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Comment by ssl-3 | Hacker News Reader

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ssl-3·

"DOW" here is an acronym for Department of War, and really should be fully capitalized in the title.

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It's also still the Department of Defense; only Congress can change its name, and they haven't.

The article's title says "Department of War".

(I didn't write the title.)

it's a subtle kowtow to the administration, to call the DoD the DoW

I'd say it's more a kowtow to his voters and democracy. Whatever you think of him, he was democratically elected. Do remember to show up this November, though, and remind all your friends..

> kowtow to his voters and democracy.

The president can not unilaterally rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War without approval from congress. Just declaring it so is not democracy. Those that call it the Department of War are enablers.

Yeah title is currently likely to be interpreted as Dow Jones.

Or Dow Chemical.

DoW or more accurately DoD like WoW is less ambiguous than fully capitalized.

I considered the small "o". But the precedent for US government TLAs seems to be to capitalize the whole thing: https://www.justice.gov/nsd-ovt/us-government-acronym-list

Capitalizing everything is the new direction, but I doubt it’s going to stick around. There’s a long legacy of DoD vs DOW, for a current military example that wasn’t updated: https://dodtap.mil/dodtap/app/about/DoDTAP

Here the DoD pattern makes it clear what part of the larger acronym is representing.

wouldn't it be DoW, like DoD?

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