Re: UNIX vs. Unix

[Steven Pritchard <steve@silug.org>]

Ryan Senior said:
> I was just wondering why some people write Unix as Unix, and others
> write UNIX?  I have seen many times that authors use both even in the
> same paragraph.  I was looking through some O'Reilly books, and they
> seem to use UNIX.  Why is the case different and which one is
> appropriate to use?

From the Jargon File (http://www.jargon.org/html/entry/Unix.html):

    Some people are confused over whether this word is appropriately
    `UNIX' or `Unix'; both forms are common, and used interchangeably.
    Dennis Ritchie says that the `UNIX' spelling originally happened
    in CACM's 1974 paper "The UNIX Time-Sharing System" because "we
    had a new typesetter and troff had just been invented and we were
    intoxicated by being able to produce small caps." Later, dmr tried
    to get the spelling changed to `Unix' in a couple of Bell Labs
    papers, on the grounds that the word is not acronymic. He failed,
    and eventually (his words) "wimped out" on the issue. So, while
    the trademark today is `UNIX', both capitalizations are grounded
    in ancient usage; the Jargon File uses `Unix' in deference to
    dmr's wishes.

> I also was wondering what to appropriate plural
> usage of UNIX is, is it Unices or Unixes?

I don't know that anything is right...  I've been known to use both.

Steve
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Steven Pritchard          | http://www.silug.org/
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