# Why are the D* and E* acronyms used?



## camo (Apr 15, 2010)

Why are the D* and E* acronyms used? Seems easier to type direct and dish. Hate hitting the shift key.


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## Carl Spock (Sep 3, 2004)

History. Tradition.

It dates back to the early days of satellite television when there were Primestar and Echostar. It was P*, E* and D*. This is also why Dish Network is E*.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

Because of http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=46315&highlight=D*+E*+acronyms

*Search *is wonderful feature here !


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## matt (Jan 12, 2010)

I actually saw a primestar dish the other day. It's over by my drive up ATM. Maybe I will snap a pic next time.


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## la24philly (Mar 9, 2010)

because its easier to type 1 letter then a word


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Just to be anally retentive this afternoon...

D* and E* are not acronyms... they are abbreviations 

And aside from that sentence above, I prefer to type out Dish and DirecTV. That way no confusion results.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

camo said:


> Why are the D* and E* acronyms used? Seems easier to type direct and dish. Hate hitting the shift key.


Just be glad we're not calling them Dave and Charlie. 

I still get to press the shift key as I spell them DirecTV and DISH. The D* and E* shortcuts are becoming less popular. Too many people thinking D* is DISH. To alleviate confusion most spell out the names now. Besides, we have the bandwidth.


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

And in fact, the marketing department of my satellite provider told me that the proper usage is DIRECTV, not DirecTV. The ™ is not required when used in blog posts but may be typed as DIRECTV(TM) for those not comfortable with using the ™ character. Or, as I said, it may be omitted in blog posts regarding the company but they have language they use for the bottom of press releases and other media. 

(How's that for retentive, Mr. Vernon?)


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## camo (Apr 15, 2010)

James Long said:


> Just be glad we're not calling them Dave and Charlie.
> 
> I still get to press the shift key as I spell them DirecTV and DISH. The D* and E* shortcuts are becoming less popular. Too many people thinking D* is DISH. To alleviate confusion most spell out the names now. Besides, we have the bandwidth.


I was thinking D* is DISH for sometime. Have it down now but was curious about the history and why it was being used.


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## FTA Michael (Jul 21, 2002)

I'll see your marketing department and raise you a newspaper style guide.

When third parties (such as us) write about trademarked items, the typical way to handle it is to capitalize the word. It's wrong to say you blew your nose on a kleenex, but it's okay to say that you had a Coke with your Big Mac.

Newspapers hate words of all caps because they're hard to read. Unless it's a true acronym, they'll usually find a cleaner way to write it, as you did with DirecTV.

OTOH, if you are the trademark owner, then you really need to add the TM or R after your trademarked term whenever you use it in print. If it's your trademark, it's your job to protect it, but it isn't a blogger's job to do it for you.



Stuart Sweet said:


> And in fact, the marketing department of my satellite provider told me that the proper usage is DIRECTV, not DirecTV. The ™ is not required when used in blog posts but may be typed as DIRECTV(TM) for those not comfortable with using the ™ character. Or, as I said, it may be omitted in blog posts regarding the company but they have language they use for the bottom of press releases and other media.
> 
> (How's that for retentive, Mr. Vernon?)


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

Michael, you're spot on. 100%. 

What a shame that so few people follow any manual of style these days, even big companies. At least DIRECTV has a corporate standard, even if it does not hew to any other standard for style.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

When I was working for a living and writing (technical writing) I was much more retentive about trademarks and proper capitalization of company/product names.

Where I worked, we also had agreements in place where some terms we gave trademark attribution and others we did not.

Some documents you will see every trademark, marked... and others (like where I worked) we only marked the first appearance (non-cover appearance) in the document and thereafter just used the proper term without (tm) or (r) markings.

We even had some terms that had characters for which there were no acceptable fonts... So the rule was, whenever we could use the proper graphic, we had to do so... but in straight-text situations (like a .txt file) we could use alternate spelling/capitalization for trademarked terms.

And as noted... it most behooves the company with the trademark to trademark their terms... because they are the ones protecting it.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

The "E*" for "Dish" is even more out-of-date now that Echostar has split from Dish... so technically speaking, the "E*" should be only used for Echostar, while we'd need a new "*" moniker for "Dish".

But I still prefer typing out short names so there is no confusion.


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

To make matters worse, you have many entities today, from at&t to dish network, that prefer to use all lower case letters in their identities. I don't know if there is a newspaper style that deals specifically with that.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Stewart Vernon said:


> The "E*" for "Dish" is even more out-of-date now that Echostar has split from Dish... so technically speaking, the "E*" should be only used for Echostar, while we'd need a new "*" moniker for "Dish".


"DISH" is the stock symbol, as well as being the beginning of "DISH Network" (the way DISH types their name in press releases, etc.).

Of course Wikipedia doesn't allow an all caps name ... but when Wikipedia becomes the style guide all hope is lost for the world. (They do allow DirecTV - must be a different set of unwashed masses fighting for that spelling. One really has to fight on Wikipedia to get them to accept anything other than first character capitals.)


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

James Long said:


> Just be glad we're not calling them Dave and Charlie.


Gee, that's my preference. I'm constantly being overruled.:sure:


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## xmguy (Mar 27, 2008)

Stuart Sweet said:


> And in fact, the marketing department of my satellite provider told me that the proper usage is DIRECTV, not DirecTV. The ™ is not required when used in blog posts but may be typed as DIRECTV(TM) for those not comfortable with using the ™ character. Or, as I said, it may be omitted in blog posts regarding the company but they have language they use for the bottom of press releases and other media.
> 
> (How's that for retentive, Mr. Vernon?)


LMAO!!


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## FTA Michael (Jul 21, 2002)

Stuart Sweet said:


> To make matters worse, you have many entities today, from at&t to dish network, that prefer to use all lower case letters in their identities. I don't know if there is a newspaper style that deals specifically with that.


My vote for toughest example: http://www.thistv.com/ Although the title tag for that web page capitalizes it, and the FAQ page uses all caps.
Ditto: http://www.iontelevision.com/ The display font is all lower-case, but when the site uses it in text, it's all caps.


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## Thaedron (Jun 29, 2007)

Stuart Sweet said:


> And in fact, the marketing department of my satellite provider told me that the proper usage is DIRECTV, not DirecTV. The ™ is not required when used in blog posts but may be typed as DIRECTV(TM) for those not comfortable with using the ™ character. Or, as I said, it may be omitted in blog posts regarding the company but they have language they use for the bottom of press releases and other media.
> 
> (How's that for retentive, Mr. Vernon?)


Yeah, that's some sort of retentiveness... 

I could have sworn that DIRECTV was using DirecTV, but alas all over their website it's DIRECTV. Either the forums have warped my understanding of them, or they switched some number of days, weeks, months, years or decades ago and me in my ADD / over-saturated / too much info / too many channels world just never noticed... :eek2:


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## Herdfan (Mar 18, 2006)

Stewart Vernon said:


> And aside from that sentence above, I prefer to type out Dish and DirecTV. That way no confusion results.


But there are still those who use the Digital TV abbreviation DTV, for DirecTV. Now that does cause confusion.


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## Herdfan (Mar 18, 2006)

James Long said:


> Just be glad we're not calling them Dave and Charlie.


That probably flew right over the heads of many. :lol:

Definitely old school.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Herdfan said:


> But there are still those who use the Digital TV abbreviation DTV, for DirecTV. Now that does cause confusion.


I never used the "DTV" abbreviation either... for similar reasons.

Another one is "HD" which these days could mean High-definition OR Hard drive... and maybe 10-15 years ago would have been assumed to mean High-density (floppy diskettes)...

Abbreviations are a dangerous game.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

Usually *HDD *is hard drive abbreviation.


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

camo said:


> Why are the D* and E* acronyms used? Seems easier to type direct and dish. Hate hitting the shift key.


...and yet you 'hit' the shift key seven times just to type that?


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## jdspencer (Nov 8, 2003)

I don't believe DirecTV was referred to by D* until after they took over Primestar (P*). I don't use the abbreviations (except the above).


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## Grentz (Jan 10, 2007)

James Long said:


> "DISH" is the stock symbol, as well as being the beginning of "DISH Network" (the way DISH types their name in press releases, etc.).
> 
> Of course Wikipedia doesn't allow an all caps name ... but when Wikipedia becomes the style guide all hope is lost for the world. (They do allow DirecTV - must be a different set of unwashed masses fighting for that spelling. One really has to fight on Wikipedia to get them to accept anything other than first character capitals.)


DirecTV is actually a valid WikiName without even trying (also known as CamelCase):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CamelCase
http://docs.wikkawiki.org/WikiName

A lot of wikis auto make pages based on content that is put in WikiName format. Might be why Wikipedia allowed it.


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

Alphastar (A*) once made me a dealer on a Friday but then filed for bankruptcy on the following Monday, making a whole lot of C-band receivers whose boards had not even been stuffed with the actuator driver chips available cheep.


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## mashandhogan (Dec 21, 2010)

there are a number of old primestar dishes still around where I live


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