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Usenet Posted 22 years ago
Usage

Pc

From the BBC site:
"Pc Ian Broadhurst, 34, was shot dead on Boxing Day in Leeds while his colleague Pc Neil Roper, 45, was badly injured and is recovering in hospital.
The shooting happened after Pcs Broadhurst and Roper stopped a stolen BMW car in Dib Lane in the Oakwood area of the city."

Are "Pc" and "Pcs" standard capitalization and punctuation in BrE?
  

Top answer

[nq:1]From the BBC site: "Pc Ian Broadhurst, 34, was shot dead on Boxing Day in Leeds while his colleague Pc ... [/nq] The truth is that there *is* no standard capitalisation in BrE. The Guardian, who generally embrace lower case as if they were running out of ink, use 'PC' for this.

  • [nq:1]From the BBC site: "Pc Ian Broadhurst, 34, was shot dead on Boxing Day in Leeds while his colleague Pc ...
  • [/nq] The truth is that there *is* no standard capitalisation in BrE.
  • The Guardian, who generally embrace lower case as if they were running out of ink, use 'PC' for this.
  • The Times do too, because it's more their kind of thing.
  • I've written here before about the great punctuation massacre thirty odd years ago when the Brit Civil Service made a conscious decision to encourage the omission of full points from abbreviations on economy grounds.
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19 Answers
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[nq:1]From the BBC site: "Pc Ian Broadhurst, 34, was shot dead on Boxing Day in Leeds while his colleague Pc ... in Dib Lane in the Oakwood area of the city." Are "Pc" and "Pcs" standard capitalization and punctuation in BrE?[/nq]
The truth is that there *is* no standard capitalisation in BrE. The Guardian, who generally embrace lower case as if they were running out of ink, use 'PC' for this.
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[nq:1]From the BBC site: "Pc Ian Broadhurst, 34, was shot dead on Boxing Day in Leeds while his colleague Pc ... in Dib Lane in the Oakwood area of the city." Are "Pc" and "Pcs" standard capitalization and punctuation in BrE?[/nq]
Not to me. "PC" would be the correct form. P and C are the initials of Police Constable. In BrE is not usual to include full stops (periods) in initialisms. Writing
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[nq:1]From the BBC site: "Pc Ian Broadhurst, 34, was shot dead on Boxing Day in Leeds while his colleague Pc ... in Dib Lane in the Oakwood area of the city." Are "Pc" and "Pcs" standard capitalization and punctuation in BrE?[/nq]
No, this is a reprehensible habit that emerged only a couple of years ago and appears to be ever more common. One often sees abbreviations this way, in particular ac
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[nq:2]From the BBC site: "Pc Ian Broadhurst, 34, was shot ... Are "Pc" and "Pcs" standard capitalization and punctuation in BrE?[/nq]
[nq:1]No, this is a reprehensible habit that emerged only a couple of years ago and appears to be ever more ... such as NATO are rendered as Nato. I blame the abominable WORD spell checker myself. GRR! Or is it Grr!![/nq]
In general I would wish to see initi
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Peter Duncanson filted:
[nq:1]In general I would wish to see initialisms as all capitals. I am only mildly offended by acronyms such as ... is spoken as a word there is a (weak) justification for treating it as a word for purposes of capitalisation.[/nq]
I smell slippery slope..
You have to stop these people before they start writing things like "We all went to Ihop for breakfast"..r
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[nq:1]Peter Duncanson filted:[/nq]
[nq:2]In general I would wish to see initialisms as all ... for treating it as a word for purposes of capitalisation.[/nq]
[nq:1]I smell slippery slope..[/nq]
Seems to me that "Aids" is quite common in BrE, but "AIDS" is the standard in AmE.
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[nq:1]From the BBC site: "Pc Ian Broadhurst, 34, was shot dead on Boxing Day in Leeds while his colleague Pc ... in Dib Lane in the Oakwood area of the city." Are "Pc" and "Pcs" standard capitalization and punctuation in BrE?[/nq]
I'd be much less surprised to see PC and PCs. It strikes me that it was written on one of those word-processors that thinks it understands the rules of capitalisatio
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[nq:2]No, this is a reprehensible habit that emerged only a ... abominable WORD spell checker myself. GRR! Or is it Grr!![/nq]
[nq:1]In general I would wish to see initialisms as all capitals. I am only mildly offended by acronyms such as ... is spoken as a word there is a (weak) justification for treating it as a word for purposes of capitalisation.[/nq]
Well said! But I think Dave's wron
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[nq:2]From the BBC site: "Pc Ian Broadhurst, 34, was shot ... Are "Pc" and "Pcs" standard capitalization and punctuation in BrE?[/nq]
[nq:1]I'd be much less surprised to see PC and PCs. It strikes me that it was written on one of those word-processors that thinks it understands the rules of capitalisation better than humans do.[/nq]
It's standard UK practice, as used by the Civil Service a
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[nq:1]It's standard UK practice, as used by the Civil Service and taught in secretarial schools, for full points to be ... generally omitted in typewritten addresses and dates. Private individuals, however, often stick to the old ways they learnt as children.[/nq]
It seems clear that many BrE writers go further and omit nearly all punctuation marks. A typical BrE business letter might look lik

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