PowerPoint is CamelCase

I was reprimanded for yesterday's post on Camel Case. I didn't include PowerPoint, iPod, or iTunes.

And I didn't list a whole bunch from the RSS syndication world: FeedBurner, iPodder, GreatNews, MagpieRSS, NewsGator, NetNewsWire...the beat goes on.

No doubt the widespread commerical use of CamelCase has its roots in programming. If a company wants to seem hip: they use the camel. It looks cleaner than dashes-between-words. Takes up less bitspace, too.

SpongeBob SquarePants is still my favorite, though. He came to be in the dotcom era, so why wouldn't his name be in camel case?

• Imagine how tacky he'd be if his name was Sponge-Bob-Square-Pants.
  That's so "I was too late to get the URL I wanted." Not hip at all.
• Or how about the Title Case "Sponge Bob Square Pants"?
  That seems like a 1950's formal announcement. Why not just call him "Sir?"
• spongebobsquarepants?
  too ee cummings...maybe even orwellian futurespeakish..

Grammarians, take note. The widespread commercial use of CamelCase is bound to impact our futurespeak....if indeed, futurespeak is even in the future. I'm not aware of any CamelCase words in the Oxford English Dictionary yet....but I could be misinformed.

Anybody know of any CamelCase or Orwell's futurespeak words in the OED? Please inform me of common use words only....I can see that there are too many commercial camel case words!

¶ 9/26/2005 12:02:00 PM