alt Hacker NewsThat certainly explains it; this particular acronym is even called out distinctly in the style guide.
But "Nasa" still looks weirder to me than "NASA" does.
Like writing "The Scsi bus went Awol" instead of "The SCSI bus went AWOL" also looks weird.
That certainly explains it; this particular acronym is even called out distinctly in the style guide.
But "Nasa" still looks weirder to me than "NASA" does.
Like writing "The Scsi bus went Awol" instead of "The SCSI bus went AWOL" also looks weird.
The NYT respects acronyms, but only up to four characters:
Why Nascar, Not NASCAR?
Auto racing fans chafe at our rules on acronyms. Here they are, from our stylebook:
acronyms. An acronym is a word formed from the first letter (or letters) of each word in a series: NATO from North Atlantic Treaty Organization; radar from radio detection and ranging. (Unless pronounced as a word, an abbreviation is not an acronym.) When an acronym serves as a proper name and exceeds four letters, capitalize only the first letter: Unesco; Unicef.
We limit the uppercasing to four letters because longer strings of capitals are distracting and tend to jump off the page.
https://archive.nytimes.com/afterdeadline.blogs.nytimes.com/...
Or at least, that used to be the rule. I can't find anything newer about their style on their site, but here's a recent article (not published under the Athletic either) that uses "NASCAR":
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/22/sports/autoracing/kyle-bu...