Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (capitalization)/Archive 5

This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

I really hate

I'm aware about the issue of capitalization for foreign-language works has been brought up several times before. The earliest debate goes back to

Comment:First off, I think you did an awesome job in summarizing the topic to date in a dispassionate manner despite your taxing history with the topic. That said, perhaps because I am a polyglot (sorta), I feel that any proper name (when referred to in its native language) should be copied and pasted as is. Unfortunately, Wikipedia policy and practice are at odds on multiple levels and should absolutely be made consistent, but it seems intuitive to me that a name is a name, and inviting editors to use their judgement to deviate from that standard should be the exception and not the rule. The only exception (in my mind) would be if the English speaking world had a name for something that is more common than the name in the native language, like Arch of Titus (instead of Arcus Titi in the native Latin). The big problem with applying English grammar to foreign languages is that it opens up the can of worms of the language proficiency of the editor. In English, we don't capitalize the articles and prepositions in titles unless they come at the beginning of the title. So then, in Spanish titles, do we capitalize "el" or "las"? What about "unas" or "un"? Which prepositions do we not capitalize? En? Fuera? Bajo? Entre? Sobre? What about if one of those words are used in a pun, and "sobre" means "over" and "envelope" at the same time? Or how about in German, they capitalize ALL nouns, whether proper or not. So, if we copy and paste something from that language, should we then have to sniff out which nouns should not have been capitalized? In Russian (and many other languages) they conjugate nouns and proper names. Should we remove those endings because they don't conform to English conjugations? When you bring in Spanglish titles it just gets even more nasty. How do we make it comform to English grammar? Should we even try? I say no. Just copy and paste whatever its officially called it and we're done.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 20:52, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

• Comment - excellent summary. There is a conflict between the minority of quality sources (eg English language Latin music books, Grove MOS, Continuum MOS) and the majority of non quality sources (eg Billboard MOS): so the guideline "using the capitalization found in most English-language reliable sources is recommended" should be changed to the most reliable, or simply we have a MOS like
  WP:FRMOS for French accents and stick to it. Hunting round to duplicate the MOS song-by-song for "English sources" for most songs is daft and random. In ictu oculi (talk
  ) 23:09, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
  • @
    Ni es lo mismo ni es igual by Juan Luis Guerra where the album title and its track listing follows the capitlization rules. Most popular Spanish-language albums don't usually follow its native capitalization because they are usually recorded here in the US. Maybe SMcCandlish's proposed suggestions for Spanish-language telenovelas above could (not saying should) be applied to Spanish-language recordings as well? Erick (talk
    ) 02:24, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

The ping above is a redlink, so didn't see it. I wasn't pinged on the other discussion at all. I can only say what I've said before, (1) this is a MOS choice, I am one of those who prefer a hardback book MOS approach to Billboard/Allmusic MOS. (2) the lead is much more important than the title, the lead in my view should follow the real song spelling/capitalization, not Spanglish/Franglish. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:27, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

@In ictu oculi: Then I think we can come to an agreement. If an editor is the sole contributer to an article and wishes to use capitalization found on English-language reliable sources from handbooks like those you mentioned, then that decision should be respected. Likewise, if an editor is the sole contributer to an article and wishes to use English-language reliable websites or other books, then that decision should also be respected. If there are several editors who have contributed to an article, then it should be up to consensus. As I have mentioned before, I respect whatever guidelines the Classical music and Albums projects wishes to follow for foreign-language capitalization and in turn I ask they respect the Latin music project wish as well. Erick (talk) 00:52, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

@Magiciandude: well I think I have my foot more in Classical music project, and interest in Latin music tends to the jazz/salsa standards rather than pop. It does make more sense for US Latin artists to follow a Caps Title style (for convenience say "Billboard MOS") than for tangos and boleros. I also think your point about respecting article creator/contributor is valid and should be more widely recognised in all projects. I will continue to express my preference for "hardback" style in discussions, but as above the lead is far more important than the title, for example I am going to proceed to remove that eyesore "stylization" repeat on the Ai Se Eu Te Pego lead sentence. It's understandable that Japanese and Korean artwork has "stylizations", but Portuguese is a straightforward Latin alphabet language. Thank you btw for your posts on this subject. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:24, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

I think this edit brought on the confusion. The "2 step" rule was never intended for titles of works of art, but for expressions, such as fin de siècle — not for album titles such as Fin de Siècle or Fin de siecle or a book title such as Fin-de-siècle Vienna. It was never the intention to go look for an album title and see whether or not it is an "expression" translated-or-not: the capitalization of a work of art is is independent of the consideration of whether or not that title is an expression.

So I'll separate the two again. Capitalization-wise I think there is some leaning towards the primary source, that is, the title as given by the artist, in whatever language, and stick to the capitalization rules of that language. --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:29, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

For comparison, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (operas): most opera titles @Wikipedia use the original language, with the capitalization of that language, e.g. La clemenza di Tito. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:11, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

@

Manual of Style for music also does for classical compositions. The bit about using capitalization found on English-language reliable sources was something I added without gaining consensus so I should have brought it up on the talk page first. Anyways, thanks for separating the information into two sections, it should lessen the confusion a lot. Erick (talk

) 16:05, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Is there still anything that needs further discussion, or can the under discussion tag be removed now? --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:38, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

@Francis Schonken: I just have two more suggestions for the guideline before finishing this discussion. I would add using capitalization found on foreign-language reliable sources for that work of art if there are too few or no English-language reliable sources available. And per @In ictu oculi:'s suggestion, I think it would be appropriate to change from "in most reliable English-language reliable sources" to "the most reliable English-language sources" since there websites that ignore the proper capitalization for English-language works of art. Erick (talk) 14:50, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Re. "...if there are too few or no English-language reliable sources available": This is already covered in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English)#No established usage in English-language sources, so I added a {{see also}} under the section header referring to WP:NCUE.

Re. changing "in most reliable..." to "the most reliable...": no, the first was intended. Ranging sources from "average" reliability to more reliable is illusive: either a source has enough reliability for its intended use in Wikipedia, or it hasn't. Discussions on whether one source is "more" reliable than another, I've seen them, and that's specifically where I wouldn't want to go, per

WP:AT policies not needed to be repeated here. --Francis Schonken (talk

) 17:18, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

@Francis Schonken: A fair point on both issues and I think that pretty much wraps up this discussion. Again, thanks for the help. Cheers! Erick (talk) 17:36, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Problems with the syntax of the new guideline

To %User:Francis Schonken, §User:Magiciandude, ‡User:In ictu oculi &User:Esprit15d and ¿any other interested parties:

I was linked to the new

"If the article is about a work of art (such as a book or other written work, movie, album, song, or composition) with a title in a foreign language, or by a foreign language creator, usually the capitalization found in English-language reliable sources is recommended, but when such sources use different capitalizations there is some leaning towards the capitalization rules valid for the language of the creator."

After a cursory reading the discussion above, my interpretation is that "creator" means creator of the work of art and not the creator of the article but a discussant above uses it to mean the article's creator. Which is the case? In addition, I find that double qualifying "usually" with "recommended" to be a bit weak and the phrases "there is" and "leaning toward" to be excessively vague.

If the guideline indeed refers to the creator of the work then how about some changes along the lines of the following:

If the article is about a work of art (such as a book or other written work, movie, album, song, or composition) with a title in a foreign language, or about a work by a foreign-language creator, usually the capitalization found in English-language reliable sources is recommended, but when such sources use different capitalizations deference should be given to the capitalization rules valid for the language of the creator of the work."

If the guideline instead refers to the creator of the article then how about:

If the article is about a work of art (such as a book or other written work, movie, album, song, or composition) with a title in a foreign language, or was created by a foreign-language contributor, usually the capitalization found in English-language reliable sources is recommended, but when such sources use different capitalizations deference should be given to the capitalization rules valid for the language of the creator of the article."

(I don't really know what a "foreign-language contributor" is, so I hope the latter is not correct.) What thinkes y'all? Thanks. —  AjaxSmack  04:47, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Typically, a four-letter preposition must be lowercased. like is anything, like a verb and a preposition. How are Love You like a Love Song and I Like It Like That different from each other? --George Ho (talk) 02:35, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

When 'like' is a coordinate conjunction, it is capitalized. Eric - Contact me please. I prefer conversations started on my talk page if the subject is changed 01:05, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, on

@

MOS:JOBTITLES. Errors of this type are widespread at Wikipedia and no one seems to care much. ―Mandruss ☎

11:53, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Sundostund even cared so much that he reverted the move. Without explanation however, so I repeated the move. Bever (talk) 22:42, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

I didn't saw that consensus is reached on

Talk:List of Presidents of the United States/Archive 6#Requested move and Talk:List of Federal Presidents of Austria#Requested move). I have nothing more to add to what is already said in those discussions, so I'm letting other users to reach consensus about the issue. Cheers! --Sundostund (talk

) 14:06, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the links, as those discussions show me what I would be up against if I attempted widespread corrections of these errors. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:57, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

See current discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music#Meanwhile at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music/Guidelines#French capitalization rules – seems like some rules might benefit from being harmonized across WikiProjects and more general standards. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:06, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Merge in MOS:PN – about merging an old, disused MoS subpage into the relevant major ones. An objection has been raised about potential loss of a line-item in the old page, but it's one that appears to be out-of-scope for MoS in the first place, as it is about article titles.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:40, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

This journal stylizes itself AoB PLANTS. However, I thought that we did not follow such styles and would use normal capitalization conventions, unless something is an initialism. "Plants" obviously is not an initialism, so i guessed the correct title would be "AoB Plants". ("AoB" stands for "Annals of Botany" and is an initialism). However, reading through this guideline, I see nothing mentioned about article names being (in whole or in part) all caps. What's correct here? --Randykitty (talk) 17:50, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Wrong page. This is covered at

Talk:PLOS ONE#Requested move 29 September 2017.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢

 ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:28, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: Russian railway line article titles.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  04:31, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#L'Hôpital's rule.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:34, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Hey there. There has been

• WP:TITLEFORMAT
  says to use sentence case.
• WP:NCCAPS gives a relevant example for multi-word articles: "1993 Russian constitutional crisis
  ".
• The current policy at Wikipedia:WikiProject Wildfire#Naming says capitalize "Wildfire"m, and this is based on the argument that it is a proper name.
• Other event-based projects (e.g. severe weather, meteorology, earthquakes) haven't made up their own rules to convert Edmonton tornado, Pine Lake tornado, 2013 Alberta floods, and 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

I'd like to create a consensus on this and make it a standalone section here at

Actually, it says to cap "Fire", not "Wildfire". This comes from official agencies that give fires names for their own purposes. It's not clear to me that secondary sources consistently treat these as proper names, but some do. In general, though, no, event descriptions are not proper names. It's sometimes hard to get the point accepted when there's a specialist editor community that likes to cap their stuff, because there are not enough people that care about Wikipedia style guidelines. Getting a more centralized discussion can help. Dicklyon (talk) 15:36, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

And this is not really a title issue, but a style issue. The title will be the same as how we style it in the article text. But titles are where the discussions take place, just because we have the

WP:VPP to get a wider audience. Dicklyon (talk

) 15:37, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

I went ahead and edited the Wildfire naming conventions to not look like an overt override of

MOS:CAPS. Surely the new wording will be acceptable to the project, as it still says to cap Fire when it's part of a proper name. Dicklyon (talk

) 15:53, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see

Additional editors are requested to discuss if the "from" in Spider-Man: Far From Home should be capitalized. The discussion is here Talk:Spider-Man: Far From Home#From or from?. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 17:00, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#The endless "fan-capping" problem
How are

Now archived at: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 206#The endless "fan-capping" problem.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:35, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

The issues raised in

@Roman Spinner: It's "Is". There is no principle by which a verb in a work title is made lower case (in a title that would be written in title case).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:20, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: A year ago, in July 2019, your vote would have been most welcome and might have contributed to convincing the opposition. Unfortunately, the opposition was not convinced and no one has apparently felt any desire to raise the matter again. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 03:14, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, there's a reason this page has a big note at the top to not post here (unless it's about editing this guideline). Hardly anyone watchlists this, and all "style noticeboard" types of discussions usually happen at MoS talk pages, which are heavily watchlisted, at least for the main one (

WT:MOSNUM, and a few others.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢

 😼  04:10, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Watchlister here. Roman Spinner, maybe just RM the page, enough time has gone by and it seems a good argument for a reversal from both of you. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:17, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

@

Ke$ha", because they're just marketing twaddle that real-world publishers usually ignore. So, an RM would only be feasible if there's strong evidence that a significant percentage (maybe ~20% – there's no exact cut-off or way to be certain, since search results vary) of mainstream, reputable sources write "Apathy Is Boring".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢

 😼  04:24, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

@

A Boy was Born), but that example was apparently judged to be not directly analogous. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs)

05:01, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Right; MOS:TITLES does apply to that. Basically, there's a rare style "out in the wild" (mostly mid-20th-C. and older, but still surviving in some real publications, and revived a little by sloppy online writers) to not just apply lower case to short prepositions but to all short words (other than "I"). So we'll encounter it at times. But it's so kooky, we should not acknowledge it in our own style except in the rare cases when an overwhelming majority of

WP:INDY sources also do. That will nearly never be for works (if anything, it'll be the opposite: overcapitalization, as in Spider-Man: Far From Home), but it won't be unheard of for organizational and product trademarks.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢

 😼  07:03, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Ultimately, it came down to who could provide more

Kiev. On the other hand, when no one cares, such as at Talk:Izzet Mehmed#Requested move 4 July 2020, the move is made without even a vote. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs)

22:40, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

That summary matches my experiences, except I would add that the most common source of drawn out trouble is probably the

specialized-style fallacy.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢

 😼  01:19, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Any thoughts on this move to Welcome to Country? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:15, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

It looks like unnecessary capitalization to me (cf.

bar mitzvah, etc.). But, it will probably come down to what the majority of reliable sources are doing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢

 😼  14:33, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Should it be Sarasvati River, as it is now, or "Sarasvati river"? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:47, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

WP:NCRIVER (first paragraph) would suggest that capitalized "River" is the better choice. Deor (talk

) 16:47, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 17:02, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Should these be capitalised? This guideline article implies not, but

Forbes72, I don't have a strong preference, but I do work on mine articles and have mostly kept the words 'copper mine' etc lowercase. There doesn't appear to be a consistent convention. (Similarly, 'oil field' and 'gas field' are somewhat more frequently lowercase, but not consistently so). I think if consistency matters to you, it's probably less work to establish a convention for lowercase, because it's slightly more common. Hope this helps! Thanks! Larataguera (talk) 11:59, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

I posted a note at

WP:MINING Larataguera (talk

) 12:31, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see:

Why are a lot of editors moving articles, especially British English articles to American convention titling? Govvy (talk) 13:55, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Do you have any examples to help editors understand what you're raising? ~TPW 15:01, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

@

Talk:1872 FA Cup Final and felt that the style guide feels somewhat bias towards an American style different from Oxford English Capitalise the first word of the title, and all words within the title except articles (a/ an/the), prepositions (to/on/for etc) and conjunctions (but/and/or etc). However there seems to be a move to change British English articles away from Oxford/Cambridge title style to the American approach which has me on the fence. Govvy (talk

) 16:15, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not use what you're calling "title style" for the titles of articles or for the section headings in them. We use sentence-style capitalization, as is made clear at

MOS:CT, are quite similar to Oxford's.) Deor (talk

) 16:22, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, and it has nothing at all to do with "American" versus "British".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:17, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

I want to establish a general rule for when we capitalize wars on Wikipedia. I found 5 different stylebooks and reviewed what they had to say:

I think that last 2 are unacceptable based on our current practices, but I do lean towards what the AP had to say on the matter (though it is too vague for things like the

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#RFC on capitalizing after dash in sports article names. That RfC really should have been opened here, since it's entirely about capitalization in article titles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:49, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters § RfC on capitalization after a colon or dash. Thank you. InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:45, 20 September 2023 (UTC)