Resistance to InterCapping

[ktinkel]

Every so often some language curmudgeon rails against the use of interior capital letters within words (actually, often two or more words stuck together), sometimes known as camel case (because of the visual hump). This week Caleb Crain makes his case in “Against Camel Case” in the N.Y. Times’s On Language column.

He refuses to countenance iPod (instead taking a full paragraph to identify the product otherwise without allowing his “prose to be so disfigured.” Then he reminds us that the practice is not all that modern, with such examples as McIntosh, MacNeice, and other historic names (all from Scotland, evidently).

The author is a historian, so it is not surprising that the most interesting part of the article is his discussion of the use of spaces in ancient languages, in which words were meant to be read aloud and memorized, and spaces were viewed as unnecessary. It took the spread of literacy to bring spaces into text.

He ends, of course, with an indictment of camel case. Worth reading, no matter where you stand.