Topic Maps and topic maps
In all the Topic Maps-related documents I read these days people use "Topic Maps", "Topic Map", "topic maps", and "topic map" indiscriminately when referring to the Topic Maps technology. Sometimes people even mix it up within a single document. For a long time there was no official definition of what was appropriate, but the 2005-10-28 TMDM draft introduced a consistent terminology for this. So far it doesn't seem that many people have noticed this (admittedly subtle) change. So here goes.
In what is soon to become the standard, "Topic Maps" is defined to be the name of the technology (or paradigm, or model, or abstract concept, or whatever you please). Since it is a name it is singular, so "Topic Map" is just a typo (except when using Title Case). This means that one has to refer to Topic Maps implementations, Topic Maps syntaxes, the Topic Maps paradigm, and Topic Maps experts.
The phrase "topic map", on the other hand, means a specific topic map, such as the Italian Opera Topic Map (note the use of Title Case here). Similarly, "topic maps" is plural, meaning more than one topic map.
It can sometimes be a little tricky to decide which of the two it is one is referring to in a sentence, but after having used it for about half a year I think that it works very well. To me phrases like "the Topic Maps are then merged" now just look strange. Whether it will actually catch on remains to be seen, of course.
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