Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun computing A way of naming a variable using more than one word, in which the first letter of each word is capitalised and the component words are concatenated without any additional characters between them, such as "MyVariableName" (as opposed to other conventions such as "myvariablename" or "my_variable_name").

Etymologies

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Examples

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  • The Wiktionary definition here suggests that camel case is confined to programming, but clearly it is not. There are all too many examples of camel case (camelCase?) sneaking into everyday language, especially in the world of branding. "iPhone" is probably the most famous example right now, but any random survey of Silicon Valley startups will turn up a passel of other offenders (e.g. VeriSign, MoneyTree, NextBio, PowerReviews, and NitroSecurity, just to name examples from this week's pages at my publication, Xconomy). In fact, it's getting so bad that as a journalist, I sometimes reflexively put a name into camel case even when it's not officially spelled that way (e.g., Dropbox is not DropBox). Caleb Crain offered an interesting history of (and plea against) camel case in a 2009 On Language column in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/magazine/29FOB-onlanguage-t.html

    October 21, 2011

  • The Wiktionary definition makes the suggestion only weakly. If you mentally edit out 'the variable' it's a very general definition.

    October 21, 2011

  • I learned this morning that my employer has a new service which is spelled with a lowercase first letter, two medial capitals, and an inexplicable exclamation mark, like so: "xyXxxXxxlxk!",* even if it appears in the middle of a sentence. (I don't know what it looks like at the beginning of a sentence; I doubt anyone who works here is brave enough to try it.)

    * That's not the real name, but the pattern of risers and descenders is approximately right.

    August 8, 2012

  • See also medial capital.

    August 8, 2012