Not I.S.O., but ISO!

[xpatUSA]

I have spent a lot of my life in two areas: education, and service and delivery management. That cocktail drives me to make sure things are referred to correctly - communication is important, and after all this is a registered trade mark and deserves respect as such. Not to do so is, IMHO, unprofessional.

In a related sense, I set my camera time to UTC**. Which, like ISO, does not match the originating Temps Universal Co-ordinee. I often wonder if "TUC" was avoided due to the existence of a less-respected body in Great Britain known as the "Trade Unions Congress".

** Why? because images posted on stupid DPR get "GMT" tacked onto the capture time in the EXIF pop-up.

[MrB]

I find it odd that the American system was commonly said as "100 ASA" but the International system is said as "ISO 100" ...

... myself, I obstinately write "100 ISO" - it just doesn't look right the other way round, LOL.

Ted, to me it just seems reasonable (and consistent with other stated values) to write and say the term before the number, as in "at ISO 100 the exposure was aperture f/16 and shutter speed 1/100s" but your obstinacy doesn't cause me any grief!

Philip

[xpatUSA]

Ted, to me it just seems reasonable (and consistent with other stated values) to write and say the term before the number, as in "at ISO 100 the exposure was aperture f/16 and shutter speed 1/100s"

Reasonable to me too - because, in the days long before typing with two thumbs, a couple of words were included for completeness, i.e. an aperture of f/16 or a shutter speed of 1/100 sec.

Nowadays it is quite common to see "F16" all by itself - which in my world beyond the pale is a US fighter jet.

I have the book "Eats Shoots and Leaves" a classic, I believe.

but your obstinacy doesn't cause me any grief!

Philip

Ta!

[Tronhard]

When I took up photography the film speed rating was always expressed as ASA (American Standards Association). Then ratings were expressed as ISO (International Standards Organisation). But what the hell, they both equate to one another! To be grammatically correct, full-points should be applied between the letters.

Barry:

Actually, you missed the whole point! Did you read the whole series of explanations on this, or at least the whole of the original post???

ISO is not an acronym, so it does not get points between the letters. It is a WORD. It is a corporate name, a registered brand name and trade mark. It clearly states this in the about us and branding sections of the ISO site.

ASA could have dots between the letters as it IS an acronym. The two are completely different grammatically.

[lunaticitizen]

That cocktail drives me to make sure things are referred to correctly - communication is important, and after all this is a registered trade mark and deserves respect as such. Not to do so is, IMHO, unprofessional.
see: ISO - ISO name and logo

Interesting. Do you also think we need to refer to trademarks correctly in written communication? For example, "SONY" instead of "Sony"?

Wikipedia's Manual of Style instructs us to ignore trademarks' formatting style, and follow standard English text formatting and capitalization practices.

BBC News style guide also uses lower case with an initial cap for acronyms where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word. For example, "Fifa" instead of "FIFA".

[oe31]

Interesting, Because there was no greeting, I misheard the start as "Hello, ISO."

[Tronhard]

Interesting. Do you also think we need to refer to trademarks correctly in written communication? For example, "SONY" instead of "Sony"?

Wikipedia's Manual of Style instructs us to ignore trademarks' formatting style, and follow standard English text formatting and capitalization practices.

BBC News style guide also uses lower case with an initial cap for acronyms where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word. For example, "Fifa" instead of "FIFA".

Personally, my angle is that ISO is not an acronym, nor does it represent a body called the International Standards Association - which does not exist as that name. The official branding, trademarks etc. IMHO simply give it more gravitas... in the end it is what it is.

As a matter of interest, ISO is the umbrella organization that represent 165 national standards and creates global standards, protocols and guides to make trading easier and fairer. Someone asked me what happened to DIN (it still exists) and ASA (it lost its name to the Audiology Society of America and became ANSI the American National Standards Institution).

[DanK]

BBC News style guide also uses lower case with an initial cap for acronyms where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word. For example, "Fifa" instead of "FIFA".

These "rules" have exceptions, and moreover, there are competing sets of rules, as anyone who has dealt with more than one publisher has probably learned.

Re this particular "rule": It's certainly not followed invariably on this side of the pond. One example is HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which protects patient confidentiality. It's much discussed now because of people being asked about their vaccination status. It is always spelled in caps, and it's always pronounced "hippa". Another example is the well-known think tank RAND, which originally came from "Research and Development", which is not it's name. It too is always spelled in caps but pronounced "rand". Another example is the WIC program, an acronym, for Women, Infants, and Children, which is always written in caps but pronounced "wick". In contrast, there are many other examples of acronyms that are spelled in caps and pronounced as letters, e.g., SSI, Supplementary Security Income, the Social Security disability benefits program. It's always pronounced "S S I". all of which is to say that I wouldn't place too much stock in style guides.

That said, this is a weird case. ISO calls this a name, but it clearly came from the acronym. And if it's a name, this makes it an outlier. Of the top of my head, I can't think of other trademarked names that aren't acronyms but are written in all caps anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if there are some, but I can't think of any.

I'm going to find it very hard to get in the habit of saying eye-so rather than I S O, both because of many years of habit and because in my circles, it's often the not terribly well informed photographers who have been saying eye-so.

[xpatUSA]

I'm going to find it very hard to get in the habit of saying eye-so rather than I S O, both because of many years of habit and because in my circles, it's often the not terribly well informed photographers who have been saying eye-so.

I was a Controls and Instrumentation Engineer for about 35 years and the most common engineering parlance was "eye-so". From that, it follows that most photographers who are/were Engineers, in spite of being so well-informed, would likely say "eye-so" too.

As I may have mentioned before, it's a pity that the "ISO knob" (eye-so nob) wasn't labeled "gain", or "noise", then we wouldn't be having this discussion ...

[Tronhard]

BBC News style guide also uses lower case with an initial cap for acronyms where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word. For example, "Fifa" instead of "FIFA".

The BBC uses ISO as it is correctly written: see: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-...where-43224316 as an example.

That said, this is a weird case. ISO calls this a name, but it clearly came from the acronym. And if it's a name, this makes it an outlier. Of the top of my head, I can't think of other trademarked names that aren't acronyms but are written in all caps anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if there are some, but I can't think of any.

I'm going to find it very hard to get in the habit of saying eye-so rather than I S O, both because of many years of habit and because in my circles, it's often the not terribly well informed photographers who have been saying eye-so.

Dan: with all due respect, ISO is ABSOLUTELY and DEFINITELY NOT from an acronym. Apparently, you too did not read the first post in this thread completely...

Here, I will quote from their own website, the link to which I also enclose: ISO - About us I would encourage you to look at that page in detail and be informed.

IT'S ALL IN THE NAME
Because 'International Organization for Standardization' would have different acronyms in different languages (IOS in English, OIN in French for Organisation internationale de normalisation), our founders decided to give it the short form ISO.

ISO is derived from the Greek 'isos', meaning equal. Whatever the country, whatever the language, we are always ISO.

There is a further explanation from this web page too: What is ISO (International Organization for Standardization)? - Definition from WhatIs.com (techtarget.com)

So, to drive the point firmly home, it is NOT an acronym based on an organization called the International Standards Organization, because there is not such named group. Because ISO was created as an umbrella international standards body for 165 national standards institutions, they will each call that body different names in their own languages, which is confusing for an international body that issues such documents. Hence the adoption of something that refers to the Classical Greek for "equal" and is easy to say and pronounce (by those prepared to do so).

Frankly, while I don't really care if people find it hard to change a lifetime habit and decide to spell it (although I am personally willing to learn I realize others are not), I will object vehemently to anyone using erroneous and disingenuous information to justify that. It's plain W R O N G!

In fact, those you call "the not terribly well informed photographers" deserve some respect. So, please don't correct them - they are correct!

[odds]

...Frankly, while I don't really care if people find it hard to change a lifetime habit and decide to spell it (although I am personally willing to learn I realize others are not), I will object vehemently to anyone using erroneous and disingenuous information to justify that. It's plain W R O N G!

Hehe, what about "degree(s) Kelvin"?

--
OddS

[Tronhard]

Hehe, what about "degree(s) Kelvin"?

--
OddS

Who is Kelvin, what does he have to do with ISO, and what kind of degree are we discussing - BA, BSc, BE...

[DanK]

Hehe, what about "degree(s) Kelvin"?

--
OddS

And it turns out that "degrees Kelvin" (initial capital, because it was a person's name) is now out of date. Standard usage is now just "kelvin" (no cap, no "degrees"). E.g., "I shot this at 3000 kelvin." And to complicate things more, the symbol for the kelvin, no caps, is K, capitalized. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin

However, I think being immersed in photography requires a certain degree of flexibility in such things. E.g., people write RAW rather than raw--an example of what linguists call a rule-bound error. Other file format-names are in caps because they are acronyms, but raw isn't an acronym; it's an adjective. It makes no logical sense whatever to capitalize raw, unless--along the lines of twitter--one is doing so for emphasis, in lieu of underlining or italics. Even some of the manufacturers use RAW in their publications. This one, irrationally enough, really annoys me, as capitalizing does nothing but obscure the meaning of "raw".

[xpatUSA]

Originally Posted by odds Hehe, what about "degree(s) Kelvin"?

Who is Kelvin, what does he have to do with ISO, and what kind of degree are we discussing - BA, BSc, BE...

While we're on Units I must say that the metric system beats U.S. Customary by a long head!

For example BTUSCF (heat content of a gas) makes my eyes glaze over - as does MMSCFD (gas volume flow rate) - although one does get used to it.

Over here however, when metric units are mentioned, spelling and format often go right out the window. So it is that a big bottle of 'Murkin wine often contains 1.5 L instead of 1.5l. Not to mention those 50MM lenses often found in photographic fora.

I could go on about failing to capitalize units like Volts, Amps, etc. while incorrectly capitalizing Liters - but it is probably best to let sleeping dogs lie ...

[Manfred M]

Getting even more off track, my first job after graduation was with a large multinational company that built steam generators (a fancy name for boilers) for industrial and utility use.

A common unit of measure used in heat calculations was the MkBTU; i.e 1,000,000 British Thermal Units. The strange part is using two different symbols for 1,000. The Roman M for 1,000 and the SI abbreviation k, for 1,000. MM or kk would have made just as much sense.

As I recall, it was also acceptable to write Btu, so there were two variants out there; MkBTU and MkBtu, just to confuse mere mortals.

[xpatUSA]

... and then there's IEEE or I.E.E.E., normally pronounced "eye-triple-eeh" ...

[Tronhard]

While we're on Units I must say that the metric system beats U.S. Customary by a long head!

For example BTUSCF (heat content of a gas) makes my eyes glaze over - as does MMSCFD (gas volume flow rate) - although one does get used to it.

Over here however, when metric units are mentioned, spelling and format often go right out the window. So it is that a big bottle of 'Murkin wine often contains 1.5 L instead of 1.5l. Not to mention those 50MM lenses often found in photographic fora.

I could go on about failing to capitalize units like Volts, Amps, etc. while incorrectly capitalizing Liters - but it is probably best to let sleeping dogs lie ...

I think there are only 3 counties that do not officially engage with metrics to some degree: the USA, Liberia and Myanmar. On the other hand there are countries that have not fully converted, such as the UK (still using gallons?), and Canada - still using letter and foolscap paper for example.

NZ went fully metric about 45 years ago and I was working in an engineering office at the time. I was appointed the metric changeover tzar. For our legacy imperial drawings I took all of the imperial scales and replaced them with metric conversion scales 1:24, 48, 96 etc. and we had a fines system if anyone used an imperial word such as foot, yard, acre etc. Our fund did very well for a while!

I must say the metric system is much more attuned to our digital world, everything is in simple units on a 10 base, unlike having to do calculations with 1/4", 1/16", and ever chains and links! That doesn't even start on foot-pounds and other derived units. Yet, when I lived in Canada until recently, if I wanted to get a measuring tape, one with pure metric or both metric and imperial was significantly more expensive than the imperial-only ones - assumedly the influence of our US neighbours...

[Dave Humphries]

A common unit of measure used in heat calculations was the MkBTU; i.e 1,000,000 British Thermal Units. The strange part is using two different symbols for 1,000. The Roman M for 1,000 and the SI abbreviation k, for 1,000. MM or kk would have made just as much sense.

Hang on a moment, surely (like copyright dates) MM is 2,000, not 1,000,000.
Perhaps M.M would be 1,000,000

[xpatUSA]

Hang on a moment, surely (like copyright dates) MM is 2,000, not 1,000,000.
Perhaps M.M would be 1,000,000

In the United States of America, "MM" is indeed a thousand-thousand - also known as a million of course.

But, so as to remain inscrutable, a million-million is known here as a trillion, unlike my schooldays in England when a million-million was a billion, IIRC or I.I.R.C.

[xpatUSA]

... Yet, when I lived in Canada until recently, if I wanted to get a measuring tape, one with pure metric or both metric and imperial was significantly more expensive than the imperial-only ones - assumedly the influence of our US neighbours ...

One of my more prized possessions is a Mitutoyo metric/Imperial Vernier caliper ... not cheap, even if purchased used on ebay ...