Talk:Alstom
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The company always writes its name in capitals as ALSTOM but this is just an affectation as it is not a six-letter abbreviation for anything. Andy G 18:12, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Although after what's been said on talk:Naming_conventions Odd capitalization of commercial names we should probably honour this and move the article back to ALSTOM. Bah! Andy G 23:49, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Not necessarily. Copy-editors and writers of style guides for newspapers have long experience on this kind of thing. For example, the company that likes to write its name "BAE SYSTEMS" was not successful in instructing newpapers to capitalize it all; "BAE Systems" seems to be what has stuck in the broadsheets. Other new ways to write trademarked names (which seem to me to be entirely derived from whatever the current logo is...) have been more successful: car magazines used to write 'Quattro' (for various Audi cars), but now 'quattro' is quite common. Of course, computer companies are some of the most "innovative" in their orthographic strictures: eBay, CorelDRAW!, etc. Although a computer magazine might bow to Corel's instructions, no broadsheet would, and rightly so. They've sinced changed back to something more normal. Why should a company logo dictate typography of a company name? Hotlorp 13:55, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Is there any explanation as to why the company's name shed an 'h' at some point? Teflon 18:55, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
- I would assume that it was so that English-speakers would know how to pronounce it. David Arthur 19:09, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
- The H originaly comes from the name of another company. Alsthom was created in 1928 from three companies: CGE (Companie Générale d'Electricité), Alsacienne Société and Thomson houston. In 1998, a major change in shares occured, GEC and Alcatel partly left Alsthom which changed its name for Alstom.Tiwan 18:02, September 2, 2005 (UTC)