Enlightening mankind about the correct spelling of Gnome

Alan Horkan had some very
enlightening words worth repeating for all of you out there who misspell ‘Gnome’:

We know you like Gnome but there is no need to shout.

Okay if it is an acronym then the only correct way to write it is G.N.O.M.E. and then it looks strangely reminiscent of a James Bond villian. If that is too difficult for you to type then by all means type “Gnome” and stop inflicting ALL CAPS on people.

R.A.D.A.R. and L.A.S.E.R. stopped being treated as acronyms and I look forward to the time when Gnome is mature and popular enough to do the same.

14 thoughts on “Enlightening mankind about the correct spelling of Gnome”

  3. I thought putting full stops in an acronym was very old fashioned. Very rarely do I see it these days, GNOME seems fine to me.

  4. AFAIK you don’t have to write “full stops” when an accronym is _pronounced_ like an ordinary word, or when it’s a name for something (e.g. a trademark), e.g.: UNESCO, IBM, GNOME, etc., but there is no reason to write it like if it _is_ an ordinary word (unless you want to get rid of the meaning of the abbreviation).

    Also, “GNOME” is a lot easier to establish as a trademark than “Gnome”…

    Once a majority of the people start to use “gnome” to mean generally “a computer display screen based user interface” or something like that, it will be written without capitals, and as an ordinary word. Compare to ‘laser’, ‘radar’, ‘scuba’.

  5. And Microsoft used to be “MicroSoft”, but isn’t, today. And remember when we used to send “E-Mail”?

    Lots of people (including me) will type it “Gnome” (or even “gnome”), because typing an all-caps word takes more effort, and remembering all the crazy capitalization rules of the various projects is just absurd. (Some are ALL-CAPS, some are no-caps, some are BiCaps, some are MidAndEndCapS…)

    So as long as it’s “GNOME”, it’s going to be used inconsistently. Whenever people want me to remember the special capitalization rules they’ve invented for their pet programs, it makes me want to shoot their eyes out with friggin’ LASERs.

  6. Tim is correct: people are going to use “GNOME”, “Gnome” and possibly “G.N.O.M.E.” inconsistently, whatever the correct official spelling is.

    That official correct spelling is “GNOME”, and definately not “Gnome”, by the way. Personally, I like “GNOME” better, but that’s just a matter of taste

    However, the fact that other people will continue to use it incorrectly, is a very poor excuse for actually encouraging the wrong use. As is having a different personal taste.

  7. If it’s really called “GNOME”, then why do all my programs have names like “gnome-about”? It’s not like we don’t have case-preserving filenames. X11’s program is called “X11”. AbiWord has silly capitalization, but I have an app called “AbiWord-2.4”.

    If the “GNOME” project really cared about capitalization, then show you mean it by spelling the names of your programs correctly. As long as my computer thinks your name is “gnome”, then I’ll call it that, too.

  8. THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN! NOW SAY IT! gNOME! gNOME! gNOME!!!

    Seriously, though, I completely support you. GNOME is ridiculous. It doesn’t look like an acronym, it doesn’t sound like an acronym, and the original acronym has no meaning anyway. At least KDE and IBM have some meaning. GNOME doesn’t. Gnome does.

  12. I personally consider the word “mankind” to be deprecated in favor of the word “humanity”, as it is more inclusive of all genders.

  13. The word “humanity” was soon deprecated, as well, in favor of the word “HUMANITY”.

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