Camel case

I'd heard of 'upper case' and 'lower case', obviously, but not of 'camel case' until our web editor enlightened me recently.

It's one of a number of names for the practice of using capital letters in the middle of (usually compound) words – 'iPod', for example. The capital letter is said to resemble the hump of a camel.

As you can imagine, camel case is popular in brand names and unpopular in subbing circles. In fact, you could say that having to remember or constantly check strange capitalisations gives subs the hump!

The Wikipedia article on camel case (or more appropriately, CamelCase) is rather good, so I'll just point you over there today.

What are you looking at?

The Engine Room: a mystery explained

You may be wondering why sometimes Apus and I refer to 'the engine room' (no caps) and sometimes to 'the Engine Room' (initial caps). After all, it's not like subs to be so inconsistent, is it?

Well, Apus and I work for the production desk of a particular publication. Long before I joined the publication, Apus had developed the habit of referring to the production desk as the engine room of the magazine, for obvious reasons. I picked this habit up from him, and when we came to start the blog, it seemed the perfect name.

So when we refer to 'the engine room', we mean the production desk on our magazine; when we refer to 'the Engine Room', we mean the blog you are reading. Of course, you may ask why we don't cap up the 'the'...