Saturday, April 21, 2007

CILIP? Cilip? cilip?

CILIP vs Cilip...traditionally, an acronym (initials to make a word - e.g. scuba, radar, modem) doesn't need to use capitals but an abbreviation (initials that are spoken as initials - e.g. DfES, PDF) is written using capitals. Now, I have always written CILIP in capitals but I think that I might be wrong here...it's actually an acronym and as a proper noun, needs an initial captial letter, giving us...Cilip. I also see that that is what they use themselves.

I guess I had better update the title of my blog!


3 comments:

Katharine Widdows said...

I use "CILIP" too, but to be honest I have never found myself too concerned over how correct that is - perhaps, as a wannabe librarian I should be paying more attention to such things - after all, we are supposed to be precise - what on earth would happen to the classfication systems if people went around just throwing in lower and upper case characters willy-nilly without a care?!?

Or maybe, CILIP/Cilip/cilip should offer some official advice on the point? Lets ask the lIs-ReG LIsT?
:) :)

David Bruce said...

"what on earth would happen to the classfication systems if people went around just throwing in lower and upper case characters willy-nilly without a care?!?"

If they were managed by Microsoft...absolutely nothing! (and therein lies one of my problems with Bill...)

michael said...

A pedant writes:

Back in 2002, when CILIP first appeared, I remember getting a newsletter explaining all of this. Thanks to the interweb (and after the frantic application of some librarian skills ;) ), you can still see it at http://www.la-hq.org.uk/hot_news/preview1.htm. See this bit, near the bottom:

"When writing about CILIP, please use the full form of the organisation's name the first time you refer to it - i.e. 'CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals'. Thereafter, you can use just the acronym, but please put it in capitals – ‘CILIP’ – not in lower case as in the logo design, so that it stands out prominently in the text."

I remember someone pointing out the inherent daftness of the text in the logo contravening the guidelines for using the name. It's still daft.