Pedantic, but NASA is an acronym. Am I unaware of a British English composition rule that permits writing it "Nasa"?
> 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 plc are lowercase.
The site is WIRED UK. Maybe it's a UK thing?
My first reaction was, "That's not how you write NASA; This author/editor is an idiot. How can I trust anything they've written here?" I doubt that's the reaction they want.
Now I just feel sorry for the author whose writing is forced to look weird to many readers.
Over time, maybe people will just come to recognize it as "a British thing" just like they recognize aluminium as the British spelling.
I say defer to however the organization in question writes it. That should surely lead to the least confusion and weirdness. It would certainly help UK news organizations with consistency:
* "CARE International": http://www.theguardian.com/lend-with-care/entrepreneurs-seek...
* "Care" _and_ "CARE": http://www.theguardian.com/lend-with-care/tackling-the-root-...
* "Nasa" _and_ "NASA" (But "Ladee" rather than "LADEE"): http://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2013/sep/07/nasa-la...
(That'sh Private Eye's job. Ed) http://www.private-eye.co.uk
I think there's a cultural difference here, USAian papers kept up the many founts with underlining, etc thing long after it had become unfashionable in the UK.
The norm is the norm - whatever you're used to.
...which is what my previous post was supposed to highlighting. Somebody took it personally :-(
When it comes to the English language, the English have a pretty valid claim.
Then, just to confuse matters, Charles Martin Hall promotes it as aluminum on his marketing posters, but himself calls it aluminium on his technical documents, so some people think that the predominance of aluminum in North America may just be down to a typo.
edit - Looking at the New York Times, I notice that while they write 'NASA' and 'NATO', they also tend to write 'Unicef' and 'Norad'. I wonder if they have a four letters or less capitalisation rule for acronyms.
In my perception, USA don't seem to care so much for consistency with others; cf use of imperial measures.
arg
Yes, it's redundant, but the point is that it's not being used as an acronym, but as a separate part of the lexicon with its own meaning.
I've never seen the BBC call the BBC the Bbc though...