Sunday, May 31, 2015

€1.2bn for Irish farmers

There has been an amount of publicity on making public the sums of money Irish farmers received in 2014 under the EU Common Agricultrual Policy (Cap).

Irish farmers received €1.2 billion last year.

France got the largest Cap amount in 2014, receiving more than €9 billion. Ireland was the 11th largest beneficiary.

The Cap was introduced after World War ll to guarantee food security. But its aims have broadened over the years.

5 comments:

GN said...

CAP, surely ...,,,
What makes people do it?

Michael Commane said...

Because Cap can be pronounced as a word, it's just the first letter in the acronym, which is uppercased.

Gerard said...

I prefer to follow EU and Irish official usage on CAP. This is not least because this seems to be how those who administer the CAP refer to it. What you describe follows a BBC and European English phenomenon, indicating that a word has passed into the normal lexicon and therefore does not need capitalization of any sort as an acronym. So with radar, fax, scuba, etc. Will Cap eventually become cap, to the confusion of many in Ireland? The Chicago Manual of Style 14.15 says that acronyms are usually set in full capitals with no periods.

Michael Commane said...

Maybe style and taste play a role.
It seems most serious publications in Ireland spell it 'capitalisation'.

Gerard said...

The Oxford dictionary, since the first edition, has used "-ize" forms. It cited the first usage as 1425, according to http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/03/ize-or-ise/ of Oxford University Press.
This goes on to note that the use of ‘-ize’ spellings is part of the house style at Oxford University Press. Serious enough?
I have moved to American usage in recent years, for publication purposes. However, when studying classical Greek I was told as a rule of thumb that terms derived from Greek roots ending in "izw" would normally have English derivatives in Z, others varied according to derivation, etc.

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