CamelCase

CamelCase CamelCase CamelCase By Maeve Maddox A reader commenting on my e-mail post brought my attention to a term I’d not heard before: It will end up simply as book, but before that happens it will be ebook- just as email ended up as email. eBook looks entirely too corporate to me, and I doubt if the general writing public will ever adopt camel case for anyThing, ever. Camel case, also appropriately spelled CamelCase, is the practice of writing a word with a capital inside it. For example: iPhone CinemaScope VistaVision AstroTurf The name comes from the fact that the uppercase letter makes a â€Å"hump† in the word. The Wiki article gives a long list of other terms for this practice. Here are a few: BumpyCaps, CamelBack, CamelCaps, CapWords, mixedCase, and RollerCoasterCaps. I have to agree that words written that way are a bit too cutesy to survive as real words. Thats not to say there is no practical use for the mingling of upper- and lowercase letters. For example, in chemistry: NaCl, AgF, BaSe, etc. As for the e-book poll, 326 DWT readers voted. The form e-book received 50% of the votes. The CamelCase version eBook came in second at 26%. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Spelling category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Spelling Test 1For Sale vs. On SaleHow Do You Pronounce "Often"?