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[Tony Travis]

On 12/10/2019 20:39, Nemo Nusquam wrote:
> On 10/10/19 22:46, Dave Horsfall wrote:
>> On Thu, 10 Oct 2019, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>>
>>> DEC documentation mostly used uppercase in the text; e.g. the "pdp11
>>> peripherals handbook" (to transcribe the cover exactly) uses "PDP-11"
>>> several times on pg 1-1.
>>
>> And being an acronym it is of course upper-case...
> 
> At the risk of being labelled a pedant. from the OED:

Hi, Nemo.

It takes one to know one!

> https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/acronym

What is interesting about this definition is that an 'acronym' is 
pronounced as a word (i.e. not spelled out as letters). So, from that 
point of view PDP-11 is an 'initialism' and not an acronym :-)

> https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/initialism

Which opens up a whole area of controversy about how to pronounce:

   vi

In my experience, research users and hackers spell it out as "vee eye" 
as originally described by Bill Joy, but business/enterprise users tend 
to pronounce it as "vye" instead.

Well, I'm a research *nix user so I spell "vi" out, but my dark secret 
is that I do pronounce "vim" as a full word and don't spell it out...

I suppose this is just about recognition of a suitable peer group that 
agree, but it really sets my teeth on edge when people pronounce "vi"!

Anyone else got pet hates about how people pronounce *nix commands?

There are many pointless discussions about this already on the Internet, 
so please only post comments here of historical interest like mine :-)

Bye,

   Tony.

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