Capping company names

[geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA]

 Jennifer Jelinek <<...was also told that everytime I use
 the name of the company in text, it should be
 capitalized.>>

 This is an ongoing debate on copyediting-l too. My opinion,
 having listened to the debate for several years now and
 consulted various style guides,  is that you're obliged to
 spell a name correctly, whether you like the spelling or
 not: I'm "Geoff", not "geoff" or gEOff, and that's that.
 Pointe finale. So if a company chooses to call itself IBM,
 you won't get away with calling it Ibm, iBm, or ibM... the
 latter three are not the same people at all.

 The issue gets more complicated if the company does
 something weird with formats. If Microsoft decided to redo
 the corporate logo as (for the sake of argument)
 <blue>Micro</blue><red>SOFT</red>, there's no way they
 could force you to use the colors in all your
 documentation, but they could certainly force you to
 capitalize SOFT, and to use the right colors and fonts if
 you use use their name as a graphic.

 Bottom line? Respect capitalization rules just as you would
 for any other proper noun, but ignore weird formats unless
 the name appears as a wordmark (graphic).

 --Geoff Hart     @8^{)}     geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
 Disclaimer: Speaking for myself, not FERIC.


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