Acronymic Question

[dewline]

A question for my reporter/journalist friendlisters, particularly the ones outside of North America: why do I often see acronyms not having every initial capitalized?

"Nasa" as opposed to "NASA", for example, or "Nafta" instead of "NAFTA"?

Comments

[dewline]

I've seen the online editions of the BBC News and Guardian style guides. What I wonder is why they've made that choice in each of those cases (and apparently, it's the rule in some Swedish publications as well)...

[jo]

Likely because the more familiar the acronym is as an actual word, the more sense it makes to treat it as a word rather than an acronym. Like scuba. Which is an acronym but no one would ever write it SCUBA anymore. No one uses "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome" -- it's just Aids, like cancer, or Polio, etc.