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I'm not an expert on English, but I'm fairly picky. I'm also a programmer, and I regularly use the word "Id" as an abbreviation for Identifier. So I was wondering whether it's more correct to use "Id" or "ID". Maybe it's a meaningless question because as far as I know it's a unique usage of abbreviations as it's pronounced "eye-dee", but it does get on my OCD not knowing.

Edit: This question is about which is correct in the English language- the fact that it's for use in programming is incidental.

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  • Naming is explicitly off-topic.
    – Andrew Leach ♦
    Jul 7, 2014 at 13:26
  • This question appears to be off-topic because it is about variable naming.
    – Andrew Leach ♦
    Jul 7, 2014 at 13:27
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    It's actually about whether Id is short for "Identity" or "Identity Document", and therefore it's really about English. But it probably doesn't matter either way in code, since most camel-cased languages idiomatically only capitalise the first letter of acronyms. Id it is.
    – Lunivore
    Jul 7, 2014 at 13:31
  • It's short for Identifier. And it's not a programming question- I wouldn't be posting it here if it were. The question is about whether to capitalise the second based on English rules. However, Lunivore might be right- this might be made irrelevant by CamelCase conventions anyway.
    – PointlessSpike
    Jul 7, 2014 at 13:48
  • @PointlessSpike If what you're looking for is an abbreviation for "identifier" then I would say "id." or perhaps "ident." would be ok. But if you're wanting to know whether you need to capitalise "ID" as generally used (and where as far as I'm concerned the derivation has become irrelevant - note the commonness of the verb "to ID someone"), then I think you need to capitalise it.
    – Rupe
    Jul 7, 2014 at 14:10

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It is something of a style choice, but I would use ID, because id/Id is an actual word (a psychological term).

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