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From the NY Times story about the press conference introducing CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett to the Yankees:
Oh, it's a big deal my friend. You don't know how much just yet. But you've made a powerful enemy when you tell the New York Times style guide people that you don't need periods in your name. And an even bigger enemy in me, who thinks that the New York Times uses way too many periods.When C. C. Sabathia joined the Milwaukee Brewers last July, he was said to prefer that his name be written as “CC,” with no punctuation. Mindful of that, the Yankees spelled his name that way on the scoreboard Thursday, although they included the punctuation in A. J. Burnett’s first name.
Sabathia laughed when asked for his preference. “You know what, you can spell it the way you want, man,” he said. “I don’t care.”
And how does Sabathia write it? “I write Carsten, if I have to write my name,” said Sabathia, whose initials stand for Carsten Charles. “You guys write it however you want. That got blown way out of proportion. It’s not a big deal.”
The last check of the home page of the online Times reveals "M.L.B." "N.B.A." "N.H.L." yet "NCAA" and "PGA". (Although in other parts of the page there is "P.G.A." and "N.C.A.A.: And the page has an RSS feed. Why not an R.S.S. feed?
In a perfect world, I will become publisher of the paper and show up for work the first day wearing a UCLA sweatshirt and tell the editors that from now on my alma mater will have its name punctuated correctly. Not like this offense to my eyes.
But I fear that the all powerful Extraneous Punctuation Lobby will be difficult to defeat. And I will slink away from this battle with nothing left but a semicolon and an apostrophe to my name.
When it comes to punctuation wars, there are no winners.
H.M.O.'s
So I guess they use their style guide except when they don't.
But you probably knew that before you made the comment.
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