Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters/Archive 12

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Resolved

 – Question answered (it's not capitalized), article moved to ability to benefit.

I created this article today by clicking on a red link. It's a specific term used in US post-secondary education and also the name of the test(s) used to assess it. The capitalised "To" doesn't seem right (although some sources capitalise it that way). I need some advice about what to move it to, if at all:

• Ability to Benefit ?
• Ability to benefit ?

Google results – Voceditenore (talk) 17:44, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

If ability to benefit is an ability that some students have, I wouldn't capitalize it at all, it's just a descriptive phrase. If it's a federally defined status relating to the ability to apply for federal financial aid, then a case could be made for capitalizing it the way the government does. If it's a specific test like the Wonderlic Basic Skills Test - Ability-to-Benefit, then it would be capitalized the same way a book or movie title would be.

I'm not surprised that it's often capitalized where education jargon is used, but I don't think it would be in a general encyclopedia. The references, even the Department of Education website, don't capitalize it in running text. So I'd vote for Ability to benefit. SchreiberBike talk 20:54, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Chicago MOS and the Oxford style guide both say to minimise the use of caps. There would have to be a very good case to cap at all, here. If downcased, would it be competing with another page title? Tony (talk) 10:23, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks both. There are no competing titles with downcased capitalisation. I'm inclined to go with Ability to benefit as the title, and "ability to benefit" in the article unless the phrase begins a sentence (although using ATB gets around most of those occasions). I'm going to move the article and leave the alternative capitalisations as redirects. Voceditenore (talk) 11:33, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. What would you suggest for the question just above? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:54, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

FWIW, that phrase seems to be hardly ever capitalized in Google Books, though I wouldn't know how many of those occurrences actually refer to something else.

 

09:26, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

• The "to" shouldn't be capitalized here. It's semi-conventional in some circles to capitalize an entire acronym, but this is not universal (e.g. many of us write
  AfD); when it is, this does not somehow retroactively confer capitalization on words in unabbreviated phrases if they would not normally have it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  10:30, 25 March 2014 (UTC) PS: The "benefit" wouldn't be capitalized here either, though it would if this were the title of a book or some such. The article has alread long singe been moved to ability to benefit, with lead: "Ability to benefit (ATB) is a term...", so I'm marking this {{resolved}}.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢
   ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  03:31, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

My first thought was that it made no sense the way it is above, but as usual with more research it is more complicated. It is the first line of a movement of a larger piece and the first line of the poem the movement is based on. The movement and poem don't have any other title. Reliable sources capitalize it that way. Rose is capitalized because when they say Rose, they mean

Mary. I'd say that you have it right above, but you should fully expect some editor to come along in the future and capitalize the "l", because it looks wrong. Then you will have to explain the above. That's my thinking - hope it helps. SchreiberBike talk

00:50, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

“Then you will have to explain the above.” — that's what <!-- comments --> are for!

 

09:31, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

The small el looks funny. And I don't quite see that an individual's logic concerning capping the r because it symbolises someone needs to be duplicated ad-infinitum. Tony (talk) 10:15, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree the small el looks odd, but SchreiberBike's explanation of it is right on the money and justifies the unique capitalisation. --

talk

) 15:30, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

• Cases like this come up often enough (and sometimes so furiously) that MOS badly needs to account for them categorically, and distinguish such handling of titles of published works using the orthography RS consistently use, from kowtowing to
  WP:SSF style-pushing from one narrow field that contradicts the grammatical expectations of every other English-speaker on the planet. The reasons for using or not using capitalization in each case are quite distinct.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢
   ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  03:44, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Moved to WT:Manual of Style § "Generic words" specific rule needs to be generalized

The "Generic words" provision at

I agree that it's pooly worded.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  10:35, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

"for the proper name of an individual." what is a "proper name"? -- PBS (talk) 21:46, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

A proper name is a

proper name.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢

 ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  01:18, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

In this case it ain't that simple because historically defining what a person's name was depends on the jurisdiction and also their rank. In this case what is the proper name of Louis XVI? -- PBS (talk) 10:47, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

I'd always read this as meaning "proper noun" (a unique entity), which would be more accurate I think. Hchc2009 (talk) 13:25, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

I wonder if the third point can be considered redundant with the second point: "When a title is used to refer to a specific and obvious person as a substitute for their name." That is to say, if a title is understand to refer to an individual title holder, then you capitalize it. I don't know that this issue arises much in encyclopedic writing, but minions may refer their bosses as "the Prime Minister", "the President," etc. without an obvious antecedent, as if this was the subject's name. The Clever Boy (talk) 13:39, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

• @
  WP:COMMONNAME, which seeks to find one particular name for us to encyclopedically prefer for article titling, but which has nothing to do with style questions like what this page is about. Any sourceable name we have for Louis XVI is a proper name. @Hchc2009:: The proper noun article is mis-titled and mis-written. The actual concept is proper name; in noun form it is a proper noun ("Italy"), but in adjectival form ("Italian", "Italo-"), it remains a proper name. It doesn't lose its "properness" (capitalization) by virtue of not being a noun any longer. This does not hold true across all languages, but is a solid fact of English usage. @The Clever Boy: President (of a nation, not a company) and Prime Minister are among various honorary exceptions we conventionally always capitalize; they cannot be broadened in the way you suggest without absurd results, capitalizing every stand-in for the official name of anyone or anything.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢
   ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  03:23, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

I am not suggesting any broadening. The broader rule is already in the guideline, so the narrower one is redundant. The Clever Boy (talk) 05:50, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Like. See WT:Manual of Style#"Generic words" specific rule needs to be generalized; you may have specific ideas on how to work that.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  07:48, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

I had a discussion (about "(Z|z)ener diodes") recently:

[...] Our own MoS says

In the names of scientific and mathematical concepts, only proper names (or words derived from them) should be capitalized: Hermitian matrix, Lorentz transformation. However some established exceptions exist, such as abelian group and Big Bang theory.

[...] SpinningSpark 01:26, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

"Only x should" does not mean "all x should". Not even "most x should". ;–) — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 02:54, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, that's just playing with semantics. The intention is clear. SpinningSpark 05:48, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Is the intention indeed clear? If yes, what it actually is: "only proper, but not common", or "all proper", or "proper ... usually"? Probably, it needs to be stated more clearly. (And, apparently, there must be a comma after "However".) — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 06:52, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

I think it should mean to say "...capitalize most, but not all, proper (e.g.

Big Bang theory)..." —[AlanM1(talk)]— 08:02, 1 April 2014 (UTC) (edited) —[AlanM1(talk

)]— 08:04, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

14:03, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

While there may be no "official name" the community was named after the company (yes, the butter company in Wisconsin) which uses a capital O, and is always referenced as a capital O. I don't think someone else can "know better" than the residents and neighbors how to spell the name; it is a name, not a title.

talk

) 14:30, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

• NO - @
  talk
  ) 14:58, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
• You seem to have applied
  talk
  ) 15:07, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Parenthetical phrases in song titles

Resolved

 – Article moved.

Have I interpreted the house rule in its current form correctly

Yes, that article should be renamed. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:36, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Because The Place We Ran from would look really odd? The first words of Wikipedia's articles' titles are capitalized "because of technical details", but that has nothing to do with the capitalization of composition titles. Deor (talk) 18:32, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Because everybody else does it. My children can't use that excuse, but it works for Wikipedia. Basically it means we follow existing established styles, and that usage is recommended by the majority of style books and is what is done by the majority of sources.SchreiberBike talk 18:44, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Also, the first letter isn't capitalized because of technical details. When the first letter shouldn't be capitalized, we don't: iPhone, for example. As SchreiberBike said, we do so because that's the accepted style; first words and last words are more significant than middle words in titles, and are capitalized even whey they are short prepositions, conjunctions, or other words that wouldn't be capitalized in the middle of a title. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:53, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

The actual title of the article you cited is "IPhone". It just contains the {{Lowercase title}} template so that the title displays as "iPhone". The "real" names of all WP articles begin with capital letters (which is what I presumed the OP was referring to with "because of technical details"). Deor (talk) 21:43, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

And the other "real" name of the article iPhone does not begin with an uppercase letter, thanks to tools that allow the "real" title displayed to be different from the "real" title behind the scenes. My point is that the first word must be capitalized when it needs to be capitalized because it's the correct style, which happens to line up with the behind-the-scenes necessity. It's not capitalized simply because of the behind-the-scenes necessity. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:31, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

The original idea behind title case seems to be the avoidance of emphasis on "little words" in the middle of a title. Personally, I agree that In The Court Of The Crimson King is aesthetically jarring because the brain tends to ignore "little words" in running text and focus on nouns. Historically, title case may be a trace of German-style noun capitalisation, which was used in earlier English, too, based on the same idea of emphasising important words such as nouns and de-emphasising less important words (even though the precise rules of capitalisation vary of course).

At the time when printing appeared, the practice was simply guided by the vague principle "capitalise important words", which was interpreted in constantly evolving and inconsistent ways over the centuries prior to the introduction of standardised orthographies (at least in German there was a tendency to capitalise more and more words, which reached a peak in the highly redundant, ornate and – well, baroque – orthographic habits of the Baroque era and then grew more economic).

"Little words" in this sense, by the way, are regularly unstressed and often clitics – they aren't really independent words in a sense, but fulfil various syntactic (or in general, grammatical) functions, thus being more like "little helpers". Words that do get capitalised, on the other hand, are usually content words. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:46, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

First the Vagina Monologues and now clitics? Is this really necessary? EEng (talk) 03:36, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Everyone's a critic, but everyone is not a

use-mention distinction), while 's is, to provide examples. Perhaps I should have linked the term right away since not everyone is a cunning linguist ... which group, by the way, overlaps strongly with punning linguists – I think we can handily (or rather, orally) outpun you. :-) --Florian Blaschke (talk

) 14:35, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

It might also be worth pointing out that, defying Aristotle, not everyone is also not a clitic. EEng (talk)

I'm in love. Can I marry you? EEng (talk) 16:21, 11 April 2014 (UTC) But (P.S.) let's try to keep this conversation out of the guttural.

See also User_talk:Hertz1888#I.27ll_prob.27ly_be_crucified_for_this... EEng (talk) 00:07, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

There were move discussion on

It was followed by a request for comments on the same subject, Talk:Crowned crane#Request for comments. The move discussion was closed (and the pages moved) on 26 March 2014, see Talk:Crowned crane#Requested move for details. There is now an ongoing follow-up discussion on Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2014 March.

Mama meta modal (talk) 06:12, 1 April 2014 (UTC).

New discussion

The important discussion started on Talk:Crowned crane and Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2014 March#Black crowned crane now moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#A new proposal regarding bird article names.

Mama meta modal (talk) 21:06, 9 April 2014 (UTC).

The consensus is now clear. The relevant pages will soon be checked and made consistent with Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Bird common name decapitalisation.

H. H. Wander Strata (talk) 23:03, 2 May 2014 (UTC).

I think of translating

• Title of an article here should be rendered Praxis pietatis melica, given how we treat Latin titles. If there's any doubt, trust Britannica[1], the book at Google Books[2], and book at the Bavarian State Library[3], just for starters. A large number of the capitalised title hits on google seem to be connected to the erroneous capitalisation on Wikipedia. Few reliable book sources render it at P.P.M., most are P.p.m. --
  talk
  ) 15:47, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

This should be a

WT:MOSCAPS one.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢

 ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:11, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

3. And I'm not sure about (medical) titles, upper case wrong, see here: Podiatrist

Just to answer question 3: people sometimes like to

capitalize things like professional titles, but normal writing doesn't ("My mother is a Teacher."—you wouldn't write that, would you?) and I think it's accurate to say we generally have a consensus here not to do it, at least for professions. There is occasionally debate about certain titles, such as chief mechanical engineer, but even that is lowercase these days. None of this is to suggest we have particularly good adherence to the MOS or even particularly good writing on some articles out there. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs

) 16:33, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

1. Huh? Proper style for a legal case would be Roe v. Wade (italics, and v. not vs.), and v. and vs. is always lower case, even in a sports context.
2. Don't change "10GB" in a quote or a title to "10GB". Purely formatting/display matters like using the proper dash character or properly italicizing the name of a genus and species in an article title is okay, but don't change spacing, unit symbols, etc.
3. Job descriptions like "podiatrist" are not capitalized. Neither are job titles except when used with a name: "The hospital fired their chief oncologist" vs. "The hospital fired Chief Oncologist Sam Moran".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:25, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Titles of works are capitalised currently The Foundations of Mathematics (but I notice an apparent trend in bibliography to down-case these things (as we would with an article title or, a section title) - so in five or ten years we may need to change this aspect of the MoS) - this includes titles given on web pages as ALL CAPS and other varieties if casing. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:28, 19 August 2014 (UTC).

Per prominent wording at the top of

Please watchlist this page and help dissuade any further attempts to fork it from its parent,

PS: It's fairly likely there are other PoV-forks from MOS in MOS:CAPS; please review it in other sections.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:11, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

One such was a conflict on capitalization of the start of parentheticals in the titles of published works (see confused move request at Talk:I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)). Anyone aware of other recent ones? Any still ongoing?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:37, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Should Internet be capitalized or lowercase? Is there a guideline on this somewhere? I did a quick search of this page and couldn't find anything, so if there is a rule, it should probably be added. ~

I don't know if there's an official guideline, but there's an article (

Capitalization of "Internet")! So I'd say it doesn't matter, just as both email and e-mail are acceptable. Unless the distinction is important for meaning, use whichever form you prefer. I personally agree with the sentiment expressed in that article: "Many publications today disregard the historical development and use the term in its common noun spelling, arguing that it has become a generic medium of communication." --BDD (talk

) 22:17, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. I personally agree with the common noun form, but it's good to know there's no guideline (yet). ~

talk

) 02:50, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

This has been discussed extensively in various places in WP, and the result, as I understand it, is that we capitalize the Internet, but not an internet, if you get my drift. Here's a discussion from way back in 2004: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive (capitalization)#Capitalisation of 'I' in Internet and 'W' on World Wide Web, when it seemed pretty unsettled. Here's one I settled in 2011: Talk:Internet protocol suite#Capitalization in "internet layer", after capitalization of the Internet was pretty well ingrained. Probably it's not in a guideline, but I'd regard it as settled by consensus. Dicklyon (talk) 03:58, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Here is one of my favorite linguist authorities on this question. Normally, I'm a downcaser, but I think the case for capitalizing the Internet is pretty good. Dicklyon (talk) 04:06, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

(A year late, but just in case there should be any subsequent question:) I concur with Dick. Any interconnection of computer networks can be an internet, but the Biggest Daddy of Them All is Internet. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:32, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

• The Internet (the world-wide network of networks based primarily upon the TCP/IP protocol) is always capitalized. An internet, any network of smaller networks, is not capitalized, and is rarely used because of the ambiguity to most readers.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  10:26, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
  PS: WP does not write in news style, so we really don't care if this newspaper chain or that news website is lower-casing "internet" out of laziness these days. We're not obligated to follow sloppy journalistic style trends.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:55, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
• I have to take a different line from my friend SMc. Lowercase usage has been on the increase for some time, seeing no use for the original technical distinction between the internet as worldwide network, and more localised structures. I downcase it when I can. Tony (talk) 13:10, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

That strikes me as an argument to downcase everything for which there's any paper-publishing trend to downcase, which is everything, because fewer and fewer people bother with the shift key and some publishers are emulating this to be "hip". It's not a trivial matter. There are entire style guides, since the 1990s, leaning this direction because they're trying to appeal to a particular market, not because it actually aids English writing clarity in any way. Another issue I have with this is that the more dominant the Internet becomes, over other internetworks, the less some people want to capitalize it, which seems rather like wanting to write roman empire when discussing the empire at its peak, or writing microsoft windows because its the most popular OS. Names don't become less proper because the things to which they refer become more successful and ubiquitous in their time. See my response to Enric Naval, below, for more concerns some of which apply to the case you're making as well.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:49, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

• ngrams shows a decline of the capitalized form starting in 2002 [7], but it only covers until 2008.... --Enric Naval (talk) 14:04, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

That's barely statistically significant. What it does show is that lower case usage has barely risen at all, and that fewer books are being published talking about the Internet. Rhetorical question: How are you weeding out references to internet (i.e. general internetworking) technologies and protocols? How are you distinguishing noun from adjectival use? The latter question is independently important, because a growing camp of writers, following the Chicago Manual of Style and other guides, in competition with various that disagree, are proselytizing the idea that adjectival usage should be downcased even where noun usage would not be (brussels sprout, draconian measures, roman candle fireworks, etc.), with various exceptions that generally have to do with how closely tied the reference is to the referent (thus Italian cuisine and Kafkaesque bureaucracy). Another question (and for Tony1, too): How many of the sources you are looking may be relying upon The Guardian style guide, which downcases almost everything and has a lot of other problematic postmodernisms, like abandonment of most hyphenation and most use of "." except at the end of a sentence, and so on? Next, frequency of use we observe through a tool like ngrams is a secondary concern to clarity in encyclopedic writing, which would naturally lean toward using a more distinct form when it is not a neologism nor something only found in specialist publications.

This is nothing like the species common name capitalization case, but exactly the opposite: Here we have something that began capitalized and has started to become lower-cased by technologically ignorant writers whom we do not need to emulate; in the other case, we had something that's always been lower case, going all the way back to Darwin's era, but which was being capitalized here (and not much in any general-audience writing elsewhere) because specialists verging on ignorance of formal writing outside their own field were trying to make everyone change to capitalization. We can't approach questions like this from a "capitalization is bad, get rid of all of it" angle. Different things are capitalized for different reasons, both logically and conventionally. It's not WP's job to try to play trend-spotter and emulate what some publishers are doing because

we believe they're going to win. PS: It's pretty clear that some writers (and readers) are just confused by the difference (or that there is any) between various things ending in -net. The Internet is a proper noun. So is Usenet, but a substantial number of people lower-case it anyway, yet others camelcase it incorrectly as UseNet, and some even throw in weird capitalization like USENET or even USEnet (because of the influence BITnet, back in the day). But ethernet is not a proper name; it's just a technology, not a particular network, thus lower-cased. And so on. These things are not all the same sort of thing, and have different case conventions because they are not the same.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢

 ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:49, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Bravo! I will just underline that we should not follow trends, but good usage. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:03, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

More sourcing

• See above for sources provided by Dick Lyon, and links to previous discussions with more sourcing still.
• Here are much more useful ngrams[8][9], showing that even in cases of adjectival use of "Internet" or "internet" – the most common usage for which people have started advocating lower case – there is no major trend in this direction. These searches find any case of a determiner followed by internet or Internet, followed in turn by a noun (first ngram) or another adjective (second ngram). They show the exact same pattern of a barely noticeable rise in lower-case usage, but a general decline in capitalized usage (which is still the vast majority of usage). This means there are fewer books being published about the Internet, or going on and on about the Internet, but that, yes, there's the beginnings of trend toward lower-casing in more recent ones. Note also the enormous spike toward upper case from the late 1990s to mid-2000s when most books about the Internet and the Internet revolution were published. The current trend (only observable up to 2008, and which could actually be in decline for all we know) to extent it's a reliable indicator of some people switching to lower case is still a small minority usage. All of the ngram data strongly suggests WP should stick to upper case. And it still doesn't weed out generic lower-case usage like "of internet technologies", etc., which would account for some of the lower case usage to begin with.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:11, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Summary

It seems to me there has been a strong showing that both current usage and the recommendations of accepted authorities favor capitalization of Internet. Are we agreed on this? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:33, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Works for me, and I can certainly cite more reliable, non-specialist evidence in favor of the capitalization if necessary. The majority of ostensibly reliable style sources on this matter which down-case are journalistic, and WP is not written in news style, so they end up not being particularly relevant to the question here. If we did whatever the Guardian, New York Times and Associated Press style guides insist on, we'd have to delete about 2/3 of our MoS.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:27, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

In a section on compound nouns,

That phrase does not include a compound noun but "Vice President Ford" is the example. -- PBS (talk) 20:31, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

It is indeed wrong - and I can't believe this hasn't been noticed for two years! It was inserted on 23 January 2012 by User:PBS with the comment "See talk Use US example not Prime Minister which is a job description not a title." The relevant discussion is here. The consensus at the talk page does not seem to have been implemented - which might explain how it slipped through the net. I suggest the best thing is to implement the consensus reached at the talk page in 2012 - unless anybody has any objections. Shem (talk) 19:16, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

The consensus was implemented which alternative would you prefer? -- PBS (talk) 20:31, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

• I have no objection. "Prime Minister" has been bantered about as a "title" of office since Parliament's 1935 budget. PBS's assertion was historically incorrect. There's a difference between saying "the American president" "the president of the Untied States said today... vs. "Warren G. Harding, the 29th President of the United States" or "the prime minister said" or "Prime Minister Chamberlain" and "Blair became the prime minister" vs. "The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of...etc.", "Pope Francis, Vicar of Christ", or "the pope". Context matters. --
  talk
  ) 19:37, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

• Follow-up: Just to say the
  talk
  ) 19:46, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

One does not usually write "Prime Minister Chamberlain" in British English, which was the whole point of the change to an American example of the compound noun of "Vice President" which is used as title (as in Vice President Biden). As to whether Ford became the "38th President of the United States" or "38th president of the United States" I am disinterested. -- PBS (talk) 20:31, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Whether or not "Prime Minister Chamberlain" is atypical in BrEng is rather arguable anymore, since some of the UK newsrags have started acting like Yanks with some of their idioms, and that usage keeps creeping into history books--which I think might be an issue of British scholars being published more often by an American press that just happens to have a London office.--

talk

) 14:21, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

It is still broadly the case I did a simple quick search on google uk for the current prime minster with "site:uk" as a parameter, "Prime-Minister-Cameron" site:uk the only reliable sites returned on the first couple of pages using were foreign embassies and the like and one foreign office blog page. In comparison "Prime-Minister-Cameron" using google.com returns two White House pages using phrase. Undoubtedly there will be instances of its usage in the UK press from time to time, but it is not common in flowing text, which is why I think it better not to use it as an example. BTW ColonelHenry I am familiar with where the term Prime Minster came from (that it was originally a derogatory term for Walpole)) and broadly how its usage has developed since then, but in this case I was not using title as an abbreviation for ""title of office" bur for title as used in the first bullet point of the section "When followed by a person's name to form a title ...". -- PBS (talk) 16:00, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

• This is simply an exception to a rule, not a rule. President of the United States, Prime Minister of the UK, Secretary General of the UN, Pope, etc., are among various titles that are honored with perpetual capitalization, even when used generically not individually, as a convention of courtesy, principally one pushed by journalists. It's common enough to have stuck, but it does not illustrate a general rule about, say, politicians, or job titles.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  03:28, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

• So which should we use, "Obama, the 44th president of the United States...", or "Obama, the 44th President of the United States..."? Major US newspapers use lowercase, but it varies in other countries. Here are first-page Google counts, ignoring quotes of written sources.

Newspaper	Lowercase/ Uppercase
New York Times	9 lc, 0 UC
Los Angeles Times	10 lc, 0 UC
USA Today	10 lc, 0 UC
Washington Post	2 lc, 0 UC
Wallstreet Journal	8 lc, 0 UC
Chicago Tribune	10 lc, 0 UC
Toronto Star (Can.)	7 lc, 3 UC
Guardian (UK)	9 lc, 0 UC
Daily Telegraph (UK)	3 lc, 7 UC
Herald Sun (Aus.)	4 lc, 6 UC
Times of India (India)	7 lc, 1 UC
Irish Independent (R. of I.)	3 lc, 7 UC

––Agyle (talk) 22:01, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

That's some good work @Agyle:. It's great to have good data to work from and I read it as a pretty convincing tilt toward lower case. SchreiberBike talk 22:27, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Indeed it is good work. I downcase wherever possible. It too easily morphs into vanity capping for every job or position name. So if we insist on "Mayor" of Morontown, do we have to write "five Morontown Councillors voted for the proposition"? And "he's Secretary to the Mayor? And she's the Chief Engineer and Bottle Washer? And he's a Garbage Collector? Tony (talk) 07:55, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

I've begun the process of uncapitalizing President & Vice President of the United States, in the presidential & vice presidential bio articles intros. Personally, I favour neither version (capitalized or non-capitalized), but I do favour all those articles being consistant & in the last roughly 2yrs, John Adams was sticking out like a sore thumb. GoodDay (talk) 13:28, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Should a named massacre have "massacre" capitalized as is done for "Accepted full names of wars, battles, revolts, revolutions, rebellions, mutinies, skirmishes, risings ...", etc. as specified in

Yes it is non-uniform (not haphazard). Some years ago I down-cased as many massacres as I could find that weren't, as far as I could tell "accepted full name" (before that guideline was written). Of course many articles have arrived since then, and I would support moving to a lower case "massacre" if that is the form used in the article, as a very good first approximation to the guideline. I would have no objection personally to them all being lower-cased, but I doubt there would be consensus for that. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:42, 19 August 2014 (UTC).

Thanks for the advice, Rich. Chris the speller ^yack 01:47, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

I started a discussion on how to format names with al-Qaeda in the title at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Terrorism#Acronyms of groups with al-Qaeda in name that is related to this guideline.~Technophant (talk) 17:42, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style § RfC - Animal breeds in lower case

We have been discussing this in short at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Indigenous peoples of Australia#Capitalisation and I wondered if there would be consensus to reflect this here at MOS:Caps? Clare. (talk) 13:10, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

• Support, for the reasons given there by Tullyis. Wikiain (talk) 23:19, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
• Comment: Forking an ongoing discussion in one place into a new poll to try to get consensus for it in another is called "
  forum shopping", and is a form of canvassing prohibited by WP:Consensus policy. I've marked the old discussion closed and directed people to this newer one instead, since you both (as the originators of the thread at the wikiproject) seem to agree that it should be discussed here instead.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢
   ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:06, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose: This is
  WP:SOAPBOX).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢
   ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:49, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
  • No need to get worked up. Clare was only testing the waters and informing followers of this talkpage. Perfectly reasonable request. I don't see any real point to Wikiains spontaneous support vote, but I don't see any sign of
    the Australia WikiProject. Doesn't seem like there's any consensus for the proposal, but the discussion seems like it's still active. Anyone who's interested can go there and offer opinions on the matter. Peter ^Isotalo
    00:49, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

It should happen in one place, not two. And it very clearly is forum-shopping (canvassing); it was not a neutral pointer to a discussion people might be interested in, it was a request for a consensus decision to add what she wanted to this guideline despite the discussion being still ongoing elsewhere. An admin should {{

hat}} either this poll or the wikiproject discussion, or merge them, or whatever, so that it stops being forked into two ongoing attempts to gain consensus in two different places by the same people about the same thing. PS: The wikiproject "discussion seems like it's still active" because it's the same people continuing the same conversation in two venues.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢

 ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:54, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

• I strongly oppose the consistent formulaic capping of Indigenous when referring to Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders; but I've been smacked by the writers I've worked with for not capping, such that I've had to accept the practice. Just why the capping evolved is hard to determine, but now it seems we're stuck with it. I guess it does distinguish those groups from generic indigenous peoples around the world, which might be useful in some cases. Tony (talk) 16:52, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
  • That it conveys the idea that all countries except Australia has "generic indigenous peoples" is exactly why I'm opposing this. For crying out loud, there's even a
    WP:ADVOCACY. This might be useful for empowerment and identity politics in a specifically Australian context, but not in a global, general encyclopedia. The only effect it will have here is to make Australian indigenous peoples seem somehow more exclusive than other indigenous peoples. Peter ^Isotalo
    23:13, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
    • Absolutely. At the original discussion at the wikiproject, I got coal-raked for bringing up that this usage is basically a political correctness move being pushed by a government agency. Tony's work, that interfaces with some of those circles sometimes, has been influenced by it to his chagrin, and I'm sure it's common at .au universities (along with every other hyperliberal neologism), and so on, but this does not translate into a completed change in .au English to always capitalize this; we're observing the beginnings of a trend, and it may not go anywhere. In my own not-too-long lifetime I've seen "Colored", "Negro", "Afro-American", as well as "Indian" (in the Native American sense), "Oriental" and "Chicano" (some of these not always capitalized) vary from normal to activistic to respectful at various points in various cases, and now all in the trash can as disfavored ethnic epithets. The rise and fall of "Chicano" in particular was quite fast as these things go, about one generation. Capital-"Indigenous" in Australia is not a usage that's being championed and reinforced much in, say, mainstream .au newspapers. Like I said at the project page, come back in 10 years and they may have a case, if it spreads and if it sticks. Anyway, the conflict with the UN declaration is a pretty clear reason not to run with this proposal.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  03:27, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose for the reasons I gave at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Indigenous peoples of Australia#Capitalisation. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:42, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose because being "indigenous" is not something unique to Australia. We have equivalent terms for indigenous peoples over here in the States; we call them Native Americans. "Native Australians" or the other terms put forth here seem a lot more specific and therefore more deserving of being proper names. "Indigenous" is a much more general word referring to natives and can be used anywhere.
  Guy
  02:52, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

  Well, if I were going to oppose, I'd use that argument in these terms: the item is almost always paired with "Australian". In my experience, a text would refer first to "indigenous Australian(s)", and subsequently use "indigenous" as an epithet alone, because the specific meaning (not "indigenous" in general, or "indigenous Canadian") has been clearly established. In that context, I see no particular reason to upcase for the sake of distinguishing from generic usage. Except that usage is normally captial "I" ... redundantly, in my view. Tony (talk) 07:50, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose per above. — kwami (talk) 03:39, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose – WP avoids unnecessary capitalization. It is clearly not necessary. Dicklyon (talk) 05:15, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
• I don't see why "the native Americans" should be treated differently to "the indigenous Australians". Native is NOT much more specific. The two are highly synonymous. The main difference I see is that Native American was being written capitalised in the 1980s, but Indigenous Australian not until the 1990s. There political correctness at play here. Are Native Americans a more worthy group than Indigenous Australians? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:54, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
  • The suggestion is to capitalize the isolated use of the word "indigenous" (without "Australian") in any given context where it refers specifically to Indigenous Australians, as in "
    indigenous peoples outside of Australia, though; it's exclusively Australian. It's an attempt to claim the word in a way similar to "Aboriginal". That's what we're opposing here. Peter ^Isotalo
    06:05, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
    • If that's the case, then oppose. In Peter's examples, "indigenous" is being used as a simple adjective. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:59, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose—As above. Tony (talk) 07:40, 30 April 2014 (UTC) PS But then Noetica, with whom I discussed this issue, says: so "Australian aboriginal"? And "jew"? Any comments ... ? Tony (talk) 13:20, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

I would tend to agree that "Australian Aboriginal" can be capitalized the same way we capitalize "Native American". It's a specific reference to a specific ethnicity, unlike "white" or "black" or "indigenous", the latter of which can refer to native peoples from all over the world.

Guy

19:10, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Noetica has subsequently written to me that no, "aboriginal" has broadly the same status as "indigenous". And it is used not only of Australians but of Canadians (and cf.

Aboriginal peoples in Canada) and of Tierra del Fuegans (and a second example).

He says: "To distinguish 'aboriginal' and 'indigenous' so peremptorily is to prejudge the issue at hand. A good number of Australians now call themselves, and are called by others, 'Indigenous Australians' in the same way as Native Americans have expressed their own preference."

Perhaps the matter requires more research? Tony (talk)

12:59, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Ah, perhaps we are on two different trains of thought, my friend. I'm referring to "Indigenous/Native" + a qualifier such as Australian or American, which specifices a region of the globe and therefore an ethnicity. I'm not referring to what are at best informal usages such as "Populations of Native citizens in the US" which you might find in a newspaper. I would regard those more as shorthand; if necessary the publication would specify which country, but if not specified it's usually implied to be the one where the article is published or at least which place the article talks about. I'm simply saying in conjunction with a nationality it can be capitalized, because that's basically the way we've always done it, but to capitalize it and enforce one singular meaning with which it can stand by itself in every context is, as I understand it, the point of this RfC and what I oppose. Also, if you want to go further with it, there are basically sub-ethnicities of Native Americans (e.g. Navajo, Cherokee), so that might complicate things further since there are/were many different Native American nations and ethnicities. One thing's for sure, we can't let this proposal pass; the term "indigenous" is too general and cannot be restricted to only indigenous Australian peoples.

Guy

16:21, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Sorry to play messenger here. Noetica has provided a rejoinder to your comment, through me, which I think is well worth considering. (Noetica is in non-active phase as an editor at the moment, and we can't do anything about that.)

"There is no claim that the generic term 'indigenous' should be hijacked exclusively for the Australian case, is there? No more than 'aboriginal' is hijacked anywhere, or 'native'. Either the term would be used in phrases such as 'Indigenous Australian', or it would be clear in the context that 'Indigenous' indicates the same as 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander'. Such appeal to context occurs everywhere, including with 'aboriginal' in Canada, or in Chile and Argentina for certain Tierra del Fuegans. As for sub-ethnicities then, we can see already that this applies in Australia as it does in the US and Canada – and beyond that binary division ('Aboriginal' and 'Torres Strait Islander') there is much fine-grain detail. Such matters of naming are deeply and inescapably political, and inadvertently simplistic pronouncements sweep that fact aside. Let us avoid those. Consider this common sort of discourse: 'The Australian society as a whole is an extraordinary mixture of people with many different cultural identities who constantly immerse themselves in English and the Anglophone style of living. Amongst these people, Australian Indigenous nations and communities must be considered the most disadvantaged of all. Cast out by British invasion, times of colonisation and the present postcolonial era Indigenous Peoples of Australia still struggle and try to voice their resistance through their activism and literary-artistic production' (see this paper)."

Interesting. Tony (talk) 06:35, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

That is indeed interesting, but going on what SMcCandlish says below Wikipedia can only report on current usage; given the evolution of language, it may very well be the case that in the next couple of decades people will have heard the term "indigenous" in solely Australian contexts so much that they may become accustomed to thinking it only applies to that continent, even if the word's origins were more general. I have to respectfully disagree with Noetica's assertion that there is "no claim" of such a sort (no need to worry about playing messenger, it serves the same purpose as if Noetica were actually here), as pointed out by SmokeyJoe above. Wikipedia can't enforce a certain linguistic evolution via policy or guideline; some words come in and out of usage naturally (e.g. "unfriend" thanks to the magic of Facebook), but all Wikipedia can do is reflect what the real world is doing. It cannot shape what the real world does with respect to how to say or do certain things, and that is why we have guidelines such as

Guy

16:47, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, interesting but not a Wikipedia MOS matter and certainly not fodder for a new pro-capitalization MOS rule. Certain phrases are overwhelmingly capitalized by reliable sources of all types, including "Aborigine" and "Aboriginal Australian" (for the same people), "Native American", "First Nation[s]" (in Canada), etc., while others are not ("yet", if you prefer), and these include, e.g., "native Canadian", "aboriginal American", and (whether anyone here likes it or not) "indigenous Australian". To be sure, there are certain camps, governmental, academic and activists, all of them highly political (and almost entirely leftist) who always capitalize all of these phrases and anything like them, out of the mistaken belief that failure to incorrectly treat any reference to an ethnic or other minority as if the substitute/stand-in terms were themselves proper names, is somehow disrespectful. It's PoV-pushing, linguistically ignorant nonsense.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:25, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, but I can't take any spelling advice from an author who uses capitals as liberal as in "But are there many who can ... subsist in the Land?" and "... colonisation of Australian Indigenous People ...". -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 07:44, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

@Michael Bednarek: To whom is this directed? That's not my text, and I don't see it anywhere else on the page, nor in the duplicate discussion at the wikiproject. Can you clarify? I suspect you may be objecting to Clare.'s and Tullyis's proposal, though Tony1 wrote something similar to one of these quoted phrases ("Indigenous Peoples of Australia", above).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:37, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

SMcCandlish: My comment was, like yours, on Tony's relaying of Noetica citing an essay which made questionable use of capital letters. My edit conflicted with yours, which I marked in my edit summary, but not in the text. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:58, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

I adjusted the indent level to reflect this. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:39, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

• Support also see the related discussion at Talk:Indigenous Australians/Archive 7#Spelling "Indigenous" / "indigenous" -- Paul foord (talk) 06:46, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

• Support Much like "aboriginal" is a generic term when used outside of Australia, but a proper noun when used to refer to the native people of Australia, the term "indigenous" is both a generic term and a proper noun, depending on context. In Australia, "Indigenous Australian" is a proper noun, like "Celts" or "First Nations". When used as a proper noun, I can't see why we wouldn't capitalise it. That seems like a given, and I don't see a lot of room to move. Where things become more complex is where it could be used either as an adjective or as a shortening of a proper noun. Thus "indigenous art" could be seen in an Australian context as refering to "indigenous art in general" or "art by Indigenous Australians". This makes my head hurt. :) But I can see the point that in Australia, when refering to Indigenous Australians, the term is always a shortening of a proper noun. Thus I defer to "Indigenous" being captialised when used in an Australian context if it is implying "Indigenous Australian", although I don't see it as being as clear cut. - Bilby (talk) 12:20, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Comments

• Since arguments are being put forth here rather than only at the Indigenous Australian page, I'll just reiterate here the fact that the Macquarie Dictionary - the key Australian dictionary - has two usages of the one, specifically providing for the capitalisation of Indigenous when being used instead of "Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander". Also, in the case of the example above of "Indigenous languages" the human agency is implied. It's a very different context to "indigenous grasses of the Flinders Ranges" or "indigenous peoples of the southern hemisphere". What about "Indigenous communities"? The communities themselves aren't indigenous to the area in that biological adjectival sense. They are referring to communities made up of Indigenous Australian people. The Australian is implied. First Nations is a general term too, applied to a range of different peoples just like Indigenous is. We talk about First Nations communities. A Google site search of Wikipedia provides many many instances where "First Nations communities" is used, for example.[13] The usage of "Indigenous communities" needs to be acceptable on the same grounds, when referring to Indigenous Australian communities Tullyis (talk) 12:21, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Of course people are commenting here and at the wikproject page. You turned it into a MOSCAPS poll yet insisted on keeping the other discussion open for no reason, forcing discussion to fragment. Per
    WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, this is the one that's going to matter. No one is unfamiliar with the argument you are making here, and you don't need to keep repeating it. It simply isn't strong. The usage you advocate is an activistic neologism that is not well supported in mainstream reliable sources, including Australian ones. Part of a modern, descriptive dictionary's job is to identify and catalogue usages even if they are not common. This is not at all part of Wikipedia's job.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢
     ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:07, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

SMcCandlish , I think you are overstating your case when you say that it is 'not well supported in mainstream reliable sources.' You note The Australian doesn't always capitalise, and nor does the Daily Telegraph, but the ABC, SBS, The Guardian, Australian government departments at all levels, universities, the Macquarie Dictionary and a great number of other publishing houses always capitalise "Indigenous Australians," and I doubt any organisation that deals regularly or exclusively with Aboriginal people would fail to either. Many style manuals I can find on line insist on it. It is well documented that the uncapitalised version is seen as offensive by many Aboriginal people and, as a result, it is typically avoided. I think there are two quite distinct issues here- the use of Indigenous whenever it refers to Australian Aboriginal people, and the use of the specific term "Indigenous Australian/s." (I note that the Australian and Daily Telegraph also frequently use the term "Aboriginals", so maybe they're not good sources on what is current, valid language use towards Aboriginal people). — Preceding unsigned comment added by WotherspoonSmith (talk • contribs) 4:37, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

It is well documented that the uncapitalised version is seen as offensive by many Aboriginal people and, as a result, it is typically avoided. I question this claim. This reads more like a political correctness construction than any actual change in language usage. --Pete (talk) 17:10, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

WotherspoonSmith: And I can provide counter-examples, but don't need to. It's already been shown that the majority usage is lower-case. Your criticism of sources for using a term you consider politically incorrect crisply demonstrates that this is an advocacy soapbox issue. It's clear that you, Clare., and Tullyis feel very, very strongly about this, so see also

WP:GREATWRONGS; it is not WP's purpose to serve as a platform for "social justice" pushes to change the English language and its usage, sorry.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢

 ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:28, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

There's a lot here and on the other page to read, but I challenge your assertion that "it's already been shown that the majority use is lower case." I'm sure there are some uses of lower case- I found and mentioned a couple. I just can't find many- certainly compared to all those that capitalise.

I was not criticising because the term is politically incorrect, I was stating why it has become more the norm than you are saying it is.

As it said, I see two quite distinct issues here

* the general capitalisation of indigenous whenever it refers to Australian indigenous

* the specific term "Indigenous Australians". I have come in late to the discussion but am wondering if I should start a separate query about the latter term. Thoughts, anyone?

Pete/ skyring- what claim are you questioning- that it is seen as offensive, that it is avoided because it is believed to be offensive, or that it is well documented? I think I have supplied a few sources that show the changed usage. Happy to supply sources of style manuals for every university i can find plus SBS, ABC, BBC, the Guardian and all levels of government. WotherspoonSmith (talk) 01:57, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

When does one capitalize the word "on" during a title? I ask in relation to the song title "

I've operated under the assumption that

MOS:CT, which specifies title case almost always, applies to the titles of articles within other publications. They are titles of compositions, so it seems like a natural fit. Some citation styles seem to prefer sentence case and where I've seen that pattern in an article I haven't changed it, but generally, when I change things, I convert to title case.SchreiberBike talk

03:39, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

I regularly convert these copy-pasted, sentence-case titles of off-WP articles (almost always academic journal citations) to title case, and virtually no one ever reverts this. It's clearly something being done for convenience, not insistence that it's "right". I think most editors are experienced and level-headed enough to realize that various style guides/manuals use different citation styles and that some (like ours) call for title case on (English-language) article titles in citations, while others (e.g. in several of the sciences) call for sentence case in their journals. It's kind of nutty that WP doen't use it for our own article titles, mind you, but that's a fish to fry another day.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:44, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Me too. I'm amazed how often both book and article title drop capitals in online titles or references which are actually there in the printed version. I presume its just lazyness, but maybe there's another explanation. A title is a title, whether of an article or a novel, and we should follow the original. Johnbod (talk) 00:43, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

The initial question here is about all-caps, which we are pretty much against ("avoid"), regardless of the original. The question then becomes what other case to use where the original was all-caps. I say use title case, as retaining some sense of the original's all-caps. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:56, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I meant the question in general, not just for all-caps. I mentioned

MOS:ALLCAPS

because it's the only guideline that discusses article title capitalization (well, "newspaper headlines and other titles" to be precise), and it suggests that both title case and sentence case are acceptable.

Nobody has cited explicit guidelines on the question. People have given their assumptions, and SMcCandlish said the guidelines require title case for articles, but without citing a guideline. SchreiberBike's assumption that "composition" is meant to include articles may be right; it's not explicit, but the term has different meanings, and particularly in intellectual property law, it would encompass articles. I have sometimes converted articles from title case to sentence case for style consistency, the opposite of SMcCandlish, and the changes have been similarly unreverted, so I wouldn't draw any conclusions based on that; I think it mostly reflects the low priority of citation formatting. As was pointed out, non-WP style guides differ; APA, MLA, and Harvard call for sentence case, while Chicago calls for title case. Agyle (talk) 22:19, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

@Johnbod: It seems to be a combination of laziness (copy-pasting citation material from a journal that uses sentence case for titles, and not title-casing it the way we do here) and habit (people very used to sentence case for titles will habitually type titles out in sentence case when manually adding citations, regardless what case the original used, and regards of MOS's preference for title case. @Argyle: If MOS:ALLCAPS seems to suggest that sentence case for titles (other than WP's own articles, and foreign language titles in languages that don't use English-style titles case for titles at all, as in French), that's a confusion that needs to be cleaned up. I agree it's a low priority, but we might as well be clear that MOS settles on something. MOS:TITLE and MOS:CAPS I think have long been clear on title case. PS: Chicago is hardly the only mainstream style guide that calls for title case being used for titles.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:31, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

And then there is mixed use. E.g., newspapers used to have multiple headlines, the first all-caps, then subordinate headlines in a smaller font, mixed-case. To maintain some semblance of the difference I have used title-case and sentence-case. Well, it's not a burning issue, but clearer guidance might be useful. Possibly article titles in journals might be handled differently than those in newspapers and magazines. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:18, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

We generally don't need to mention subordinate headlines in citations.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:23, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Generally not, yes. But in some old newspaper headlines, where the first headline is so big they can get in only three or four words, sometimes the subordinate headline provides some context. Mixed usage seems useful there, though rarely used. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:53, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

I, also, would like MOS to state explicitly which of these we should do when citing refs (eg online news articles):

1. always convert references titles to title case
2. convert only all caps to title or sentence, but leave everything else unchanged
3. leave everything, including all caps, unchanged (This my personal preference, as I believe that the title should not be changed unnecessarily, including capitalisation)
4. no preference / editor's choice
5. (combined with 4) do the same thing consistently for all the refs in the article, following the method used by the first major contributor (eg per
   WP:CITEVAR
   )

As others have pointed out, there are ambiguities and contradictions in the existing MOS, and it wouldn't hurt to resolve them (even if the answer is "editor's choice"). One ambiguity not mentioned above is whether

WP:CITESTYLE's "style" is intended to include capitalisation of the title or not. I think not, but I believe others think that it does. If nothing else, having MOS give more specific guidelines would avoid wasting time on discussions like this. Mitch Ames (talk

) 12:17, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

• Comment—my preference, based on
  MOS:CT is to convert titles in references to title case consistently across the all of the references in an article for consistency. When done properly, this is a minor typographic change that does not affect meaning, and other style guides offer similar advice. Imzadi 1979 →
  00:35, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

The is an ongoing discussion about the capitalisation of the conservation statuses of biological species on Talk:Conservation status#Capitalisation of conservation statuses. Please do not hesitate to take part!

Coreyemotela (talk) 20:03, 4 June 2014 (UTC).

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see

SMcCandlish misstates the RM, which is to merely ask that there be about 12 exceptions to the standard natural disambiguation of horse breed names (out of 300-400 articles) due to specific circumstances. We are not arguing that all breeds should be in title case, we are arguing only for a few specific animal breed names where the proper noun form inherently requires a capitalization even of the species name, not a general rule. This is a non-issue for the overall MOS and should not be blown up into such a thing. Montanabw^(talk) 02:22, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Plain wrong, SMcCandlish. Hafspajen (talk) 14:39, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

I would like to add an example of a genre that does have capitalization because I've had editors changing them to lower case. Examples would be contemporary Christian music, Christian rock and other sub-genres.

Incorrect: She released one album to the Contemporary Christian Music market.

Incorrect: She released one album to the contemporary christian music market.

Correct: She released one album to the contemporary Christian music market.

Comments? Walter Görlitz (talk) 21:16, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

MOS:GENRECAPS already says "unless the genre name contains a proper name". It seems like an unnecessary addition to me as the Manual of Style is long now and it's worth fighting to keep it from growing unnecessarily. SchreiberBike talk

02:16, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Anyway, all these city examples may be too repetitive. The difference is general. I live in the state of California, but my tax bill comes from the State of California. It's only coincidence that the legal name and the geopolitical one are sometimes identical but for capitalization. The legal names of the states of Massachusetts and Virginia are the Commonwealths of Massachusetts and Virginia, respectively, and that of Rhode Island is even longer. The legal names of the UK counties of Belfast, Somerset, and Ayr are (were? I forget which aren't administrative counties any longer) County Belfast, [just] Somerset, and Ayrshire, respectively.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:43, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree that your proposal is much more in line with general Wikipedia principles (minimise capitalisation) and logic (as far as language bends to it) than some of the current wording which seems to be in part the result of an undiscussed addition by

WP:BRD? -- Michael Bednarek (talk

) 13:33, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

I have reverted myself for now. I'll return to this discussion this evening after work and other commitments. Cheers, Hwy43 (talk) 15:46, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Cool, but preventing changes here isn't my goal, just having it say what it should say, clearly, is. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:59, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

The City of Smithville has a population of 55,000.

My additions of three plural city scenarios has called the above pre-existing example at

Like universities, municipalities are legal entities. Municipalities have legally defined official names (i.e., "proper names"), geographic boundaries and a form of local government with jurisdiction over delegated matters within those boundaries. In most cases I am aware, the official legal names apply both to the defined geographic area and the local government. This local government represents the residents, land owners, businesses, etc. within the defined geographic area. If 55,000 people live within the geographic boundaries of the land legally defined as, and under the official name of the "City of Smithville", it is correct to say The City of Smithville has a population of 55,000.

In my corner of the world, no one would ever use this sentence to describe the amount of people on City of Smithville’s payroll. The sentence describes the amount of people that live there within the municipality's legally defined boundaries. To suggest The City of Smithville has a population of 55,000. is incorrect while The City of Smithville employs over 500 people, including police. is correct, is also to suggest that The University of Delhi has a student population (i.e., enrollment) of 5,000. is incorrect while The University of Delhi employs over 500 people, including faculty and support staff. Hwy43 (talk) 07:22, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

I see your point about The City of Smithville has a population of 55,000., when we mean the population of the exact legally defined city limits, but we have to distinguish it from cases of The city of Smithville has a population of 55,000. and Smithville has a population of 55,000., both of which have an indeterminate meaning, and stick to what the sources actually say. Very often what is understood to be a city, and addressed as such in sources, is not precisely the legal-boundary-defined city. "The city of Smithville" (lower case) is typical English-language usage (US, UK, and otherwise) to refer to what is commonly understood to be an urban geographical location called Smithville. The average person, even many of its residents, not to mention various sources writing about it, may not actually have any idea whether the legally defined entity, the City of Smithville, covers precisely the same area they're thinking/writing about. Cities annex nearby townships and other land all the time, and sometimes lose land as neighborhoods or boroughs incorporate and form separate legal entities with their own municipal governments; public understanding of the exact effects of any such change is slow to take hold. We cannot confuse these two concepts - the exact legal city vs. the city as popularly understood - in our writing. It's a

WP:NOR

problem to do so. (NB: I was making a language logic joke when I suggested that "The City of Smithville has a population of 55,000." means a huge municipal payroll.)

U. of Delhi example: It is not "also to suggest" that at all; the cases are not in any way comparable. There is no usage, anywhere, of "the university of Delhi" (lower case), much less to refer to a place in the general sense that may or may not exactly correspond to the legally defined real property of the University of Delhi.

Anyway, we clearly need a bigger example tree, that includes these (I'm skipping some of the formatting, and eliding ones not under discussion):

• Correct with regard to a city broadly defined, or when the meaning in the source is unclear (geographically specific) The city of Smithville has a population of 55,000. or Smithville has a population of 55,000.
• Correct only with regard to exact, legal city limits (jurisdictionally more specific) The City of Smithville has a population of 49,000.
• Incorrect (geographically specific, but logically wrong) The city of Smithville employs over 500 people. or Over 500 people are employed by the city of Smithville.
• Correct (legally specific) The City of Smithville employs over 500 people. and Over 500 people are employed by the City of Smithville.
• Correct (varies) Over 50,000 people are employed in... the city or the City of Smithville, depending upon whether we're being geographically or jurisdictionally precise.
• Ambiguous (uncertain) “Over 500 people are employed at the city of Smithville.” or “Over 500 people are employed at the City of Smithville.”
• Incorrect (general) The University has a student body of 5,000 or The Universities in Delhi have a total student body of 15,000
• Correct (general) The university has a student body of 5,000 and The universities in Delhi have a total student body of 15,000
• Correct (specific) The University of Delhi has a student body of 5,000 and Over 500 people are employed by the University of Delhi.; Over 500 people are employed at the University of Delhi. may be ambiguous if another employer, e.g. a restaurant or credit union, employs anyone on the university grounds.
• Correct (very specific and unambiguous) Pat's Restaurant employs 20 people., Twenty people are employed by Pat's Restaurant., and Twenty people are employed at Pat's Restaurant.

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:35, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for recognizing my point. I’m going to continue to focus on the population-related examples for now.

A) Regarding the first two examples, if the City of Smithville has a population of 49,000 within its city limits, I’m having a difficult time reconciling that there would be an appropriate scenario to use The city of Smithville has a population of 55,000. That is, how could Smithville have two significantly different

reliably sourced

populations? More specifically, and legal boundary adjustments (annexations, separations, etc.) aside, how can the broadly defined place of Smithville factually have a 12% higher population than the legally defined place of Smithville?

B) At

WP:OR

, or is it verifiable and reliably sourced? If the alternate population is not directly linked to a legally or statistically defined boundary that is verifiable and reliably sourced, I don’t think The city of Smithville has a population of 55,000. is even possible.

C) As a quick aside about legal boundary adjustments, here is an example of how use of "City of..." is still appropriate. A significant amalgamation occurred in the Ottawa region in 2001. The City of Ottawa had a population of 323,340 in 1996. is correct because the population corresponds with its legally defined city limits as they existing at that time. Likewise, the statement of The City of Ottawa had a population of 774,072 in 2001. is also correct as it applies to its post-amalgamation boundaries. Hwy43 (talk) 07:59, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

D) BTW, I fixed some formatting within your examples to what I think was intended and to aid in interpretation. If I am incorrect, feel free to revert those portions of my edits. Cheers, Hwy43 (talk) 08:40, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

@

fallacy of equivocation with stats like these, using numbers that apply to one area as if they applied to a different but overlapping one. I agree that generally one would want to report the same sorts of stats for the same kinds of geographic areas in things like CANPOP tables.

C) I have no disagreement with that.

D) Yep, looks right to me.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢

 ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:58, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geology#Capitalization of divisions of geological time. Dicklyon (talk) 04:40, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

A user just moved [14] "

I have reverted that move, as it was undiscussed. I am not aware of such an exception. —BarrelProof (talk) 21:15, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

No, there is no exception for the groups own usage... See:

WP:Official name - we do not necessarily use the name that the subject of an article desires. Instead we follow sources that are independent of the subject. Where things are less clear is what to do if a significant majority of sources that are independent of the group all present the name with a certain capitalization. In such cases there is a good argument for making a rare exception to our normally sound MOS guidance (per WP:COMMONNAME). Otherwise, we should follow the MOS. Blueboar (talk

) 17:41, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

It's not that rare for the style guide and common usage to conflict. To rely on common usage alone (what's a "significant majority of sources"?) would basically mean that our MOS would be a slave to the median of all the style guides [of outside sources] treating the subject. Dekimasuよ! 00:09, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Um... I think you may not understand what the meaning of the word "common" in COMMONNAME is... Just to be clear, we use the word in the sense of "frequency of usage", not in the sense of "what the common people call it". I.E. the "common" in COMMONNAME is talking about the number of sources that use a particular name when referring to the subject... and a "significant majority" means that there has to be agreement in usage between a lot more than just a simple majority ... the majority has to be fairly substantial. Blueboar (talk) 02:31, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

No, I'm not unclear on what the "common" in

WP:COMMONNAME means. It is not that rare for the common name, the most frequently used name, to conflict with our manual of style. The parenthetical was meant to point out that "a lot more than a simply majority" is very vague. Dekimasuよ!

02:38, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Answer: no, it doesn't—we have a house style, which does occasionally bend to outside style where there's compelling evidence and good stylistic reason; but this is rare. An example of the kind of thing we should disregard as POV: some Australian universities have recently gone in for vanity capping of the "The", in particular "The University of Queensland", quite insisting that staff use it in mid-sentence. Yet you go back to the incorporation documents, which have legal status, and find "the" in use. It's not WP's job to pay lip-service to local drives for commercial self-aggrandisement. Take no notice of this pap. Tony (talk) 11:41, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

@Dekimasu... OK. Just wanted to make sure.

@Tony...We do not necessarily follow the incorporation docs (per

WP:Official name). Nor do we follow the modern "vanity" desires of the university. What we should follow are the sources that are independent of the university. If a significant majority of independent sources capitalize the T in "The", then so should we (the capitalization is no longer pure "vanity"... it has become the accepted norm). On the other hand, if the independent sources do not capitalize the T (or if they are mixed in their usage), then neither should we. Blueboar (talk

) 12:39, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

@

WP:COMMONNAME does not apply to the styling. (I'm not convinced this is the right position to take, but it has been upheld repeatedly, e.g. over capitalizing English names of species, using en-dashes instead of hyphens, etc.) Peter coxhead (talk

) 11:28, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

The problem is that the contention that style is not dictated by sources has not been repeatedly upheld (remember the Deadmou5 debates?). The relationship between style and sourcing is actually the subject of extensive and continued debate. Yes, the diehards at MOS repeatedly argue that style should not be determined by sources... but the diehards at WP:AT repeatedly argue the opposite... and results at RfMs are mixed. I can point to move decisions that support both contentions. What settles it for me is that COMMONNAME is policy, while MOS is "only a guideline". As a community, we make a lot more exceptions for Guidelines than we do for policies... and when independent sources indicate that a specific name should be capitalized in a certain way, policy says we should follow those sources... we make an exception to the guideline. Blueboar (talk) 13:22, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

That's a weak, circular argument. Tony (talk) 13:36, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

I would say the same for your argument. But that is a debate for another day... ultimately we are agreeing on our response to the original question in this thread. Whether we follow MOS guidance, or look to independent sources per the AT policy...

WP:Official name applies. We don't necessarily follow how the group itself capitalizes it's name. Blueboar (talk

) 14:14, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

• Indeed. But may I point out that not one of the examples at WP:COMMONNAME (part of WT:TITLE) has any bearing on style whatsoever; nor is there any mention of style in its text. Wording is one thing, styling is another—that’s why the concepts are referred to differently. Tony (talk) 14:42, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Lack of example does not mean lack of jurisdiction. There have been numerous RfM debates that have been resolved by applying COMMONNAME to style questions (the most well known was probably the

Deadmou5 debate). In any case, we won't settle it here... For now, we will just have to continue to "agree to disagree". Blueboar (talk

) 15:30, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

I would advise you not to make the changes without initiating requested move discussions, considering that several editors objected to the move of Space Shuttle program to "Space Shuttle Program" at Talk:Space Shuttle program#Requested move 08 December 2014. Dekimasuよ! 03:41, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

What would be the rationale for capitalization, in relation to

WP:NCCAPS? Many NASA docs do not. I did a pass over the article fixing its inconsistent caps; might have missed some. Dicklyon (talk

) 04:39, 16 December 2014 (UTC)