Talk:For the Children

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move. Cúchullain ^t/c 14:21, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

For The Children → For the Children – Restore to standard capitalization per WP:CAPS:"In general, each word in English titles of books, films, and other works takes an initial capital, except for articles ("a", "an", "the")...". This proper name is backed by sources such as the BBC, Scotsman and the Daily Telegraph. Tassedethe (talk) 22:20, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

• Support. Clear WP:CAPS case. Jenks24 (talk) 01:18, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. What the MoS says is "Use lower case, except for proper names",[1] and the actual title of this TV programme is clearly a proper name. See for instance Donnelly (2005), and the citation already in the article. I sense though that sanity will not prevail over revisionism, therefore I'll now leave this article to you MoS warriors. I hope you'll develop it in the way it deserves. George Ponderevo (talk) 03:05, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
  • You've so fundamentally misunderstood what WP:AT and WP:CAPS say that I'm not sure where to start in correcting you. To use one of many obvious examples, Democratic Republic of the Congo is clearly a proper noun, yet we don't capitalise "of" and "the" because of that. Jenks24 (talk) 13:17, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

    You seem to have only a passing acquaintance with the concept of a proper noun. Consider "Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Windsor" for instance, or the TV series Children Of The Night. George Ponderevo (talk) 17:17, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

    First, I'd like to apologise for my comment; it was over the top and your comment did not merit that sort of response. Regarding your first example, it seems that the standard way to capitalise the first is "Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Windsor", which would be in line with WP:CAPS (see here). To your second, we don't appear to have an article on that TV series and I'm not familiar with it, so I couldn't properly refine a google books search for it, but the capitalisation of all the proper nouns at the Children of the Night disambiguation page may be of interest. Jenks24 (talk) 22:21, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

    Apology accepted; there seems to be something in the Wikipedia environment that encourages such comments. But let me give you another example, that of the capitalisation of novel titles, which is clearly closely related to the capitalisation of TV programmes. Consider Orlando: A Biography; by the normal rules of punctuation that ought to be Orlando: a Biography, but as it's a proper noun and the convention for novel titles is that the subtitle begins with a capital letter then it's not. In other words, my argument is that the normal rules of WP:CAPS don't apply to the titles of TV programmes, just as they don't apply to the titles of novels. Or as Fowler writes, "the employment of capitals is a matter not of rules but of taste". George Ponderevo (talk) 00:40, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

    Actually, WP:CAPS explicitly covers "English titles of books, films, and other works". Decapitalizing "the" here should be completely uncontroversial. Similarly, Children of the Night should be written with lowercase "of" and "the". Jafeluv (talk) 09:31, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

    Indeed it does, and what it says is this: " for many works of art the capitalization practice can be derived from the original publication". So as Children Of The Night and For The Children are derived from the original publication in that they are the names the series were broadcast and promoted under, they too ought to be uncontroversial. And I'd be interested to hear your justification for the capitalisation of Orlando: A Biography. George Ponderevo (talk) 13:11, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

    The context of the text you quote is quite different from what is the case here – it's from a section of WP:CAPS that discusses the capitalization of foreign-language (specifically French) titles. I'll just quote the third paragraph of the guideline which I feel is more relevant to this case: "In general, each word in English titles of books, films, and other works takes an initial capital, except for articles [...], the word "to" as part of an infinitive, prepositions and coordinating conjunctions shorter than five letters [...], unless they begin or end a title or subtitle." (Note that the indefinite article is capitalized in Orlando: A Biography because it begins a subtitle.) Jafeluv (talk) 06:28, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

• Support. I do not believe this is in any way a MoS issue but an English issue; the MoS simply follows standard English rules on this. See e.g., here ("do not capitalize prepositions, the word and or the articles a, an, or the when used as part of a proper noun... the Statue of Liberty"), here and, well, the rule is ubiquitous. By the way, in "Orlando: A Biography", the "A" follows a colon, which is often capitalized regardless of whether it falls inside a proper noun or not because it is treated as if it's a new sentence (though grammar guides often advise against doing this unless whatever follows the colon could stand on its own as a sentence).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:52, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

  "... follows a colon, which is often capitalized regardless of whether it falls inside a proper noun or not because it is treated as if it's a new sentence". I'm afraid yo'u've got that completely wrong. What follows a semicolon is treated as a complete sentence, not a colon, but even then the initial letter isn't capitalised unless it's part of a proper noun. But this isn't about the rules of English, it's about what the creators of the programme actually called it, not what Wikipedia editors think they ought to have called it. George Ponderevo (talk) 13:03, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

• George, you've cited the Wikipedia:Article titles section that says "Use lower case, except for proper names" as in support of your position but this simply means that proper nouns should be capitalized the way proper nouns are normally capitalized using normal English language rules, as opposed to the way we treat common nouns. I won't repeat the common grammar rule but it's consistent across every grammar/style guide/English language primer/English textbook, and is accordingly what is provided in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization) – that, unlike the WP:AT language you've misinterpreted, is where the detail is provided on the manner of capitalization for proper nouns. The logic (or illogic) of thinking "Use lower case, except for proper names" means we must capitalize in the manner the product or work does, by logical extension for example, requires us to use ALL CAPS if the topic does (and many products and works do just that). The issue couldn't be more directly addressed in the naming conventions guideline, directly against your position. I'm not big on bald, "because the the policy/guideline say so" arguments, but I agree with the guideline in this case.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:03, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

  You believe that I've misinterpreted something, I believe that you've misinterpreted something, so I doubt we're likely to agree any time soon. My position is quite simply that the article ought to carry the title given to it by its creators, but I see that's not the Wikipedia way. I do hope though that those who've contributed to this discussion, which is about twice the size of the article itself, will consider doing some real work in helping to expand it. For myself, I find discussions over trivia such as this one to be debilitating and demotivating, so I shall be moving along. George Ponderevo (talk) 01:17, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.