"Spam" is Not an Acronym, But Thank You for Playing

Today I re-encountered the practice of writing "spam" — as in, unsolicited commercial e-mail — in all-caps, like so: "SPAM."

Please stop it, you people who are doing this. "Spam" is capitalized just like all the other words.

And while we're on the subject, the good kind of computer is a "Mac," not a "MAC." (Although thankfully the equally-or-perhaps-even-more-wrong "MacIntosh" capitalization scheme seems to have finally fallen out of favor with the cap-challenged set.)

Posted on Feb 22, 2006

Comments

I thought the good kind of computer was spelled "Cray".

Posted by Dr John K | Friday, 24 Feb 2006 at 8:02 AM

Word on the street is that Cray's a super computer. (Not just a good one.)

Har!

Posted by Jeff | Friday, 24 Feb 2006 at 10:15 AM

Actually, "SPAM" (all-caps) is a registered trademark of the Hormel Foods Corporation, but they have approved (thanks to the power of intertia, I suppose) the use of "spam" (lower-case) for use in describing Unsolicited Commercial Emails.

This ends this week's edition of "Useless Facts You Don't Really Want To Know Anyway"... ;)

Posted by Doug Burke | Monday, 10 Apr 2006 at 9:21 AM

That's outstanding! That means that referring to the e-mail as "SPAM" rather than "spam" is actually sticking it to the Man! Do it often enough and their trademark evaporates! So I take it all back. (Except for the Mac/MAC part, obviously.)

Posted by Jeff | Monday, 10 Apr 2006 at 10:34 AM




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