On acronyms and initials and foreign newspapers

I was just reading La Repubblica, one of Roma's daily newspapers, when I was reminded of a difference between English and Italian acronyms. In English, each of the letters is generally capitalized. Thus, the United States of America becomes the USA. However, in Italian, only the first letter is capitalized so now USA reads Usa. This is difficult for Americans like me because a) few of us know Italian very well and b) Usa looks like it should be related to the verb usare. Since I'm not very good at Italian, I'm easily confused.

I've also noticed a difference when it comes to one's own initials. On occasion, our friend Davide Vitali signs emails dv. It makes me wonder if all Italians use lower case letters or if it's comparable to instant messaging when English-writing people don't capitalize the word I in order to save time. When I initial things, I tend to use all capital letters as in TRQ. It's been said that people do not like emails written in all capital letters because it's like shouting. Am I shouting when I type TRQ? And while on the subject of the first person pronoun I, it's a spelling error in English if it is not capitalized. However, the Italians never capitalize their equivalent io unless it occurs at the beginning of a sentence. For that matter, the Italians generally leave off pronouns since their verb formation relays the same information. This makes me wonder if Americans have bigger egos than Italians. For what it's worth, this is the farthest thing from a scientific study because all of my other Italian friends type out their first names. If, on the other hand, this habit is a reflection of American egos, then perhaps it's related to why American presidents (except Obama) don't bow to kings.

OK, another thing I've noticed while reading La Repubblica is that it appears that the Italians rarely capitalize anything but the first word in a title, unlike Americans who tend to capitalize everything but the and and. If indeed this is the case, then it is consistent with the Italian treatment of acronyms. But what if the title continues onto a second line? Lots of times it appears that when this happens the first word of the second line is also capitalized, something which confuses me because to me it suggests that the second line is a second title.

Gli italiani sono liberi ma è giallo
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Sometimes I read Le Monde. I think my French is better than my Italian because generally Le Monde is easier to read. Unfortunately, the French daily is decidedly more French than La Repubblica is Italian. Consequently, I have less interest in what goes on in Le Monde than on the international events reported in La Repubblica.

Le Tamiflu provoque nausées et cauchemars chez les enfants

However, just to prove me wrong, the lead story in the French paper looked interesting. Also, I don't think that the French use as many acronyms as the Italians. Only during our last visit did I learn that the Pdl is an Italian political party. I have a list of Italian abbreviations but it didn't list Pdl or a lot of other abbreviations, for that matter.

That said, I think I'll call it a day. Only I don't know if I should sign off as TRQ or as trq. I wouldn't want to give you the wrong impression.

P.S. On Bill's computer the pasted entries got jumbled together.