[NU Sports] NU vs. NW or NWU or whatever!

[John Labbe]

A couple of random thoughts on this thread:

1) I completely agree that we should try to get the W banned in NWU.  
It doesn't make sense, and just because Nebraska may also be "NU" 
doesn't mean we shouldn't be NU as well.  It seems to me that I've seen 
NU used in some telecasts lately, although I may be mistaken.  The ESPN 
broadcasts of the Michigan and Iowa games had us as "NW" although ABC 
had us as "N'western" during the Ohio State game, which is fine.

2) Back in the early days of the Internet, isn't it true that all 
domain names were three letters?  Hence, we chose "NWU".  In any event, 
clearly we changed that for a reason and the fact that a couple of 
techies chose NWU back in the day shouldn't necessarily count for much.

3) The correct abbreviation of the Northwestern University Law Review 
is "Nw. U. L. Rev."  As Michael notes below, the lowercase "w" is the 
key here, as well as the fact that there's no period between the N and 
the w, which means the "Nw." is an abbreviation for just one word.  But 
in any event, this abbreviation wasn't chosen by the university.  It's 
from the Bluebook, which was written by some editors at the Harvard Law 
Review, and was chosen to make it clear what journal is being cited and 
distinguish it from other possible N.U.s.




On Nov 21, 2005, at 7:27 PM, Michael Vance wrote:

> At 11/21/2005 06:07 PM, Jonathan Michael Hawkins wrote:
>> Nice guess, but the nwu as a part of the domain name was intentional. 
>> nwu.edu was registered on January 22, 1987.  nu.edu was registered by 
>> National University in San Diego on January 6, 1993.
>
> Yeah, I was going to point out that when Northwestern first joined the 
> Internet, our domain was nwu.edu (and I'm pretty sure that it still 
> works alongside the more current northwestern.edu).  I had an nwu.edu 
> e-mail address back in the day.  Actually, a casbah.acns.nwu.edu 
> address, before the days of universal directories and centralized mail 
> routing.
>
>> Academically NU uses "NW" or "NWU" in certain areas, including cites 
>> for the Northwestern University Law Review ("Nw. UL Rev." or other 
>> variants).
>
> Key difference there being "Nw." (lowercase 'w' and a period at the 
> end) vs. "NW" (Uppercase 'W' and no period).  The formal rules of 
> abbreviations, if there is such a thing anymore, would say that 'NW' 
> implies two words, i.e. "North Western".
>
>> The University of Nebraska at Lincoln follows in what is generally an 
>> odd (some might say "dumb") tradition of the Big Eight....  I'm not 
>> sure why the University of Nebraska enjoys being called NU.
>
> I'd never made the Big Eight connection before, but I have noticed -- 
> and been annoyed by -- the University of Colorado and the University 
> of Kansas referring to themselves as CU and KU.
>
>> In general, though, anyone who got confused at seeing "NU" on a 
>> televised scorebug and then not finding their beloved ugly red colors 
>> deserves their confusion.  I don't buy the confusion issue.  Anyone 
>> know how North Dakota gets abbreviated?  How about South Carolina?
>
> North Dakota is UND (both Internet domain and logo); South Carolina is 
> USC (although they are just sc.edu; that evil school in LA has 
> usc.edu).
>
> -Michael
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