This month has seen an increase in the number of articles written using the word “Trojan”, both for the upcoming March Madness team, as well as Microsoft’s Release Candidate (RC) being leaked as a torrent on various trackers around the world. Subsequent news suggested that some of the downloads were infected with malware, specifically a “trojan.”
Spellcheck on every product I use hates trojan with a lowercase “t”, so it’s time to see what the AP Style book says.
A Trojan, of course, is named for the Trojan Horse which appeared to be one thing (a gift) and was instead something else (a way to sneak in Greek warriors). Not surprisingly, the AP Stylebook says that Trojan should be capitalized when referring to the Trojans as historical people, or as members of entities that use the Trojans as their mascot like University of Southern California, or USC, and numerous high schools around America.
According to the Associated Press Stylebook, both words are capitalized in Trojan War, but not in Trojan horse. The former being the proper name of a historical event, and the latter being the unofficial or non-brand name of an object.
However, the trusty AP Style Guide is silent on the computer term for trojan which is akin to the non-capitalized, “virus.”
Webster’s only defines “Trojan horse” in the computer sense. The difficulty with this solution is that it works best in non-technical situations where the term doesn’t need to be repeated. Constantly using “Trojan horse” in a more technical article where the term is used several times will throw of the rhythm of the prose fairly quickly.
So, what is a writer to do when faced with the obstacle of needing to “use AP Style” without any guidance from the AP Stylebook?
Generally, I check to see if a respected news source like a newspaper, or other respected news sites, has published anything with the word or phrase I need, though in this case, the technique has proven less useful. Most examples I can find also use the phrase “Trojan horse” even when speaking about computer malware.
Is Trojan War Capitalized
Yes. Trojan War has both letters capitalized as it refers to the proper name of a historical event.
Is Trojan Horse Capitalized
Yes and No. Trojan is the proper name of a group of people, but horse refers to a non-proper name. One can safely assume that its builders did not call it Trojan horse.
Is malware capitalized in AP Style?
No. malware is simply a kind of software, which is also not capitalized in AP Style.
The second difficulty is that Google’s News Search inexplicably returns results based upon user comments to a news story. Thus, when trying to find New York Times articles with the word “Trojan,” I get numerous results in which the word is written by John Doe, who isn’t much of an AP authority.
In the end, it looks like I’ll just have to go with what seems to fit best for the article. If writing about a single incident or piece of malware, I think I’ll stick with the “Trojan horse” solution. For a technical article about trojans in general, or about viruses, trojans, and malware, I’ll just have to click Ignore-All in the ol’ Spellchecker.
Historically, the Trojan horse was used to sneak Greek soldiers into the city of Troy, not the other way around.
Oops. Yes, you are correct. I have fixed the article. Thanks for pointing it out.