LiDAR News Magazine makes a case for my discontinuing the use of the term LiDAR: http://www.lidarnews.com/PDF/LiDARNewsMagazine_DeeringStoker-CasingOfLiDAR_Vol4No6.pdf. Of I am apparently in the 14% that have been using LiDAR (light detection and ranging). 65% use the term lidar. My use of LiDAR is consistent with what I perceived as the most common usage. Apparently my perception was off. Of course it might help if LiDAR News Magazine changes their name.
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I certainly think it is time to let the L, D, A, and R’s retire and invite their perfectly capable lowercase underlings take over. I have been using the radar analogy fairly successfully with colleagues and editors for a couple of years now. The Casing of lidar article is another level entirely. It is like bringing nuclear weapons to a battle I have been fighting with sticks. Down with superfluous capitals!
Geology student here; I'm going to continue to use the archaic "LiDAR" form because I believe it'd be a linguistic disservice to my peers and future geostudents to reduce it to the common lower case. Everyone I talk to knows the expanded forms of important acronyms like "SEM" (Scanning Electron Microscope), but when you bring up former acronyms and portmanteau like "laser", "radar", "sonar", etc. hardly any of my peers can define them. LiDAR technology is one of the defining achievements in the geoscience community over the last half-century, and is perhaps the most influential technology we presently use. Although I wouldn't mind if it professional consensus developed the lower case version, those capitals will live on in my notes and informal dealings to preserve the legacy and uphold the importance of this fantastic tech!
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