Acronym

====Pronunciation-dependent style and case====
Some publications choose to capitalize only the first letter of acronyms, reserving all-caps styling for initialisms, writing the pronounced acronyms "Nato" and "Aids" in mixed case, but the initialisms "USA" and "FBI" in all caps. For example, this is the style used in ''[[The Guardian]]'',<ref>{{Cite news |url= https://www.theguardian.com/styleguide |title=Styleguide |work=[[The Guardian]] |location=London |date=December 19, 2008 |quote=Use all capitals if an abbreviation is pronounced as the individual letters (an initialism): BBC, CEO, US, VAT, etc; if it is an acronym (pronounced as a word) spell out with initial capital, eg Nasa, Nato, Unicef, unless it can be considered to have entered the language as an everyday word, such as [[awol]], [[laser]] and, more recently, [[asbo]], [[pin number]] and [[sim card]]. Note that [[pdf]] and [[public limited company|plc]] are lowercase.}}</ref> and ''[[BBC News]]'' typically edits to this style (though its official style guide, dating from 2003, still recommends all-caps<ref>{{Cite news|url= http://www.bbctraining.com/pdfs/newsstyleguide.pdf |title=BBC News Style Guide |work=BBCTraining.com |publisher=[[BBC]] |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110707214856/http://www.bbctraining.com/pdfs/newsStyleGuide.pdf |archive-date=July 7, 2011}}</ref>). The logic of this style is that the pronunciation is reflected graphically by the capitalization scheme. However, it conflicts with conventional English usage of first-letter upper-casing as a marker of proper names in many cases; e.g. ''AIDS'' stands for ''acquired immuno-deficiency syndrome'' which is not a proper name, while ''Aids'' is in the style of one.

Some style manuals also base the letters' [[Letter case|case]] on their number. ''[[The New York Times]]'', for example, keeps "NATO" in all capitals (while several guides in the British press may render it "Nato"), but uses lower case in "[[United Nations Children's Fund|Unicef]]" (from "United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund") because it is more than four letters, and to style it in caps might look ungainly (flirting with the appearance of "shouting capitals").