The Word The

I delete the every chance I get

UTAustin wants to be called The University of Texas at Austin, starting with the word the. And we want it capitalized — The. Not THE. Not the. The.

Curious, I learned that fights over the word The in Texas are nothing compared to fights over the word The in Ohio. They fight over whether it’s (The) Ohio State University.

Our football teams meet shortly, perhaps to fight over the The.

In Texas, we have TAMEST, which was short for The Academy of Medicine, Engineering & Science of Texas. But then we noticed how the word The was wasting the T in one of the precious words in our acronym, TAMEST.

After some wordsmithing we decided to rename TAMEST, now short for Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science & Technology. Notice that while getting rid of the word The, we kept our historic acronym unchanged, TAMEST.

The word the is active outside academies, too. For example, take my second favorite rock band. You might be tempted to think that The Eagles perform Hotel California. You would be wrong. The name of the band is Eagles. No the, no The, no THE. Eagles.

I delete the word the every chance I get.

/Bob Metcalfe