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With so many tech words being multiple words joined together with letters in the middle capitalized (like PowerPoint), there's the potential for a new phenomenon. You can change which letter is capitalized and get a different meaning. For instance, in some databases there's a function called CommonKey. If you change the capitalization to ComMonkey, it looks like it means something very different. What would something like that be called?
Or for that matter, is there a term for words that are capitalized in the way that PowerPoint is?
First, for the mixed-case terminology question. The technical term is "medial capitals," with a common term of "camelCase," alluding to the humps on the backs of camels.
As for the name of the phenomenon you describe, it seems to me that it is a kind of amphibology. Since I don't have a term to describe this exact kind of ambiguity, if I were writing a technical study of it, I might call it a CamelCase Amphibology. It may not roll off the tongue, but then, most things that do are rather disgusting.
One of my editors call those "embedded caps," but at this blog:
https://wordsbybob.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/camelcase-camel-case-just-in-case/#more-2470
where Bob McDonnell (his surname itself an example) observes the following additional names:
There are many other names for camelcase. These include Pascal case, bumpy caps, embedded caps, intercaps, medial capitals, mixed caps and bi-capitalization. Strangely, none of the synonyms are camelcase themselves.
Is it too recent to even have an "official" name? When did this first start showing up? Was "eBay" the first? I wonder if it might, in part, be related to the fact that, in early computer operating systems, spaces between characters were not allowed?
Heimhenge said:
Is it too recent to even have an "official" name? When did this first start showing up? Was "eBay" the first? I wonder if it might, in part, be related to the fact that, in early computer operating systems, spaces between characters were not allowed?
I don't think it's too recent to have an official name — as Glenn said, the "official" name for the convention is "medial capitals." Also in accord with Glenn, the most common name I've heard for it is "CamelCase."
Additionally, I doubt that "eBay" was the first to use it (the blog post you quoted suggested "Pascal case" as an option, and the Pascal language predates eBay by many years). But that means I also agree with your supposition that "CamelCase" originated in programming language, where spaces between words were not proper syntax.
Yeah, I remember Pascal. I used mostly Fortran, and then later Basic, but I saw enough Pascal to know what you're saying. Predates eBay by decades.
This thread brings to mind another issue I've had with embedded caps (or medial capitals). With words like "eBay," "iPhone," "iConji," and others that force a lowercase letter at the start, what happens when that word starts a sentence? I've always tried to avoid that issue by rewriting the sentence so the word was elsewhere, even though that sometimes gets a little awkward. But what if grammar considerations absolutely require it at the start of the sentence? Do you change that first lowercase letter to a cap?
Again, the phenomenon is so recent I'm not sure there is a "rule" about what to do in that case.
The earliest instance of such orthography in my experience is the many Mc and Mac names that exist. Long before any CamelCase became popular, McDonald's and MacMurray were commonplace. Referring back to the original post, there was also a schoolboy prank that involved tricking someone around the confusion between MacHinery and machinery. That is the earliest example that I am aware of centering on the reinterpretion of a word based on medial capitals, and it goes back well over 50 years. Ahem, or so I have read.
Heimhenge said:
This thread brings to mind another issue I've had with embedded caps (or medial capitals). With words like "eBay," "iPhone," "iConji," and others that force a lowercase letter at the start, what happens when that word starts a sentence? I've always tried to avoid that issue by rewriting the sentence so the word was elsewhere, even though that sometimes gets a little awkward. But what if grammar considerations absolutely require it at the start of the sentence? Do you change that first lowercase letter to a cap?
That's a really interesting question, and I find it curious that I've never had to consider it before. I guess I've never tried to begin a sentence with "iPhone" or "iPod" or "eBay". My guess is that, since each of those is a proper noun, each would retain its nonstandard capitalization. For example, I wouldn't capitalize the first "e" in e.e. cummings's name if I used it to begin a sentence, but that might be an example referenced in usage guides, and the opinions might contradict me. (I just moved, and all my books are still in boxes, so I have no authority to back that guess up and no better answer, unfortunately.)
Well, unless you have a very current "style guide" I doubt you'll find any standards even after you unpack your book boxes. The use of "forced lowercase" (if that's what it's even called) is probably just too recent. This article from Wikipedia addresses the issue, but doesn't really answer the question.
And that, for whatever reason, reminded me of a sketch on the old Benny Hill comedy show. Benny walks past an office. On the door is one of those signs that uses individual letters that slide into a holding bracket. The sign originally reads "THERAPIST" (all in caps). He looks at it for a moment, nudges the letters to create a space between the "E" and "R," smiles to himself, and walks away.
And now we're in the area of website addresses that raise eyebrows because the words can be broken out in more than one way. Such as the purported Italian branch of British energy company Powergen, which took the address http://www.powergenitalia.com.
There was also "Pen Island" (custom fountain pens), "Who Represents" (find out who a celebrity's agent is), "Experts Exchange" (a knowledge base for programmers), and "Mole Station Nursery" (for Welsh plant lovers).
The website has been moved, but used to be exactly what you'd expect, for the company at lower left in this sign that I snapped a photo of one day; they promised people with financial problems "A New Start":
As for lower-case words, I've thought about it, and though I'm willing to hear arguments for a different convention I decided such a lower-case proper noun gets capitalized at the beginning of sentences just like any other noun. Thus I address tunawrites in the middle of the sentence, but "Tunawrites" at the beginning of one. Ee cummings, too; I'll let him decide whether his name should be capitalized, but once he decides it should be treated like a regular noun he doesn't get to control how I apply grammar to regular nouns.
But as I said, I'll listen if someone has another idea about it.
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