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I've noticed a recent question got edited first one way, and then the other. It seems the growing convention as been to refer to the language as Fortran, and unless one is referring to historical FORTRAN 77 or earlier specifically, we should consistently adopt Fortran when referring to the language across the site. If anyone has a different opinion, this is probably the time and place to hash this out.

From Wikipedia:

The names of earlier versions of the language through FORTRAN 77 were conventionally spelled in all-caps (FORTRAN 77 was the version in which the use of lowercase letters in keywords was strictly nonstandard). The capitalization has been dropped in referring to newer versions beginning with Fortran 90. The official language standards now refer to the language as "Fortran". Because the capitalization was never completely consistent in actual usage, this article adopts the convention of using the all-caps FORTRAN in referring to versions of FORTRAN through FORTRAN 77 and the title-caps Fortran in referring to versions of Fortran from Fortran 90 onward. This convention is reflected in the capitalization of FORTRAN in the ANSI X3.9-1966 (FORTRAN 66) and ANSI X3.9-1978 (FORTRAN 77) standards and the title caps Fortran in the ANSI X3.198-1992 (Fortran 90), ISO/IEC 1539-1:1997 (Fortran 95) and ISO/IEC 1539-1:2004 (Fortran 2003) standards.

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    $\begingroup$ That seems a reasonable convention. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 6, 2011 at 17:31
  • $\begingroup$ Fortran is case-insensitive, so why shouldn't we be too? :D $\endgroup$
    – naught101
    Commented Mar 30, 2012 at 13:47

2 Answers 2

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Hopefully we will deal with Fortran rather than with FORTRAN. So I agree the default capitalization should be Fortran. And the abbreviation should be with a capital F too: F77, F90, F95, F03...

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I think that the modern way is to simply say Fortran, not FORTRAN.

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