[SIGCIS-Members] Opinions on "Spacewar" vs. "Spacewar!"

[Marc Weber]

Dear Tom,
Steve Russell who wrote the game in question is a docent for the Computer History Museum and until fairly recently gave demos of the program on our PDP-1; perhaps you’ve met him. I’m sure he’d be happy to give an opinion if useful. Although as you point out the creator’s wishes are not always relevant to later style.
Best, Marc



> On Jul 15, 2020, at 10:47, Deborah Douglas <ddouglas at mit.edu> wrote:
> 
> Friends,
> 
> When MIT marked the 50th anniversary of the game the name had the exclamation point.  (http://gambit.mit.edu/updates/2012/01/spacewar_turns_50_gambit_celeb.php <http://gambit.mit.edu/updates/2012/01/spacewar_turns_50_gambit_celeb.php>).  I used it in the label for our display of a Spacewar! emulator in our MIT150 exhibition in 2011 (http://museum.mit.edu/150/25 <http://museum.mit.edu/150/25>).  I did so in deference to the preference of the game’s creators (in the manner, I had deferred to Oliver Smoot on the question of plus-or-minus an ear in the measurement of the Harvard Bridge).  It is now in our database as well.  At the same time, I will confess to having dropped the exclamation point in informal communications.  
> 
> My recommendation, Tom, is to strive for consistency in your text; the computer search engines will find it with or without excitement!
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Debbie Douglas
> 
> 
>> On Jul 15, 2020, at 1:14 PM, thomas.haigh at gmail.com <mailto:thomas.haigh at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Hello SIGCIS,
>>  
>> I’m canvassing opinion on a small topic, as I work with Paul Ceruzzi to finalize revisions on the revised History of Modern Computing. 
>>  
>> There are a lot of style choices like FORTRAN vs Fortran, Internet vs internet, etc. where dominant usage has evolved over the past twenty years, generally in the clear direction of not capitalizing things that aren’t acronyms. We’re planning to follow that, while still capitalizing Internet and Web to respect the historical context.
>>  
>> On the other hand, since the first edition the pioneering PDP-1 video game formerly known as Spacewar has grown an exclamation point to become Spacewar!. This causes problems with punctuation, as in the previous sentence. It did not have one in either of the accounts that made it famous, Levy’s Hackers (1984) and Brand’s 1972 article “SPACEWAR: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums.” So one might assume that any punctuation attached to it in its original MIT incarnation had fallen by the wayside as it spread. The original Modern History followed this then-standard usage.
>>  
>> Wikipedia now has the exclamation point, and so does the Computer History Museum: https://www.computerhistory.org/pdp-1/spacewar/ <https://www.computerhistory.org/pdp-1/spacewar/>. The Smithsonian appears to have endorsed it in its writeup of the NMAH anniversary event, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-first-popular-video-game-kicked-off-generations-virtual-adventure-180971020/ <https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-first-popular-video-game-kicked-off-generations-virtual-adventure-180971020/>. 
>>  
>> So I assume that this general shift must reflect some kind of movement in video game studies to reattach a lost piece of punctuation.
>>  
>> On the other hand, there’s a precedent for not using an exclamation point in books or articles even when it is part of a company self presentation: Yahoo!! (The second exclamation point there is my own excitement). The company used it consistently, but the AP Style Guide tells journalists to drop it when writing about Yahoo. We’re following that in the revised history.
>>  
>> So I’m torn about whether to follow the trend and use “Spacewar!” throughout, despite the punctuation problems it causes, or to apply the same logic as Yahoo and use “Spacewar” with an initial parenthetical observation that the official name is “Spacewar!”.
>>  
>> Best wishes,
>> 
>> Tom
>>  
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> _______________________________________________
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> Deborah G. Douglas, PhD • Director of Collections and Curator of Science and Technology, MIT Museum; Research Associate, Program in Science, Technology, and Society • Room N51-209 • 265 Massachusetts Avenue • Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 • ddouglas at mit.edu <mailto:ddouglas at mit.edu> • 617-253-1766 telephone • 617-253-8994 facsimile • http://mitmuseum.mit.edu <http://mitmuseum.mit.edu/> • she/her/hers
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org

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