acronymscapitalization
I'm using the acronym package in my document and in several instances I want to start a sentence with the expanded acronym. Is there any way of telling the package to capitalise the first letter?
For example:
\acrodef{TLA}{three-letter acronym}
\acrodefplural{TLA}{three-letter acronyms}
...end of one sentence. \aclp{TLA} are acronyms with three letters...
This will yield:
…end of one sentence. three-letter acronyms are acronyms with three letters…
Don't use capitals in this case. Quoting Hedrick, Fine Points of Typographic Usage:
What do you do if a sentence starts with an acronym, e.g. "RUCS is great." If you're using small caps, I would set RUCS in small caps. Some people are bothered because this seems to violate the rule about capitalizing the first word.
To understand my answer, you need to realize that small caps are used in two completely different ways.
In some cases they are used for abbreviations or acronyms, e.g. NATO [typeset in small caps]. In this case the small caps are acting as capital letters that just happen to be smaller than usual.
However in some contexts small caps are mixed with full caps. E.g. some people recommend that in bibliographies, the author's name should be in mixed case, with the first letter of each name in full caps and the rest of the name in small caps: CHARLES HEDRICK [typeset with first letter capitalized, rest in small caps]. In this case the small caps are being used as lowercase.
Let's go back to the question of a sentence that starts with an acronym. The problem with using a full cap for the first letter is that by mixing case, it makes it look like the small caps are being used as lowercase. E.g. in "RUCS" if you put R in full caps and the rest in small caps, RUCS [typeset with first letter capitalized, rest in small caps], it looks like a word or name Rucs, not an acronymn. So my rule is:
If small caps are being used as capitals (e.g. in acronyms or abbreviations), don't change them when you put them at the beginning of a sentence.
If small caps are being used as lowercase, then use normal rules for capitalization. Turn the first letter into full caps at the start of a sentence or elsewhere that capitalization is expected.
It looks like I haven't documented all options… :|
You have to set the option uppercase/list:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{acro}
\acsetup{
uppercase/list
}
\DeclareAcronym{PC}{short=PC,long=personal computer}
\begin{document}
I am writing this on my \ac{PC}.
\printacronyms
\end{document}
If you want the first letter of each word capitalised, i.e., want to use mfirstuc then you have to set the option list/uppercse/cmd as well and use \ecapitalisewords:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{acro}
\usepackage{mfirstuc}
\acsetup{
uppercase/list ,
list/uppercase/cmd = \ecapitalisewords
}
\DeclareAcronym{PC}{short=PC,long=personal computer}
\begin{document}
I am writing this on my \ac{PC}.
\printacronyms
\end{document}
Best Answer
This is a follow-up to Egreg's answer, basically the full set of
\Ac??commands. Two points to note first:Somewhere was a stray trailing space that affected
\Acfp(and the first use of\Acp) - There was a space before the closing bracket. Oddly, it broke the original\acfpand\acpas well, which I'm sure to a finer mind than mine would indicate roughly where in the redefinitions it is. I just terminated pretty much all the lines with a % without paying any attention to what they did.Note the use of
\robustify(frometoolbox), which is required if you want to use acronyms in headings (perhaps more likely now they can start with caps)I don't pretend to understand the code, just that having done Egreg's "exercise for the reader" and found a couple of extra complexities along the way I thought I'd share.
EDIT: If you want to define your acronyms using
\acroin anacronymenvironment, the above code doesn't give you the caps, because the line that stores the acronym is in a different macro and doesn't get replaced with the rather neat definition that Egreg came up with.The solution is to also patch (well, overwrite)
acro:Edit 2: Note that this 2nd block needs to be inserted into the first block before the last (
\makeatother) line.