Thursday, November 12, 2009

(ā'pěks)

At the ODTUG APEXposed conference in Atlanta this week, a customer asked me to blog about how to abbreviate and pronounce the abbreviation for Oracle Application Express. I've seen numerous abbreviations (Apex, ApEx, APPEx, AppEx, APEX), and I think the lack of a formal abbreviation lends to the confusion in pronunciation. So here goes:

  1. Whenever an abbreviation is used in informal writing, it's abbreviated in all uppercase: APEX
  2. It's pronounced (ā'pěks). It's a long 'A' as in 'acorn'.
  3. In formal written materials from Oracle, it is always written as 'Oracle Application Express' and never abbreviated.

In conversation and in some presentation materials, you will see the Oracle Application Express team use the above spelling and pronunciation.

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Update on March 29, 2020:  In formal, written materials, you can also use Oracle APEX.

12 comments:

Unknown said...

Why not record how you say APEX and put that on your blog? And it's true a lot of people use different case and pronounciations.

Joel R. Kallman said...

@Dimitri - I'm no production studio here. I'm a busy guy.

Joel

Dan McGhan said...

Joel,

lol, I've been a little backed up so I'm just seeing this now... Nice!

I'll make sure to adhere to the standard going forward ;)

Nexi Smith said...

I know its been weeks since this post went up - but, just for the record, the correct pronounciation is AP-EX (as in APplication EXpress).
However, everyone is calling it A-PEX so I have given up and gone along with the majority! :-)

Joel R. Kallman said...

DJBali,

"...the correct pronounciation is AP-EX".

Hmmm...I'm not sure how you're concluding that you've given the "correct pronunciation". That was the whole point of this post - to relate how the authors and developers of Application Express refer to it.

Joel

oraclenerd said...

Mr. Kallman,

I was just chided for not bringing to light someone who used the verboten "apex" in code comments...because I am particular...I just pointed them here of course. So they'll be reading this tomorrow and I'll be happier.

Joel R. Kallman said...

@oraclenerd,

I may not be understanding this correctly, but what is verboten about using "apex" in code comments?

Joel

oraclenerd said...

they didn't use the proper uppercase designation, APEX. That was the problem.

I figured you would be proud that I was fighting the good fight. :p

H. Cook said...

Hey, that was very helpful, thank you!!! I corrected my brand new boss who pronounced it app - x, then said to myself "omg, I can't believe I just did that, better double check!" So thank you!!! (I was right)...

Mazin Abdulah said...

As it is never abbreviated and when you would like to abbreviate it. you can write it like ApEx. that is how I alway write it.

Joel R. Kallman said...

Mazin,

To be clear, ApEx is wrong, APEX is correct.

Joel

Joel R. Kallman said...

As an addendum to the above, you will now see it written in some materials as Oracle APEX.