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Why do they keep referring to the company as "H.P." when it's "HP".

The New York Times style guide recommends periods after the letters if you pronounce the letters individually. [1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym#Pronunciation-dependent...

And yet they write "AOL" in this article.

That's because the company's name is AOL, Inc.[1], and not an abbreviation. It doesn't have anything to do with the pronunciation. AOL used to be known as America Online, but when it bought Time Warner, the new company was called "AOL Time Warner"[2].

The Times also writes "I.B.M." instead of IBM, because it is officially "International Business Machines". They also used to write "A.T.&T." for "American Telephone and Telegraph" [3], but now write "AT&T" when AT&T changed their name to the former acronym.

[1] http://www.google.com/finance?q=AOL

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/11/business/media-megadeal-ov...

[3] (google-cache) http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ByumNxy...

Don't you hate it when people pick standards, and then actually stick with them?

And that's why the New York Times writes "I.Q." when the whole world of psychology writes "IQ" without any periods.

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