What’s ailing us

Add comment December 19th, 2008

From cancer and heart disease to the common cold, the names of diseases, disorders, syndromes and other afflictions are generally lowercase.

For those that contain an element that’s a proper name, capitalize only that element: Asian flu, Down syndrome, German measles, Legionnaires’ disease, etc.

Some names are commonly expressed in acronyms or initialisms. Those are written in all caps: AIDS, SIDS and so on. This is conventional style, and also prevents possible confusion with another word — AIDS and aids, SAD and sad, for example.