made of pure awesome"?

[bluebrother]

How about "Rockbox is made of pure awesome"?

"Rockbox is made of bits, bytes and lots of hard work"

[Zardoz]

How about 'Rockbox does more than MP3....' or just 'Rockbox does mmmmmore......'

or some other such copy-written-style soundbite. Looks like what's needed are some linguist/etymologist/orthographist/lexicographist/expertist insights here! (I don't have any BTW)

They're acronyms which have become words in their own right.

my understanding was always that an acronym was an initialised abbreviation which could be, or has been, pronounced as a word in it's own right, like Scuba or Nato, so without the need for CAPITALISATION. Whereas, perhaps, what's correctly called an 'initialism' is capitalised precisely because it cannot be, or hasn't come to be, pronounced as a word as such - eg MBNA, IRS, DOA, RTFM - and so the capitals signal this. This discussion is hilarious!! I feel like such a pedant haha Let Dr. Johnson speak....

[Chronon]

Apparently, this all comes down to the supposed distinctions in capitalization rules between initializations and acronyms.  However, in computer usage I think that lowercase initialization is fine.  Do you all force the extensions on your files to be capitalized?  Most of my MPEG layer 3 files have an extension of mp3, not MP3.

Edit: Actually, I confused things by dragging discussion back to acronyms, which clearly don't obey a strict capitalization rule.  Still, I think that the ubiquity of lowercase file extensions suggests that a lowercase "mp3" should be perfectly allowable.

[Zardoz]

IMHO the great thing about english is its flexibility, in spite of its puritans. Capital or lower case, well spelled or bad, proper orthographic form or 'the bastard inconformity', it kicks against itself. I say that in all admiration as a native Irish, speaker, colonised as it were once. (tuppence worth)

As far as MP3 vs. mp3 goes....Don't some filesystems get cranky with capitals? I've heard from users of problems with capitals and spaces? (Heroin users)

[GodEater]

So now that this topic is completely and utterly off topic :

It's not the filesystems which get cranky about capitalisation - they either support upper and lower case or they don't. It's the applications which load files from those filesystems which sometimes get cranky when they assume one case only, and then get told "no such file" when they tried to load something from a filesystem which allows both.

[wintermute23]

They're acronyms which have become words in their own right.

my understanding was always that an acronym was an initialised abbreviation which could be, or has been, pronounced as a word in it's own right, like Scuba or Nato, so without the need for CAPITALISATION. Whereas, perhaps, what's correctly called an 'initialism' is capitalised precisely because it cannot be, or hasn't come to be, pronounced as a word as such - eg MBNA, IRS, DOA, RTFM - and so the capitals signal this. This discussion is hilarious!! I feel like such a pedant haha Let Dr. Johnson speak....

If an initialism is normally pronounced as a word (NATO, UNICEF, AIDS, USMARIID) then it's an acronym, in the most precise meaning of the word. However, despite being pronounced as such, they are not words and shouldn't be written in lower case. Some acronyms (scuba, laser, radar) have gone on to become words in their own right, essentially divorced from the original acronym.

Take a look at the Wiki pages (or any other half-way scholarly source) for any of the capitalised acronyms above, and you'll see that they exclusively use capitals, despite them being eminently pronounceable.

[Zardoz]

how about this for a first line? 'And God said "Let there be Rockbox" and there was Rockbox'

just to get back on topic.

(Wintermute I think you're right. Good point. My capitalising theory was kinda bogus! Somehow 'Nato' looks all wrong next to 'NATO'. What is USMARIID by the way?? And What would Batman do? Probably capitals)

[wintermute23]

I goofed slightly there; it's actually USAMRIID (pronounced you-SAM-rid): The United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

They've been in a few detective / adventure TV series.

[Zardoz]

(Haha ok! Man I hate those forensic-scientist-cop shows!)

[ZincAlloy]

how about this for a first line? 'And God said "Let there be Rockbox" and there was Rockbox'

Many here don't believe in God. LambdaCalculus379 for instance believes in Bob. Others believe in the flying spaghetti monster or a pink, invisible unicorn...