More from the NYT

[Ben Zimmer]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 9:23 AM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>
> On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 10:10 AM, Martin Kaminer wrote:
> >
> > I was surprised to see in today's article entitled "Alone in Public
> > Housing, With a Spare Bedroom"
> >
> >
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/nyregion/housing-authority-also-has-an-undercrowding-problem.html
> > that New York City Housing Authority was spelled 'Nycha' rather than
> > in all caps.  All local policy wonks (and one imagines facility
> > residents) refer to it as /Nai-tS^/ but seeing it in print converted
> > from an acronym to a word seemed a bit jarring.  I don't think one can
> > do case-sensitive searches on the NYT archives but from my cursory
> > perusal this seems to be a first.
>
> The NYTimes favors "NYCHA" but also uses "N.Y.C.H.A" and "Nycha".
>
> "Nycha" was used in three of 55 uses in the past 12 months.

"Nycha" is an artifact of the New York Times Style Guide, which
dictates that "acronyms of five or more letters are
upper-and-lowercased: _Unicef_; _Unesco_; _Alcoa_; _Awacs_."

http://books.google.com/books?id=CnwIVkAQgFwC&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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