"ID" or "Id" on User Interface

user_75658 0
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The QA manager where I work just informed me there is a bug in my desktop app due to the sign-on prompt being "Operator Id" when it should be "Operator ID". Her argument being that "Id" refers to the ego portion of Freud's "psychic apparatus" and is not semantically correct.

Now being an anal engineer (AE) I of course had to go and lookup Id vs ID and from my cursory investigations (google) it seems ID is just as commonly used for Freud's ego as Id is.

So my reasoning would be that Id is a shortened version of "Identifier" and is more correct or at least more commonly used than ID which would typically indicate a two word abbreviation.

I could just change the UI but then I wouldn't be holding up my profession as an AE so I was wondering if there any best practices or references for this sort of thing that I could use to support my argument? Keeping in mind that this question relates to the user interface and not the source code where abbreviations and casing are a whole different branch of philosophy.

naming-conventions user-interface
15 Answers

According to Merriam-Webster, the abbreviation is "ID". If it were a correct abbreviation, it would have to be "Id." with the period.

user_497130

The 'D' doesn't stand for anything, so I've always considered it an abbreviation, not an acronym - and therefore I too use 'Id', not 'ID'.

I don't know about your qa's reasoning - words can have more than one meaning - this is not unusual in English :)

But it looks like the common usage is actually 'ID' (right or wrong :P), which is probably the format your users would expect.

user_3690

The QA manager's line of reasoning is silly. Lots of English words have multiple meanings. "Lead", "lead", "lead" (metal, be at the front of, or a connector).

I would just try to be consistent with the capitalization used elsewhere in the app.

Admin1

ID = Idaho! Id = Freud! Let the OCD begin!

user_70029390

There is a little OcD in all of us!

Anyway, the google style guide says this:

"ID: Not Id or id, except in string literals or enums. In some contexts, best to spell out as identifier or identification."

I'm going with that.

Microsoft is more vague, from what I could find.

user_66167800

as a short version of Identifier, I would use Id. Also ID it's freaky when you have functions like

getUserIDByName()

Multiple capitals in domain terms are quite problematic with CamelCase, as they can produce ambiguities and therefore dishomogeneity in your interfaces and namings

user_783740

How would you say it if you were reading out loud? I'd pronounce the two letters. ID is correct, analogous with similar abbreviations such as TV. (No dots, please, as the letters don't stand for anything.)

When I'm dealing with abbreviations like this, I like to format them in small block capitals, but that's just a personal taste. Capitals, anyway.

(But I probably would continue to use Id in the code itself.)

user_2091390

ID is correct. I have been in the Id camp for years, simply because I believed it was an argument between abbreviations and acronyms. Until one day I learned of a 3rd type (subtype really) called Initialisms which are specific to abbreviations or acronyms that are specifically read one letter at a time rather than pronounced as a single word. Initialisms are all caps.

user_196031400
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