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Capitalization of "List of Fellows of..." etc.

See Category:Lists of members of learned societies. Some are capped, especially "Fellows of the Royal Society", which I had a little pushback on while fixing. I'm presuming that even though "Fellow" is not a "job title", the same considerations as we have in MOS:JOBTITLES would apply. Other points of view on this? Dicklyon (talk) 23:03, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

  • A "member" of a society is a member in ordinary language, as well as being a grade of membership. Thus I am a member of the British Computer Society; I am also entitled to put "Member of the British Computer Society" or "MBCS" after my name. On the other hand, "fellow" in the ordinary language sense, at least in British English, does not have the same meaning as does "Fellow" in "Fellow of the British Computer Society". It's not a job title; how you would capitalize a degree is more appropriate. Would you write "List of doctors of science of X" for a list of people awarded a D.Sc. by institution X? Peter coxhead (talk) 17:56, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
    Yes, I would write "List of doctors of science of x"; wouldn't you? And I have been named Fellow of the IEEE, but our List of IEEE fellows and its subsidiary articles use lowercase. Are some societies somehow different about this? Dicklyon (talk) 01:50, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
  • The guidance at MOS:JOBTITLES states, apt to this discussion, "They are capitalized only in the following cases...When a formal title for a specific entity (or conventional translation thereof) is addressed as a title or position in and of itself, is not plural, is not preceded by a modifier (including a definite or indefinite article), and is not a reworded description" Thus, "there are many female fellows of the Royal Society", but "Jane Doe was named Fellow of the Royal Society in 2012". I hope that helps. --Jayron32 18:06, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
"Fellow of the Royal Society", and similar learned societies, is an honour/award not a position/job. If it is a list of Fellow of the Royal Society who are women then "female Fellows of the Royal Society" would be most accurate. The whole phrase is the award. We don't remove capitals from awards because they are plural (eg Victoria crosses should be Victoria Crosses) or have adjectives attached (eg foreign/female/Russian etc). This is different to a research fellow for example which is a job. Same word, different usage. Gaia Octavia Agrippa Talk 22:09, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
NYT has the MacArthur Foundation and its honorees, the MacArthur fellows. IMO, the guidance in MOS:JOBTITLES makes the most sense. —Eyer (If you reply, add {{reply to|Eyer}} to your message to let me know.) 22:41, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
I agree with that interpretation of JOBTITLES. You have titles President of the United States and Fellow of the Royal Society, but plurals presidents of the United States and fellows of the Royal Society. I don't see a reason to treat them differently. Dicklyon (talk) 01:39, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
Coming in as someone who doesn't know enough about this to give personal testimony. Does the word define an academic award or achievement title, such as Ph.Ds (Wikipedia capitalizes the Ph.D plural)? Does Harvard's use of the name President and Fellows of Harvard College, one of the governing boards of the university, enter into the discussion? Full disclosure, I plan on going to Harvard (if I can get past the gates and grab a look at an art museum or two). Randy Kryn (talk) 02:19, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
President and Fellows of Harvard College is the proper name of a governing board, not the plural of a title; so it will stay capped. Say hi to Click and Clack. Dicklyon (talk) 02:35, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
Hi Randy Kryn, your comment per PhDs (as written) is a conflation, since it is the pluralisation of an initialism. The goal posts point in a different direction when considering pluralising the phrase written in full, starting with where the "s" is placed and then, how this impacts the decision to cap (or not). Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 10:49, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
Cinderella157 Since when does pluralization of proper nouns lead to lower case? Are you arguing that the plural of Purple Heart is purple hearts?? That a singular member of The Beatles becomes a beatle? That makes no sense. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:23, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
David Eppstein, you are conflating a false equivalence between proper names and capitalisation - the former being a matter of grammar and the other, a matter of orthography. Proper names are not descriptive and cannot be pluralised or if they are in a pluralised form, cannot be singularised. There are lots of things that might be capitalised that are not proper names. Some of these are titles - of awards, honours and job titles. Others are because they are derived from proper names but are not being used as a proper name - ie there were three Williams present. "Purple Hearts" is a false analogy to which I have already commented (below). It is the title of an award (not a proper name). It is a false analogy because pluralising does not alter the phrase internally. On the otherhand, fellow of a society is an honorific. MOS:JOBTITLES applies to honorifics such as king or president. It is directly analogous. As to "a beatle", this would be an informal or incorrect construct (if not contrived - ie a false example). One would (more correctly of more formally) say: He was one of the Beatles. It might be a moot point but it is still not directly analogous to the case in hand (ie a false analogy) and we have guidance which is much more directly analogous. This is what we have an house style for. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 10:09, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
Also, a proper name is not normally modified by a determiner but sometimes includes the article the as part of the name, in which case, it cannot be substituted for a different determiner - as can be done with "a Purple Heart" or "the Purple Heart". Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 22:03, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

I'm seeing a clear majority opinion that JOBTITLES applies to such honorary titles. Unless someone starts an RFC that looks like it might overturn that, I'll assume per the recent "List of presidents of..." RM discussion that the consensus is that these overcapitalizations are worth fixing. Dicklyon (talk) 03:38, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

I strongly disagree, having found out about this discussion only because Dicklyon replied on his talk page when I complained about two of his many page moves based on this discussion. I would certainly have participated in the discussion had I known of it, having two of these lists on my watchlist, but I was blindsided by them. We don't lowercase Order of the British Empire, the proper name of a British honor, merely because some of the words in that name are also common English words; why should we similarly lowercase ACM Fellow, the proper name of a computer science honor, merely because it uses an English word? And why are we declaring a consensus based on a small number of participants on an obscure MOS talk page that was never advertised on any of the affected list-of-fellows pages? (Note: when "fellow" is used in its English meaning for this general class of honors, rather than as part of the name of a specific honor, as I used it in the immediately preceding sentence, it should certainly be lowercased, but this is not inconsistent that we should keep names of honors with their proper capitalizations.) I'm also skeptical about your ability to discern a consensus; multiple of the participants above opposed this change. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:07, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
I don't see a clear consensus here, either. My own inclination would be to capitalize Fellow in most circumstances where it refers to a specific honor. This is what I'm accustomed to in academic writing outside of Wikipedia. XOR'easter (talk) 17:53, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
I don't have an opinion about what the capitalisation should be, but there is certainly no consensus for any option in this discussion so nobody should be using it to support page moves in either direction. Thryduulf (talk) 22:46, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
I'm not seeing a clear distinction between "List of Fellows of..." and "List of presidents of...". Both tend to be elected honors, whether jobs or not. There was a very clear consensus to follow MOS:JOBTITLES for things like "List of presidents...", so I worked on a few hundred of those. What is it about "Fellows" that generates this pushback? Note that many of our "List of fellows..." articles already used lowercase. Dicklyon (talk) 04:50, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
The distinction is that "List of people with job x" should be titled treating x as the English name of a job (not a proper noun) while "List of people with award X" should be titled treating X as the name of the award (a proper noun). How is that so difficult to grasp? The name of the Purple Heart award is "Purple Heart", not "purple heart". The name of the James Beard Foundation Award is "James Beard Foundation Award", not "James Beard foundation award". And the name of the Fellow of the IEEE award is "Fellow of the IEEE", not "fellow of the IEEE". And I note that you moved many of our lists to lowercase, so the fact that many of them are now lowercase means only that you hold an incorrect opinion on capitalization of proper noun phrases and have acted on it. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:55, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
Just like people with. job title President of the United States, we don't cap in List of presidents of the United States. Yes, I got awarded, or elected, Fellow of the IEEE, but the (incomplete) set of articles like List of fellows of IEEE Communications Society don't cap fellows; and no I had nothing to do with those. Dicklyon (talk) 02:40, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Lower case: Per AReaderOutThataway. JOBTITLES applies. There is a formal title but by pluralising, it is no longer the formal title. "Purple Heart" does not change construction in the same way as the matter under discussion. "List of people with award X", does not alter the construction of X in the same way as the matter under discussion. And frankly, a proper noun is not descriptive. An orthographic convention to capitalise (or not) does not create equivalence with "proper noun". A title which is descriptive is not a proper noun even though convention or style may nonetheless result in it being capitalised. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 11:43, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

I note that there has still been no attempt to make this discussion known at the talk pages of the affected lists. Unless you get buy-in from the editors of those lists, any discussion here can hardly be considered a consensus of those editors. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:19, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
At this point, the only pages where "List of fellows" has been contested are the two orgs that David Eppstein is a fellow of (List of Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery (which I am also a fellow of), and List of Fellows of the American Statistical Association), and the 250 or so years like List of Royal Society Fellows elected in 1714 and List of Fellows of the Royal Society elected in 2016 that I haven't gotten to yet. Besides the Royal Society ones that Gaia Octavia Agrippa moved back, none of the others that I downcased have been challenged. I'm sure that people in a position to care must have many of those on their respective watchlists, and a local consensus of editors of the particular pages would not overturn the broad consensus to respect MOS:CAPS anyway. I still think I see a consensus here, more clearly now with recent comments; is there a reason to do an RFC on this, or is it clear already? Dicklyon (talk) 02:33, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
I did some maintenance work on List of fellows of IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, and the lowercase "fellows" looked wrong all the while. I had thought about upper-casing it but didn't get around to it before this discussion started. And I see no clarity arising from the discussion, just invocations of MOS:JOBTITLES, a style guide that I honestly can't see being applicable. Invoking the broad consensus to respect MOS:CAPS presumes that MOS:CAPS actually says to lowercase "Fellows", but the closest thing in it is the bit about military awards and decorations. As mentioned above, "Fellow of the Royal Society" is analogous to "Victoria Cross", which MOS:CAPS says to capitalize. XOR'easter (talk) 01:00, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
I don't see them as analogous. I would say "she received the Victoria Cross" not that "she is a Victoria Cross". I would say that "she is a fellow of the Royal Society" not that "she received the Fellow of the Royal Society". I think you might say that "she received the Fellowship of the Royal Society". SchreiberBike | ⌨  01:58, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
I'd say "she was elected Fellow of the Royal Society". It's pretty darn analogous. XOR'easter (talk) 03:42, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
Very analogous to "was elected President of the United States", I'd agree. Dicklyon (talk) 04:58, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
Except that's election to a job, not an honorary status. XOR'easter (talk) 05:29, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
Analogous. Dicklyon (talk) 04:41, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
@Dicklyon: and [[user:XOR'easter|]] disagree on whether it is analogous or not, simply repeating your assertion with no justification is unhelpful and frankly feels rather childish to me. Thryduulf (talk) 13:09, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
Chivalric ranks (peerages etc - which may be awarded for life or be hereditary) are granted as an honour or award. JOBTITLES clearly applies to such titles (ie duke, earl etc). As an honour or award, JOBTITLES is directly analogous to the matter of fellows. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 23:32, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
Thryduulf misinterprets our exchange. I say it's analogous. XOR'easter says "Except that's election to a job, not an honorary status." I don't disagree that it's not the same, but emphasize that we appear that it's "analogous" as I said. No big deal. Sorry if it "feels childish" to Thryduulf; that's on him. Dicklyon (talk) 04:08, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Lowercase per MOS. And while we're at it, there are tons of "List of [job name] in [country name]" that need downcasing. Tony (talk) 06:55, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
    Tony, if you can provide some examples, I can search for more and work on fixing them. Dicklyon (talk) 03:38, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Lowercase per MOS:JOBTITLES SchreiberBike | ⌨  03:17, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
    • @SchreiberBike: That's not a helpful contribution to this discussion given that the subject under discussion is not the title of a job - you need to explain why you believe awards be treated the same as job titles. Thryduulf (talk) 13:09, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
      • MOS:JOBTITLES clearly and unambiguously states, near the top, that it applies to "Offices, titles, and positions" A fellow clearly meets that requirement. It shouldn't be necessary for every person to quote the entire policy every time. Parts of the policy written in plain English in an unambiguous way don't need to be re-quoted every single time. The presumption that someone, such as yourself, is capable of reading and understanding the meaning of words like "offices, titles, and positions" and also being able to apply them in a simple case such as is not in dispute. We assume you know what an "office" "title" and "position" means in this context, and that fellows are a form of office, title, or position. --Jayron32 14:48, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
        • @Jayron32: I'm not here to argue for or against either position (I don't have an opinion) but when a key part of the disagreement is about whether or not the JOBTITLES guideline is relevant, it really isn't helpful to just wander in, say "it's relevant", and then wander off again. The argument from those who disagree with you is that a fellowship is an award, not a job, title or position and they have explained why they regard it as such. Unless you can explain why you believe it is one (or more of) a job, title or position and is not an award then your contribution really isn't useful. Thryduulf (talk) 16:00, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
          • Sure. There's an organization titled, let's say "The Royal Society of Pedants". One of the positions within that organization is "Fellow of the Royal Society of Pedants". To hold that position also grants the officeholder of that position the title "Fellow of the Royal Society of Pedants". That's how these things work. It is an office/title/position granted by the organization in question. Again, this is the plain English language understanding of what all of these terms mean in this context. It shouldn't have to be explained. But there is the explanation. --Jayron32 16:19, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
            • That would be fine if XOR'easter hadn't spent several comments explaining that a fellow is an award not an office or a position, that fellows are not officeholders and that "fellow" is the title of an award not the title of a job. Thryduulf (talk) 17:49, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
              • I never said it was a job. That implies it was a means of earning a living, by performing work in exchange for a salary. I said that it was an office/position/title which is (in the first two senses) membership within an organization and in the third sense, a style added to someone's name based on that membership. They have asserted that it is an award. That's a rather novel interpretation of what it means to be a fellow of a society or organization. Here, in Oxford, it is defined (for our context) as "A member of a learned society." It nowhere mentions, in that dictionary, the meaning of fellow as "an award". Merriam Webster, a dictionary of American English with similar regard as Oxford is for British English, mentions no awards in any of its definitions, but does say things like " a member of an incorporated literary or scientific society" or similar. The assertion that these represent an award granted to a person, rather than a position within an organization, is a novel definition not supported by actual, well respected dictionaries, which is why the rest of us aren't using it in that sense. --Jayron32 17:58, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Capitalisation of internet vs Internet

To quote @Markworthen: in this discussion, "In American English "Internet" has traditionally been capitalized. However, Merriam-Webster notes: "In U.S. publications, the capitalized form Internet continues to be more common than internet, although the lowercase form is rapidly gaining more widespread use. In British publications, internet is now the more common form." American Heritage Dictionary lists "internet, also Internet". I reviewed Manual of Style/Capital letters; searched within the Manual of Style for "internet"; and searched Help for "manual of style internet", but did not find any specific Wikipedia guidance. I am in favor of "internet". Perhaps we should propose including a line or two about the word in the MOS and recommend using "internet" for articles in American English. I suspect most articles in BE, AU, NZ, and other forms of English already use the lower-case version, although I did not investigate." --[E.3][chat2][me] 14:26, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Lower case seems the sensible way to go. Tony (talk) 03:32, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
For a New Yorker like me, this debate was over three years ago (It's Official), but I'm neutral on whether it gets a recommendation in the MOS. —jameslucas ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ 03:49, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
We have the article Capitalization of Internet which might be illuminating. I've definitely noticed that capitalization of the word is decreasing. SchreiberBike | ⌨  03:52, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Yes for me personally the capitalisation "Internet" feels most unnatural. Interesting to see the history behind it. I think given the number of external MOS that have been updated to reflect its common usage, it is worth standardising as uncapitalised on wiki, especially since the clear global trend favours it. --[E.3][chat2][me] 13:07, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
I don't care about what dictionaries say, I was just looking for an NPOV when I was going to ask the very same question. Also, @E.3:, since the article linked above spells "capitalization" with a Z, you should have done the same, but you spelled it with an S instead in the the header to this discussion page entry. --Fandelasketchup (talk) 11:55, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
Apologies, I hope you understand my position as a native speaker of AU/NZ English (always stuck in the middle between UK and US English) that -isation vs -ization is virtually never an intentional decision for me, and certainly not in this case. However I do feel that lower case internet is worthy of discussion. --[E.3][chat2][me]
  • Lower-case and include in MOS, per nom, Tony, and JamesLucas' link. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:03, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Lowercase/Comment – looking at Capitalization_of_Internet#Argument_for_proper_noun_usage, and the rest of the article, I can't even find a source that argues that Internet is a proper name (I called for a citation to that effect); yes, there are a few examples of style guides that recommend capping, but no actual discussion of why. I'm sure they exist, but all the recent discussion I find is going the other way, arguing why to phase out this old "specialized" style from the community that developed it. So, as long as Randy is on board, I see no reason to stick with cap. On the other hand, if you look at this ref you see that we do still cap some other things that we shouldn't -- should we try to be more consistent with our general plan of MOS:CAPS? Dicklyon (talk) 15:21, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
Perchance (never used the word before), are you saying, per your link, that Wikipedia should lower-case Sun and Moon in all instances and not just in 'the sun rose' context? Those two astronomical bodies are pretty substantial things compared to the you-can't-point-to-it internet (I've always thought of internet as lower-cased and never thought of it as an upper cased definable object or event). But unless I'm mistaken, that massive thing up there that's emitting energetic life-sustaining photons and that Earth is trying to fall into, and that large rock that's trying to fall to Earth (which the sunlight lights up to give a nighttime show of it trying to fall to Earth), are solid enough and prominent enough to have proper names. That's one of the really good things about Wikipedia, that we ignore all rules and upper-case Sun and Moon, which are usually oddly lower-cased by confused or unobservant writers and editors. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:41, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
The English language rule is that there is no rule. Just as there no hard and fast rules for a whole host of other issues in the language. Example: spelling, depending on country, Oxford or Cambridge, newspaper, or country.
The only rule (rather publishing practise) is to be consistent on a page, You know that. Just as you know it's not the projects remit to creatively make a different rule out of nothing; which is unofficially the Oxford University's privilege. This whole topic your pushing is over something 99.9 percent of the population doesn't notice or care about. It's the kind of false rule that makes the language rigid, English is the most powerful language in part because of its flexibility. However your actions or policing on this nit picking piece of uniformity, continues to play havoc with software links and redirects, destroying the follow on of reader scores. Once the title is changed in anyway the article loses its historical read count.
This all stems from a piece of contradictory nonsense in MOS:THECAPS, where the policy says: In English-language titles, every word is capitalized, except for articles, short coordinating conjunctions, and short prepositions. First and last words within a title, including a subtitle, are capitalized regardless of grammatical use. This is known as title case. Capitalization of non-English titles varies by language.This is not applied to Wikipedia's own articles, which are given in sentence case:[a] capitalize the first letter, and proper names (e.g., List of selection theorems, Foreign policy of the Hugo Chávez administration).
In a number of other places you have pedalled this nonsense and failed to get consensus. Yet you carry on regardless. See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ships#Motor_Torpedo_Boat_PT-109_and_other_such_boats
Please tell us why the rules of the English language can be or should be ignored in this matter, by this contradictory and superficial policy; and why you continue to push your unwanted dogmatic style dictatorship. See here Talk:Motor_Gun_Boat#Requested_move_20_October_2013 where the whole idea was emphatically rejected.
Do you honestly think that every creator of an article doesn't put thought into the style of the title. So every time you change it your doing something without that person's agreement; without their consent. Many against the one it would seem. You are in the minority; no consensus! Broichmore (talk) 19:27, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
Broichmore, are you addressing me with that statement? It's spaced as if you are, so please clarify. I didn't participate in one of the discussions you linked, and I don't run around changing titles unless they are obviously changeable. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 20:37, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
He means me, as I downcased an article he created (Air lock diving-bell plant) and maybe some others he cared about. In general, I think editors mostly do not think about the issues in WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS when they create articles; almost all articles are created in title case, and those that aren't proper names get adjusted later. But yes sometimes editors do think about it and try to do the right thing, which I applaud. That doesn't mean their decisions carry more weight that other editors who review it later. Dicklyon (talk) 04:48, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
Dicklyon Randy Kryn Dick thank you for putting Randy straight.
Dick, So much of the above is just incorrect. The internet started off in lower case as a custom back in the days of Tim Berners-Lee when computers were little better than ticker tape machines. We are way past that since HTML. The rules of the English language apply now, because computers can now emulate the printed page. Using title case, as it's own title suggests is to use caps, and that is the norm in the English language. All your continuing sophistry does not mask that this is the case; in your own words, editors mostly use caps in titles, and even in the wiki policy itself it admits the English language uses title case. Yet you persist in this nonsense of creating vast numbers of re-directs. The English language rule is that there is no rule. The publishing practise is to be consistent on a page. I would put the point that since your re-directs the reader scores are lost on transfer to the new title. If a newspaper quotes an instance of how many times a page was read, it will come up with wrong statistic thanks to you. To comment on what NASA does is absurd, it, as is the English language is inconsistent. It's easy to pick out bits that prove your point, which is misleading to others here. Your contributions page is revealing, your changing page names because of the wrong sized dash. Thousands of times. If, well meaning and constructive editors are getting this wrong then the rules need to be simplified, that's clear. As for your statement those that aren't proper names get adjusted later., well I would dispute that you are the world authority on what is and what isn't from my own personal experience with you. Meanwhile you sit at the very centre of a maelstrom of controversy on multiple talk pages, which you obviously enjoy as you seek it out, at the same time creating black holes sucking the time out of useful editors. Broichmore (talk) 13:05, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
If, well meaning and constructive editors are getting this wrong then the rules need to be simplified, that's clear Yes, I am often confused when trying to use the same style on the page when there is no MOS guidance. I understand with regional varieties of English, but things like emdashes and endashes, etc, are confusing when creating collaborative articles to me. Lowercase internet seemed like an easy way to standardise, for MOS from my experience in writing a detailed technical article as a newbie. --[E.3][chat2][me] 15:14, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
As for Sun and Moon, no, I'm not saying lowercase in all instances; but note that some were arguing caps in almost all instances, claiming that in "the sun rose" we mean the astronomical object, so it's an astronomical context – to which I say BS, and sources don't support that. As for "universe", yes, I'd say always lowercase; NASA says so, too. Maybe "solar system", too. Just as the techies like their capped Internet, the astronomers like their stuff capped, even when sources mostly don't. Dicklyon (talk) 04:53, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Lowercase. Writing "the Internet" as such was once common, but it is more and more frequently being written in lowercase. Calidum 14:47, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Lowercase; the technical distinction between the Internet and an internet isn't something most readers or editors maintain anymore, and several style guides (e.g., Wired, Chicago Manual of Style, The New York Times, AP) and writers have already made the switch to always writing internet in lowercase. If traditionally small-i internets are to be talked about, terms like "networked computers", "computer networks", or "internetworks" would perhaps be less ambiguous. Umimmak (talk) 15:20, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
Since when, is it our remit to mould and codify the English language. We are not allowed to engage in original research, but here we are dictating how English (or should I write english (sic)) should be written. Dicklyon through his sophistry and trouble making has made the titling of a Wikipedia article a daymare already, and now we're going to do the same with prose. That's a worse mare. The rule is to do what you want as long as its consistent on a page. For every New York Times there is another paper that will do it differently. Particular Newspapers are not our style leaders and shouldn't be. Earlier the wrong sized dash was mentioned; this is another case of the project getting it wrong by standardizing on the dash that's awkward to implement on a keyboard. We are going down a similar road to hell here. As is the case in numerous other places Dicklyon will wind up here with as usual with a no consensus result. That would be sensible. Mind you I said the same in favour of remain instead of Brexit. Oh, and Sun and Moon is a title and in small it's prose. Broichmore (talk) 16:07, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Lowercase and support for MOS as nom. I understand other peoples concerns around wiki being internally consistent in an article without too much style intrusion. However, I think all of the guides, and the vast bulk of us, have followed the world in lower casing internet so this is a specific case. Internet is confusing, sticks out like a sore thumb, and is so 1996. --[E.3][chat2][me] 14:57, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
And from another bent from this article I was the bulk contributor: A different perspective in 2018 by Musetti and colleagues reappraised the internet in terms of its necessity and ubiquity in modern society, as a social environment, rather than a tool, thereby calling for the reformulation of the internet addiction model. The internet is becoming established as an online environment, in some experts opinion, and so therefore not a proper name. --[E.3][chat2][me] 15:05, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Lowercase and include in MOS. "Internet" doesn't fall into any of the capitalization categories discussed in MOS currently. It is a bit of an odd duck and deserves an explicit mention. Inclusion in MOS is probably necessary for it to be lowercased on, e.g., Internet, where the capital I looks strange and anachronistic, as others have mentioned. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Danstronger (talk • contribs) 23:48, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Use upper case; it's a proper name in 99.9% of usage here. An internet is a lower-cased common noun, but effectively obsolete terminology (we say WAN these days). It doesn't matter that the AP Stylebook and some others prefer lower case. They're not written by people with a deep technical background, and their LC recommendation is simply ignorant. We can and should do better. The [World Wide] Web is a similar but district case. In reference to the Web, it's a proper name. In reference to web technology, by which both the Web and millions of intranets operate, it's a common noun (or adjectival derivative thereof), except in the case of the Web, proper, being a required component. Apache is a web server; PayPal is a Web service.

    There are many other such subtle distinctions. E.g.: "East Bay Community Recovery Project is partially funded by the City of Alameda" (a legal entity and thus a proper name); but "I work in the city of Alameda" (a place, disambiguated from the county of the same name). No one lives in "the City of Alameda" (unless someone's squatting in a particular government office building, I suppose).
     — AReaderOutThataway t/c 05:20, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

  • Lowercase and include in MOS. per common usage by Wikipedia editors (see above). The OED (new entry in June 2001) has only lower case, though, to be fair, it does cite capitalised usage in American sources. Dbfirs 09:38, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Because Internet is a recent book about our new language habits. It uses lowercase internet. Dicklyon (talk) 22:11, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
  • My call... officially declare that no one gives a flaming flamingo whether it should be capitalized or not. Allow both, and consider any further discussion to be disruptive behavior... and anyone who changes from one to the other gets a topic ban. Blueboar (talk) 22:25, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

All caps for music artist JPEGMAFIA?

Moved to Talk:Jpegmafia § Requested move 15 October 2019

Need your opinions on how to apply the caps rules to music artist JPEGMAFIA. Should it remain a stylization with just the J capitalized or should the article be renamed to all caps? Note it is not an acronym Talk:Jpegmafia AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 15:47, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Per discussion result, article has been renamed to JPEGMafia. AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 14:17, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Please see Talk:JPEGMafia#Instagram_objection_to_title and comment there on whether the artist's objection to be named such a title format should be taken into consideration. AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 21:30, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Regarding MOS:GAMECAPS

Talk:Three-Man_Chess is currently holding a discussion regarding the capitalisation of the names of several chess variants, i.e. should we write Three-Man Chess or three-man chess?. These games are non-copyrighted derivatives of chess. MOS:GAMECAPS states that sports, games, and other activities that are not trademarked or copyrighted are not capitalized (except where one contains a proper name or acronym, or begins a sentence) which would seem to pretty definitively rule in favour of non-capitialized versions.

However in the discussion we have found that many of these games are commonly referred to in capitalised form (including throughout The Classified Encyclopaedia of Chess Variants. The guidance appears to mandate a style here that clashes with common usage.

Practically, it seems like chess variants, although normally within the public domain, are generally discussed in the same manner as proprietary games and it would be more natural to use the same grammar. A bright line based on trademark/copyright status does not seem fit for purpose, and this guideline should be relaxed.

Specifically I propose to add "generally" to: sports, games, and other activities that are not trademarked or copyrighted are generally not capitalized (except where one contains a proper name or acronym, or begins a sentence) and add the following text at the end of the paragraph: However some names of non-trademarked/copyrighted games are nevertheless typically capitalized (e.g. Hearts (card game)), and capitalization should follow the format most commonly used for each game. --LukeSurl t c 14:23, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

I oppose this approach. The observation "commonly referred to in capitalised form" is far short of our usual capitalization criteria. Almost any term important to some specialized community will be commonly capitalized within that community. That doesn't make it a proper name, and WP style is not to dress it up as a proper name unless there's good evidence, such as "consistent capitalization", to show that it is one. The idea that we let others "vote" on our style, as in "follow the format most commonly used for each game" is antithetical to having a house style. And why do you think hearts is "typically capitalized"? Book stats appear to disagree strongly. Dicklyon (talk) 02:27, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

This ngram is a little closer and favored caps until a few years ago. The overall use of titles of chess variants is a close call, and I'd support upper-casing copyrighted games as proper names. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:39, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
Not sure what you mean by "favored caps" -- it clearly shows that caps are unnecessary for hearts, often omitted in sources. As for copyrighted, I think the concept you're looking for is trademarked, for which I'd agree follow MOS:TM and cap them. Dicklyon (talk) 04:47, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
Trademarked, yeah, that's the ticket. Randy Kryn (talk) 21:10, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
I imagine that a fair few "game of Hearts" are references to soccer games of Heart of Midlothian F.C., commonly known as "Hearts". --LukeSurl t c 20:41, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Let's not rehash this to death yet again. We all have better things to do with our lives. I paid zero attention to the RM after opening it. Now that it's closed, I'm neither surprised by the result (that kind of case being exactly why MOS:GAMECAPS exists) nor by the emotive and fallacious arguments offered in opposition, which relate strongly to this thread. The thinking goes "Well, all my chess books, and most stuff I can find online that talks about weird chess variants ..." [i.e., just more chess-specific writing] "... capitalizes them". This is the WP:Specialized style fallacy (SSF). The whole point of GAMECAPS and most of the other shortcutted sections of MOS:CAPS (MOS:DOCTCAPS, etc.), and many other MoS subpages is counteracting SSFs. The cry in that RM (from two commenters) to "overturn" GAMECAPS to protect rampant over-capitalization in one tiny corner of the games-sports-and-other-activities sphere is a classic "my wikiproject is a magical fiefdom that makes up its own laws" WP:CONLEVEL policy failure, which is why it had no weight with the closer.

GAMECAPS was established with a well-advertised RfC, and even then was just a minor clarification on much longer-standing, broad-consensus material against over-capitalizing for emphasis/signification (especially on a field-by-field basis). It follows on much larger RfCs, including one of the most detailed ever (on unnecessary capitalization of the common names of species in one particular field), among many others over the last 18-or-so years.

No we don't need a different, new, weaker standard for games; there's nothing topically special about them. And adding "generally" in there will simply make it a non-guideline. No, we don't need to argue about whether trademarked or copyrighted games (i.e., publications/works) need to be capitalized; that's a "yes", and it's already covered by MOS:TM and MOS:TITLES in detail. No, we don't need to re-re-re-argue about what "proper name" means for Wikipedia article title purposes; we already know from 1,000 prior threads like this that "is a name" and "is important to me" and "is sometimes capitalized by people who care about it a lot" and "was always capitalized in my great-grandfather's day" and "is capitalized by the government [or some other 'authority']" != proper name in either the linguistics or the philosophy sense. There's nothing new here, just more rehash. Consensus can change, but it doesn't when nothing else has, especially when the rationale for doing so boils down to WP:IDONTLIKEIT, WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, and special pleading fallacies.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:39, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Agree with SMcCandlish on these points, except for the non-acceptance of good faith. My great-grandfather in the old country never capitalized mccandlish, for example, but neither did he make a fuss about it. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:42, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

RFC on Internet or internet for inclusion in the WP:MOS/CAPS

(non-admin closure) Closed as no consensus. Opinions about whether Internet should be capitalized were roughly equally in number and strength of argument. - MrX 🖋 19:35, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Request for comment as to whether "Internet" should be upper or lower case, and whether this is suitable for inclusion in WP:MOS/CAPS. Please see this previous discussion. Recognising that the "Internet" used to be, or still is a proper name, upper case Internet remains American English (with its usage decreasing in American English). In other national varieties of English, internet is much more common. In the relevant article, we are unable to find a source for it being a proper name. "Internet" doesn't fall into any of the capitalization categories discussed in MOS, and I think it warrants specific mention, as there are numerous examples I have run across, where it causes reverts or confusion. Numerous external style guides mention this specifically. --[E.3][chat2][me] 11:58, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Survey

  • Lowercase and include in MOS for all the reasons given in the NYT article (It's Official) so helpfully provided by JamesLucas particually the objective to "reflect settled, familiar usage among educated readers." While I understand the technical distinction drawn by AReaderOutThataway, I agree with the NYT that it is "a pointless distinction now, since “internet” is rarely used anymore in the generic sense" and where the technical difference is important there are other (better) ways to distinguish a private internet from the global internet (see what I did there). 203.10.55.11 (talk) 02:55, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Lowercase and include in MOS per anon above and previous arguments. The capping fad has run its course, per the NYT. Dicklyon (talk) 04:15, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Uppercase and include in MoS. Specifically, "the Internet" should remain capitalized as a proper name for the global network of networks (and the Web as the global World Wide Web); "an internet" (a wide-area network) and "web" when inclusive of intrawebs (e.g. in "web technologies") are lowercase common nouns. Lowercasing the proper-name versions is a lazy and ignorant habit of journalists and random non-professional writers. The only reason they don't recognize it as the same error as writing "the rocky mountains run from Canada to Mexico" is lack of familiarity with and care about the specificity of technical terminology. WP can, does, and should continue to do better or we're failing to be encyclopedic. PS: I previously commented in a similar but more detailed vein in the pre-RfC discussion; it's not clear if the two stacks of comments will be considered jointly by the closer.  — AReaderOutThataway t/c 06:03, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Lowercase and include in MOS. It's way past time this was done, given general usage in sources. Tony (talk) 06:52, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Lowercase and include in MOS. Internet falls short of most definitions of a proper noun as a person, place, organization, ship, animal, event, or other individual entity (from Wiktionary), unlike the City of Alameda. Too notional, like biosphere, ecosphere etc. Batternut (talk) 10:02, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Uppercase and include in MoS As mentioned above, our Wikipedia article "Capitalization of Internet" lists which media sources do and do not capitalize it. Most of those sources made their decisions in the 2000s when more sources were more formal about writing about the Internet. I share AReaderOutThataway's view above about the intent being to note a proper noun. Even if we have no source for that, being a proper noun is the obvious rationale for the world globally adopting the practice 20 years ago. I also agree with Tony1 that many sources use lowercase. Wikipedia has special expertise in matters of technology and we have heightened need to be precise. Using "Internet" as a proper noun is more correct for use in Wikipedia. Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:11, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
  • lower case. UC use is declining rapidly, and it seems obvious that we should go with the flow. --Ohconfucius (on the move) (talk) 09:56, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Lowercase but exclude in MOS Per MOS:CAPS: only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. The previous discussion indicates that it does not meet the criteria either specifically or generally nor as a variety of English. As this TP now tracks relevant caps discussions, I don't think that the result of this RfC needs to be integrated into the MOS. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 22:16, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
    • The problem with that analysis is that most sources (newspapers, etc.) that lowercase this are not subject-matter experts, thus are not actually reliable on this question. They may be reliable for what date something happened, or what someone said in an interview or press release, but they are neither reliable sources on the Internet and its nature, nor on the underlying style and linguistic (and philosophy of names) question. Even technical writing that gets this wrong fails the latter test, and such writing is notorious for being poor when it comes to English-language skills (much tech writing in English is by non-native speakers, and even when it isn't, it's often by people with a deep technical background and very little writing and communications background). It's important to remember here that no source is categorically reliable for everything (as a matter of policy as well as common sense). Even style guides are shaky on matters like this, because they are not subject-matter experts on the history and nature of the Internet (similarly, a style guide that wanted to dispense with Homo sapiens style in favor of "Homo Sapiens" or whatever is not a reliable source on how to write binomials). This is one of those cases where the only real experts on the question are long-time technologists who are also very experienced writers; there are two circles of source reliability here, and only the tiny sliver where they overlap are the RS on this particular matter.  — AReaderOutThataway t/c 06:13, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
Proper nouns are not descriptive. Internet is a portmanteau of interconnected network. It is therefore descriptive. There is an often perceived but false equivalence between proper names and capitalisation - the former being a matter of grammar and the other, a matter of orthography. There are lots of things that might be capitalised that are not proper names. Capitalising for distinction is one case arising from historically limited typesetting options. That a word describes something is unique or special does not make it a proper noun. That it is in someway descriptive is the key critera. If I am surfing the net, am I using the internet (regardless of which case is used)? The arguement made (above) falls to WP:SPECIALSTYLE but takes it a step further to argue that only very special specialists really count. Sounds like an arguement: only those that agree with me are right. Much too obtuse for me. The criteria to be applied here is: consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources. A reliable source is defined by WP:RS - not by whether one thinks they got it right. Internet fails this criteria. It also fails a theory based arguement that it is a proper noun. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 10:30, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Situational, follow similar scheme as MOS:CELESTIALBODIES AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 23:25, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Lowercase, neutral on MOS inclusion - there isn't sufficient reasoning and consensus in sourcing for it to act like a proper noun. It's functionally only used in one sense, and so common usage is deciding the matter for us in the use case we're considering. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:49, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Uppercase, per Blueraspberry. Happy days, LindsayHello 16:26, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
  • *Uppercase and include in MoS. There's a difference between the Internet as the one, global, public internetwork, and an internet as some random (probably private) internetwork. Example: "We're using internets to connect local sites to our headquarters. At HQ, we connect centrally to the Internet." --Zac67 (talk) 16:52, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Status quo of no guidance, per avoiding instruction WP:CREEP. Sounds like a MOS:RETAIN issue if anything if American English is diverging from certain other international varieties. (As an American myself, I'd say Internet, but just leave things be on an article-by-article basis, both forms are perfectly understandable to the "other" side.) SnowFire (talk) 22:27, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
  • I don't both forms are perfectly understandable to the other side, being a UK/AU/NZ speaker myself, when the word is capitalised it causes confusion and less understanding, even as an expert in medicine. And since in US English capitalisation is is decreasing, as well as the plethora of other rationales already mentioned, it should be recommended to be lower case, MOS or not. --[E.3][chat2][me] 13:23, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
  • "Confusion and less understanding?" Do you believe that "Internet" refers to something else? When I think of commonality problems, it's generally due to not understanding / mis-understanding the word, like an American thinking a (UK) jumper has to do with jumping, or a Briton thinking that a motion that was tabled in the US is about to be brought to a vote. This is no different than October 3 vs. 3 October, the reader knows what it means regardless. SnowFire (talk) 13:38, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Yes I do believe "the Internet" refers to something else, that it isn't anymore. Namely, it is not a sentient entity, it isn't a proper name, and the network doesn't deserve the respect of being capitalised as such. Tere are many rational arguments for lower case, particularly guidelines based. For the timing of the RfC, the external MOS in the US are pertinent, because American English is moving away from capitalisation. We give extra credit to the American spelling by capitalising it, and it is not required in our polices for numerous rationales already far better explained by others above. --[E.3][chat2][me] 14:57, 28 October 2019 (UTC)
  • this is a perfectly valid, interesting RfC with varied views that aims to improve the project, hence not disruptive at all. This is a particular MOS/CAPS case based on historicity and many other rationales previously mentioned by others. --[E.3][chat2][me] 13:25, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

@Pbsouthwood: There was always mixed use. Perspectives which saw the Internet as revolutionary wrote about it as if it were an entity. Perspectives which saw the Internet as plumbing treated the word as similar. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:38, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
I am inclined to agree. I don't see that a hard rule is useful.· · · Peter Southwood (talk): 13:46, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
Network admin here, summoned by bot. I use "the internet" and consider this capitalization more correct. I don't usually feel strongly enough to change it when it's capitalized, but I associate the practice with people who still use AOL. I am also unsure what "an internet" would be. I suspect I would use intranet or perhaps mesh network. The above comments offered for insight only; not voting as I do not have strong feelings about this Elinruby (talk) 22:04, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
I guess this network here is creating a new internet, in the way that upper case Internet proponents are stating. However, "the internet" has become so genericised a term, that they don't even call themselves a new internet, rather "the world's first fully autonomous data and communications network". So I think the point of delineating "the internet" with "internets" is mute, because there are no "internets" anymore. Therefore, when referring to the global network, internet is correct. I also note that SAFE network capitalise Internet when referring to both "the internet" and their new network - so its not like the techies have a distinction in regard to capitalisation. We need to pick one to avoid confusion, and considering we know theoretically and practically its not a common name, especially as the bulk of the world doesn't capitalise anymore, "internet" is the way to go. --[E.3][chat2][me] 17:55, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Initial capital for Indigenous and Aboriginal

There is somewhere within WP a paragraph about this, which I have seen before but now cannot find, and which to my mind belongs on this page, because this is where people go for guidance about capitalisation. In Australia, it is common practice to capitalise Aboriginal and Indigenous (or their cultural or language group name) when talking about our First Nations people, and several style guides point to this: ABC Style Guide, Monash University and an Indigenous-run site, to name a few. A quick google gives me a Canadian legal guide - same thing. The US appears to be more complicated, as per the Native American name controversy, and I suppose most other colonised countries have discussions in other languages. Can we have something added to this page about this matter? Or a direction to another page where a guideline or discussion exists? It would be useful to have a shortcut to such a guideline to use when editing others' work. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 02:22, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Despite my downcasing preference, these are instances of disambiguation—not any aboriginal person (visiting from Canada, say). Tony (talk) 00:37, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
Hi Tony1. I'm not entirely clear exactly what you mean, but my intent was to use capitals only when referring to Australian Indigenous people. Have you seen the progress on this, via Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board (I don't want to post the link directly to my working document here because it's early days and that one will disappear and be superseded by proper guidelines). Laterthanyouthink (talk) 04:07, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
It has long been my understanding that it's Aboriginal for the specific Australian case and aboriginal for everything else. Whether that makes sense is irrelevant; a lot of the English language doesn't make sense. I haven't heard of a similar distinction for "indigenous", but that's neither here nor there since my personal experience should have nothing to do with it. Per my belief that Wikipedia should not be reinventing the English language, we should look to dictionaries, whose full-time function in life is to research and document common usage. My dictionary of arbitrary choice is Merriam-Webster and it supports the aboriginal/Aboriginal distinction[1] but not the indigenous/Indigenous distinction.[2] Unless someone can show that a majority of major dictionaries disagree, that's where we should leave it.
Editors should know how to use the dictionary and consult it when needed. Citation of a dictionary entry should resolve most local disputes, but in a few cases it may be necessary to look at a larger group of dictionaries for a "dictionary consensus". Dictionaries are reliable secondary sources for questions of English usage, the primary sources being the usage that they research. There is no need for MoS to get involved in something like this. ―Mandruss ☎ 05:18, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
Well, there is such a need, in that people keep fighting about this stuff, and half of MoS's job is forestalling such style fights.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:51, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
Hi Mandruss. Yes, in theory, but if only it were that simple! Dictionaries often do not give enough detail, particularly around phrases, and it is not their function in general to transmit cultural sensitivities. Merriam-Webster says "aboriginal peoples of Australia", which is not acceptable usage. In the case we are discussing, Macquarie would be the obvious authority (as an aside, I wonder how many non-Australians know that?), and here are a few links: word entry "indigenous". Then a blurb for the Macquarie Atlas of Indigenous Australia, which spells Indigenous with a capital throughout. Macquarie podcast "Indigenous languages". English words of Indigenous origin for NAIDOC Week (article). The word entry for "language" refers to Aboriginal English as "Australian Aboriginal language". Macquarie Aboriginal words : a dictionary of words from Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages - capitalises Aboriginal. My 1997 Macquarie Dictionary gives separate entries for aboriginal (i.e. general) and Aboriginal (relating to Australian Aborigines), and the entry for Aboriginal includes some discussion of the then current recommended usages (Aborigine/Aborginal/noun/adjective), etc. But it is not straightforward, and the Macquarie's online version is behind a paywall. I'm not sure exactly where the style recommendations will end up being located within WP, but there is support for it in the Australian project and I encourage you to comment there. There are issues other than capitalisation, btw. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 02:27, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
If you insist that it can't be "that simple", I'm the wrong guy for you to discuss this with. I generally feel that Wikipedia complicates such things well beyond any reader benefit that justifies the multiple costs. Fear not, somebody else will be along to help you complicate it. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:39, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
The whole idea is to simplify it for the reader and other editors. The essentials can be distilled into few words - but as with everything else on wp, it needs to be properly researched and authoritatively cited. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 06:09, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
Use Aboriginal for the specific Australian case and aboriginal (and native, indigenous, etc.) for everything else. These are just descriptive terms in almost all cases, but Aboriginal in the case of Australian autochthonic cultures (and members thereof) has become a proper-name usage (a shorthand for Aboriginal Australians, directly comparable to Native Americans). You'll find this pattern completely dominates in professional English writing; Aboriginal is almost uniformly capitalized in the Australian context (as is the short form Native[s] when specifically a shortening of Native American[s]), while no one but a twit would write "according to the Native traditions of Finland", or "among Aboriginal people of Madagascar". It's just an abject failure to understand what proper name means and what capitalization is used for in standardized forms of English (as opposed to capitalize-like-mad marketing language and officialese, and I-didn't-graduate-high-school blogging).

As for [i|I]ndigenous, I'm skeptical that any uses of this (even in long form with something more specific, like "indigenous Manx people" or "indigenous South Africans") have become proper names through becoming effectively standardized as exonyms, though there's a slight tendency to over-capitalize "just in case" even in some news media with professional editors. WP should not do that, since sources do not do it with anything approaching consistency, unless there's some particular exception I haven't noticed (if there is, then do it for that exception, not generally). The closest I've run across is [i|I]ndigenous Australians as a blanket term for 'the Aboriginals plus the Torres Strait Islanders', but it's not always capitalized, and it is not a consistently used term ("native Australians", etc., also occur in RS, and it seems most common to name them both specifically instead of using a catch-all; our own article at Indigenous Australians says in its lead, "Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is preferred by many; First Nations of Australia, First Peoples of Australia, and First Australians are also increasingly common terms"). Capitalized Indigenous Australians appears to be some .gov.au officialese, an artificial categorization created for administrative purposes, and it is thus a WP:Specialized style fallacy to insist on it at WP, except at Indigenous Australians itself, our article on the term/concept.

Aside: It seems unfortunate and verging on unencyclopedic for us to have so much historical but commingled/confused content in that article, when it really belongs separated out at Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders, and related articles on the early history, European colonization, and modern demographics of .au, with Indigenous Australians reduced to an article on the term/categorization, with just a WP:SUMMARY of historical matters using {{Main}} and other cross-references to point to the bulk of the material in its more proper contexts. (But that's a content not a style matter, so it's a bit off-topic here.)
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:51, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Capitalisation and italics of Spanish wine appellations?

The capitalisation of Spanish wine appellations seems to be different on different pages. In the Template:Spanish wine regions the categories are Vino de calidad, Vino de Pago, Denominación de origen (DO), and Denominación de origen Calificada (DOCa), and in text they appear as 'Vino de Pago' or 'vino de pago'. On the page Denominación de origen they are 'denominación de origen protegida ('protected denomination of origin')' and 'denominación de origen calificada ('denomination of qualified origin')'. On the Spanish government site they are 'Denominación de Origen, Vino de la Tierra, Denominación de Origen Calificada, Vino de Calidad con indicación geográfica , Vino de Pago' in titles, and then lower case in the text, but Spanish follows different capitalisation than English. [1]

What capitalisation should be used?

Also, the Denominación de origen title is in italics: should the Vino de calidad and Vino de Pago etc also be in italics? Fpr155 (talk) 12:02, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "Información general de interés". www.mapa.gob.es. Retrieved 7 January 2020.
Lower-case, since sources are not overwhelmingly capitalizing this stuff, but vary a lot. It's the first rule of MOS:CAPS. If in doubt, don't capitalize (except where a proper name, usually a locale, occurs in such a term). PS: There's nothing special about such terms for Spanish products in particular, or wine products in particular. There are thousands of products with protected geographical indications among every class of traditional goods. Our material would be farcically over-capitalized and look suspiciously like a big pile of marketing materials if we capitalized these entire phrases instead of just the proper names within them. Even worse for the over-capitalizing crowd is that many of them are non-English phrases and are from languages that do not capitalize such things no matter how "official" they are within an EU legal context. Applying English title-case style to them is wrong-headed for multiple reasons.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:02, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Expanded forms of abbreviations examples

At Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters/Archive 30#Expanded forms of abbreviations, it says:

Incorrect: FOREX (FOReign EXchange), FOREX (foreign exchange), FOREX (foreign exchange), FOREX (foreign exchange)
Correct: FOREX (foreign exchange)
If it seems necessary to do so (for example, to indicate a potentially unclear etymology) use italics: BX (from "base exchange").

It seems confusing that it says not to use FOREX (foreign exchange) and then immediately afterwards says it's OK to use BX (from "base exchange") if it seems necessary. Are we saying that it's not necessary specifically for FOREX for some reason, or is it about adding the word "from", or ...? —[AlanM1(talk)]— 18:16, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

I think it's saying that we don't have to tell Wikipedia readers things that are obvious, but where an abbreviation comes from the middle of a word like the x in exchange, it might help. We are allowed to assume a bit of intelligence in our audience. SchreiberBike | ⌨  21:19, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
And the distinction seems really obvious to me: FOREX, like NBA, has words that start with the acronym/initialism elements: foreign exchange, and National Basketball Association. In the BX case, part of the acronym is buried mid-word in the expansion: base exchange.

If it came to a choice between A) "Never even use the italics, because even 'base exchange' is obvious, our readers do not generally have brain damage, and we don't want anyone to wikilawyer about it", vs. B) "I love 'base exchange' style, so let's force it on everything, like 'National Basketball Association'", then count me in for option A.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:31, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Help me understand

How are we to understand the examples in this bullet point. There seems to be, at minimum, a word missing:

  • Non-trademarked acronyms that have become assimilated into English as everyday words may be written as common nouns when it is conventional to do so (e.g. scuba and laser, but ZIP Code and bank PIN).

I thought it was trying to say that scuba and laser shouldn't be capitalized but ZIP Code and bank PIN were exceptions and should be. So I changed it to read:

  • Non-trademarked acronyms that have become assimilated into English as everyday words may be written as common nouns when it is conventional to do so (e.g. scuba and laser, but not ZIP Code nor bank PIN).

Deor reverted this saying, "Change said that ZIP & PIN were wrong. That's not correct." I'm not sure I understand this either. ~Kvng (talk) 18:25, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

This looks like an English-language fluency matter. The original text is correct. In longer, pedantic form, it could be "use scuba and laser, but by contrast use ZIP Code and bank PIN". Deor is correct that your edit, while well-meaning, reversed the actual instructions. Your version indicates "use scuba and laser, and do not use ZIP Code or bank PIN". That is, your "I thought it was trying to say ..." summary is exactly what it's saying. If you write "zip code" or "bank pin", that's a style and clarity problem, because these are treated as acronyms, while the average person treats "laser" and "scuba" as regular words and doesn't even know they are acronyms at all. When in doubt, consult multiple dictionaries. If most of them prefer a term lower-case, then use lower case, and vice versa.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:14, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
OK, I understand now and I have improved my previous contribution. ~Kvng (talk) 15:12, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
For what it's worth, as a native English speaker, although not an American, I would definitely write zip code as until this discussion and the edits that led to it, I never realized the "ZIP" in "ZIP code" was an acronym (it seems almost like a backronym) and I don't really see how if it were written as a plain word there would be any way it could be confused as referring to something else. I've never heard anyone refer to "zip" without following it with "code" in this context (as in I cannot imagine anyone saying "I need to mail you something, what's your zip?"), whereas people certainly talk about their PINs (absent "bank"), which could I guess be mistaken for their pins. That is, I'm not sure why we would maintain "ZIP code" in all-caps if we use lowercase "scuba" and "laser". For that matter, not sure why anyone would capitalize the "C" in "ZIP Code". The notion that it's a proper noun at this point is a huge stretch. —Joeyconnick (talk) 19:12, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
I agree with Joeyconnick. I looked up capitalization within Google Books, and it looks like 'zip code' is about twice as popular as 'ZIP code', which overtook 'ZIP Code' around 2005. I also just searched the last 16 years of my email and the only instances of 'ZIP' that I could find came from one of two sources: Amazon.com or the USPS itself. Utility companies, streaming services, food delivery services, hotels, and everyone else all use 'zip'. —jameslucas ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ 23:52, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
This has been discussed at Talk:ZIP Code. ~Kvng (talk) 15:31, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
What random people are doing in someone's e-mail is irrelevant; they are not reliable sources. Since we know for a fact that "ZIP Code" is the name of an official spec/standard and thus a proper name (at least at one level), and we know that ZIP is an acronym for Zoning Improvement Plan and thus properly in all-caps, it would take an overwhelming majority of near-consistent reliable source usage to override two MoS rules at once and treat this as "zip code". By contrast, you probably cannot find a dictionary or other modern source anywhere that still writes SCUBA / S.C.U.B.A. or RADAR / R.A.D.A.R. We can be pretty sure that "Z.I.P." is dead, because that style barely exists for anything today other than "U.S.", and even that is on its last legs.

This n-gram would seem to indicate (aside from the total death of "Z.I.P. [c|C]ode") that if you combine sources that understand this is a proper name with an acronym in it (thus "ZIP Code") with those that know it's a proper name but either don't know ZIP is an acronym or have a house style (as many do) to write as words not as initialisms anything that is a "word acronym" not sounded out as letters (thus "Zip Code"), plus sources that realize it's an acronym but not that it's a proper name (thus "Zip code"), it's about the same number of total sources that seem to pretend to understand neither that it's a proper name nor that it contains an acronym (thus "zip code"). And in reality, it's probably more that the house style in question is just more anti-capitalization that WP is, and seeks to down-case everything its writers think they can get away with down-casing. Regardless, the kind of near-perfect consistency for "zip code" or even "Zip Code" is just not there (even after you factor in a bit of false-positive for "Zip Code" instances appearing in title-case headings when the same writer might do "zip code" in running prose). There might be enough doubt here to go with "ZIP code", on the basis that enough sources are dropping the capital C in both "ZIP code" and "zip code" cases, plus the fact that a specific instance of a ZIP code isn't a proper name; it could be seen as "a ZIP code" (a code in the text string sense) within the "ZIP Code" in the system sense. But if you just trawl through Google News and Google Books results, you'll see total chaos; all of these variants are frequent. Since there's nothing remotely like a real-world consensus that "zip" has been re-assimilated as a non-acronym, there's no case to be made for that spelling here, even there's maybe a weak one for "code", at least in some contexts.

PS: Linguistically, the cases are not similar at all: things like scuba, sonar, radar, and laser do not coincide with pre-existing words; the fact that ZIP does (and the word in any of its senses has no relation to ZIP codes) makes it especially difficult for it to transition into a word from an acronym. Similarly, all the attempts by certain news publishers [principally British, but The New York Times is also in on it] to rejigger AIDS (the HIV disease) as "Aids", out of their weird habit of writing things like "Nato", "Nasa" and "Unesco", have come to rather little avail, in large part because "aids" is already a verb with little in common with AIDS (a rather opposite relationship, really, since a frequently fatal autoimmune disease doesn't help/assist anyone :-).
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:18, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Dutch names starting with an apostrophe

The article Gerard 't Hooft includes sentences like

't Hooft is most famous for his contributions to the development of gauge theories in particle physics.

My first reaction was that this should be capitalised at the start of a sentence ('T Hooft is most famous...), as would be done with any other lower-case particule like de or von. However, my changes were reverted by User:TimothyRias. I now notice that on other articles like 's-Hertogenbosch, the first letter is not capitalised even at the start of a sentence. Is this correct? And if so, should MOS:LCITEMS be amended to note this exception? Opera hat (talk) 15:53, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

The Dutch article is very consistent in its use of lowercase, so we should follow. I'm not sure whether its' worth including in MOS:LCITEMS because it's very rare. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:50, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Proposal: allow capitalization of official names of organisms

The current Wikipedia policy is at a cross with the common policy of scientific literature and most hobbyist literature. Outside Wikipedia, common names of species are capitalized. This is to distinguish a species from a descriptive name. E.g. Little Owl is a particular species Athene noctua and little owl is any of several tens of species of small owls, or a chick of a large owl. Worse, the current Wikipedia policy puts competent people off contributing to Wikipedia, see e.g. the discussion: https://www.birdforum.net/showpost.php?p=3998544&postcount=292 and the following posts: https://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=373802&page=12 As not to waste the effort, this policy can be allowed only in new edits. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.102.169.130 (talk) 12:13, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

This was not a decision taken likely. It was discussed at length and the decision was made at WP:BIRDCON. Please review that request for comment and decision. Thank you. SchreiberBike | ⌨  03:00, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, it would be a terrible idea to re-open the largest RfC in WP history, and one of the longest-running disputes in WP history before that RfC resolved it (over a decade of squabbling and move-warring). The anon's idea proceeds from a faulty basis, anyway. There's no such thing as an "official" name of an organism. There is no global "office" or "official" who can issue one. The closest there can be is the best-accepted scientific bi- or trinomial (and that has a prescribed case and italicization pattern of the form Genus species [subspecies]). Otherwise, all we have is various organizations' preferred vernacular names in various languages, and they frequently conflict with each other, even within the same language, because different organizations want different names. And they sometimes do not match any actually common name. Nor do all organisms have any vernacular name (especially among micro-organisms, newly discovered species and subspecies, and extinct, fossil species). Even the scientific names are often disputed and may change over time.

More to the core point, though, see MOS:CAPS rule no. 1: WP doesn't capitalize that which isn't almost invariably capitalized in independent reliable sources (which does not just mean specialized sources, but also includes dictionaries, newspapers, etc.). As we saw with birds, even scientific journals that are not ornithology-specific generally do not permit the capitalization of common names of bird species (even in an ornithology article), despite ornithology journals mostly (but not universally) preferring the practice. Next, there's no such thing as a WP rule (and MoS is a guideline, not a "policy") which only applies to new material. WP just doesn't do grandfather clauses. (The one time I can recall that someone – an admin and then-member of WP:ARBCOM, closing an RfC – tried to impose one, the community just flat-out ignored that, and applied the RfC result consistently regardless of topic, article age, or WP:GA/WP:FA status, because that's just how it works here.) It should also be noted that the cleanup of the overcapitalization was labor-intensive and took several years (just as the putsch to forcibly capitalize all that stuff also took years and generated a never-ending torrent of WP:DRAMA). Changing "trivial" style matters without very good reason is a poor idea, and comes with serious editorial productivity and goodwill costs.

The anon is wrong in other ways, most obviously this: It simply isn't true as a general matter that "common names of species are capitalized", even in specialist literature. In most fields of biology, the exact opposite is true, and many of them have an explicit convention against such over-capitalization (including for mammals in particular). About the only specialist literature that fairly regularly does capitalize vernacular names are in ornithology, the insectology subfields that study flying insects (they picked up the habit from ornithology), herpetology (sometimes, and via the same vector), and botany in the UK in particular; in almost all other cases, lower case predominates even in specialized academic literature. The habit of fanciers capitalizing bird names more broadly is mostly unrelated, and was picked up from field guides, which have frequently use the technique of capitalizing (and often boldfacing or otherwise marking up) anything on which they have an entry, as a signal that it is something that has an entry. Consequently, hobbyists and fanciers and armchair experts of all sorts have a strong tendency to capitalize just about anything for which a field guide or similar "topical encyclopedia" work exists alongside a bunch of dedicated online forums (e.g. rocks and minerals, wild mammals, car parts, electronics components, martial arts techniques, dance moves, etc.). The fact that birdwatchers and professional ornithologists both like to capitalize bird common names is accidental convergence, and is a habit which non-specialized publications largely ignore.

See, e.g., n-grams for "a bald eagle" vs. "a Bald Eagle" [3] – lower case overwhelmingly dominates, despite the results including ornithological and birdwatcher publications, and worse yet for the capitalization case, the ratio of capitalization has decreased by an order of magnitude since the 1980s. One of the most common bird species of Europe is the rock partridge, but this is so infrequently capitalized in books that it doesn't even rate [4]. Another super-common one is the white stork, and lower-case results dominate [5]. Similar again for passenger pigeon [6] (once one of the most common birds in North America, now extinct, and about which a tremendous amount has been written and published, including a lot of academic material about its extinction). You only get opposite, pro-capitalization n-gram results with very obscure bird species (i.e., those about which non-ornithological literature is rare). Same goes for herpetology: try the world-record largest caudate, the Chinese giant salamander, so rarely capitalized in publication it doesn't rate [7]. Similarly, winged insects [8] just don't show up frequently capitalized in books. Same goes for British plants [9]. The specialist-publication preferences have virtually no effect on general-audience publishing. We find the same is true with regard to all specialist-overcapitalized topics, from music and fiction genres to military terminology to gamer jargon to outdoors (hiking, climbing, biking, etc.) lingo. It's the same pattern of specialists capitalizing certain very-special-to-us terms in a "signifying" way (see MOS:SIGCAPS), when communicating with other specialists, while the rest of the world ignores this as a poor writing habit. The old saw that there's an amiguity between "a little [i.e. any small] owl" and "the Little Owl" is, of course, resolved by actually writing well, e.g. "the little owl (Athene noctua), a species endemic to Eurasia and North Africa". (
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:26, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

There's some more to examine here. There is no credible evidence that WP's avoidance of overcapitalizing things like this "puts competent people off contributing to Wikipedia". Indeed, the sheer frequency with which the "bird caps" were objected to, and the holy hell of drama that erupted when birders started trying to do that to other organisms, demonstrates that we will "put off" far more people by over-capitalizing. We know there simply are no scientific professionals, in any field, whose brains melt on contact with a style rule that isn't their favorite. Yes, including ornithology, in which academics and other researchers routinely submit orn. material to non-orn., general zoology, biology, and science journals that do not accept their over-capitalizing style; in the BIRDCON review, we could only find a single such journal that allowed the capitalization in orn.-specific articles. All of these people are entirely, professionally used to adjusting their writing style, from citation formatting on up, to suit the requirements of the journal to which they are submitting (or to have that material conformed for them before publication). And when it comes to hobbyists who populate webboards like the cited birdforum.net, they are precisely 0% less or more of value on Wikipedia than any other random persons who care to contribute. Excessively persnickety individuals will from time to time decide for one petty reason or another that they do not want to work on Wikipedia. This is a volunteer project, and that's just fine, especially if they would withhold their input over a "style war" the community lost patience with years ago and settled firmly – in favor of our readers and of WP's perception by the world and by other publishers, not in favor of satisfying peccadilloes of specialists only used to writing for other specialists. This is not SpecialistPedia. Given the wording of the anon's post, and the mention of birdforum.net (which was meatpuppet-canvassed in the BIRDCON RfC itself, as well as a hotbed of anti-WP activism on this pet-peeve in previous rounds of that near-interminable debate), I have a strong suspicion that the anon is one of four editors who quit WP in a huff over the matter (actually two did, while two quit before it was resolved, for other reasons, then came back just for the RfC, then "quit again" when they didn't get their way). I have concerns that this is someone who has returned to tendentiously try to "right the Great Wrong".

It's actually interesting to read the birdforum.net thread [10] in which the BIRDCON canvassing was injected in 2014. Here's some great quotes from participants at that site – user Richard Klim: "I quite like the widespread use of leading capitals for English vernacular names within the 'birding' community. But I think it's unrealistic to expect this practice to be followed in more general or scientific literature." and "I still fail to understand why birders are so concerned about this. Capitalisation of vernacular names has become the norm in English-language birding literature, and will surely remain so. But it's unusual to capitalise species names in scientific or more general literature, and it's reasonable that Wikipedia should have a consistent policy for all biological classes rather than pandering to the whims of a particular hobby group. So what...?!" and "But however strongly you/we feel about it, I don't think that the capitalisation of vernacular species names is likely to be adopted in mainstream literature anytime soon...". User fugl: "Indeed, as I said, who cares what Wikipedia does? We have our conventions, they have theirs." User Mysticete: "I can say that as far as science publications go, I am unaware of any journal for mammals which capitalizes Mammal common names. This is in contrast with Birds, where the majority of journal do so. So I would say, yes...capitalization of birds common names is largely a phenomena of the ornithological journals[.] Having recently submitted a wave of papers with common names of pinnipeds, this has sometimes snuck through the editing and resulted in edits during peer review." Now contrast this with the agitators there: User Nutcracker: "Be interesting to see what happens now. I'd recommend that all those who prefer capitalised English names resign from wikipedia if they are not allowed to captialise names any more. ... I gave up editing wikipedia some years ago"; and user Michael Retter: "If you think official English bird names should be capitalized, please take just a moment to share your thoughts as to why at at this link [i.e., to the BIRDCON RfC] .... We who support this [pro-capitalization] convention are currently losing 3:1." The meatpuppetry attempt was detected and called out in the RfC, though it actually just completely failed to rouse the rabble with a warcry; users of birdforum.net were generally too reasonable to drink the "give me my typography or give me death" Kool-Aid.

Now check out the two newer links the anon provided. Here's some quotes from the first [11], and just the first page of it – user Paul Clapham: "Well, the IOC World Bird List says [details on their naming standards elided] ... but they don't rank as an 'authority'." (This debate has always been about the IOC names in particular.) User Jurek: "I really think that there should be at least one public, free database of birds of the world to give back to the community which gives free records and free support for conservation." And user gusasp in reply: "I know one – Wikipedia! All of us can contribute as of right now. If we work together, we'll have it up to date in no time. I'm actually surprised how little engagement there is to edit this wonderful resource. It's there, ready to use and to contribute to." More from user Jurek: "... it makes sense contributing. ... If you can do it on English Wikipedia it would be wonderful. Many bird articles look like abandoned, waiting to be filled with information." and "... just 1-2 birders with enough time could potentially make the bird section a very informative resource. ... I was very sceptical about Wikipedia initially. ...[but] people are posting even some good quality bird photos, so it might become an useful tool for birders." User Viator: "They have very explicit rules on this which mandate lower case [link to MOS:LIFE here]. This was debated quite some time ago from memory and irrespective of the birding community that is their position." User Taphrospilus: "I found many errors in Avibase [an independent ornithology wiki] e.g wrong or no references." The thread is at least 13 pages long, very little of it has anything to do with Wikipedia, and the majority of it is complaints about various other resources (Avibase, HBW, BirdLife Illustrated, the IOC lists, Birds of the World, etc.) and conflicts between them, and most especially concerns about over-reliance on common/vernacular names and treating any of them as "official". The second link provided by the anon [12] is simply one post from the same thread. It (by user DMW) claims, "I recall that a lot of Wikipedia's bird description editors left after an administrator unilaterally decided that all common names must be lower case". Except neither element of this legend is true. Two editors quit (and may well have returned by now; I have not checked), and the decision was made by the community – not some loose-cannon admin – after 10+ years of excessive debate about the matter in which (using birdforum.net as a meatpuppet recruitment venue repeatedly since at least 2008) the pro-caps side made their case as strong as it possibly could be made, yet by their own reckoning were outnumbered 3-to-1 on the matter. The RfC was even closed by an admin who said he'd prefer that it went the other direction – the diametric opposite of a supervote. Since that time, various things have become much clearer, most notably that the community has little patience left for WP:BATTLEGROUND antics over style trivia, that MOS:CAPS is not broken (in RM and other discussions every single day we routinely down-case that which is not consistently capitalized in independent RS), and IOC itself did not become the global authority it wanted to be and which many people 5 to 10 years ago predicted that it would. The case for capitalizing common names of species of birds or anything else is even weaker in 2020 than it was in 2014 when we had that RfC.

Meanwhile, the evidence before us is exactly the opposite of what the anon would like us to believe. The regulars at birdforum.net today are not only concerned about lack of a good, editable bird-specific information resource, they're talking about doing concerted work on our articles to help it be that resource. There simply is no thick knot of them agitating to engage in a capitalization war, nor agitating against Wikipedia generally (at least not since 2014 when a user at both that site and ours, and a likeminded former user of ours, tried to stir their pot in such a manner). PS: In the original 2014 thread, after the RfC had closed, someone (user AlexC) at birdforum.net thought the lower-casing move was impractical: "To adjust the copy of over 10,000 articles to make sure there's no capitalized names throughout is a near impossible task." Yet we actually got in done in a year or so, and without it being a concerted effort, just general WP:GNOME activity (and in spite of hostile, tendentious counter-activity by a couple of birders). It actually took much longer to track down and undo the over-capitalization that the same pro-caps people had imposed on other organisms (after agreeing not to do that); I was finding improperly capitalized monkeys, bats, rodents, and other things as recently as 2018, when I think we finally got the last of them. The lesson being that if you permit some micro-topic its own "magically special" exemption, this leads over time to general stylistic chaos that is much harder to manage or undo. It creeps like an infection from topic to topic.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:01, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

A peculiar breach of conformity

So according to WP:TOURDAB and following sections, editors in the area of pop music tours have been naming the tour articles consistently with title case, in conformity with that guideline. For example, Category:Led Zeppelin concert tours, Category:Pink Floyd concert tours, and Category:Pearl Jam concert tours, except for a stray parenthetical disambiguation, "Tour" is always capitalized. This seems counterintuitive to MOS:CAPS. Granted, some bands give their tours proper names, and in the case of a proper name, a tour may be given title case. But absent a proper name, when Wikipedia is just throwing something on an article title, it seems to me that "tour" or "world tour" should be lower case. Comments? Elizium23 (talk) 17:52, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, they should usually be lower case. The most common structure is going to be "Album Title [world] tour"; the Album Title part is a proper name by virtue of being the title of a published work. I could see some tour title being a proper name if it was not descriptive but evocative/figural. E.g., "Tour of Doom and Mayhem" or "The Final Tour and We Really Mean It This Time". Heh. Pop music fans are apt to capitalize anything they can get away with, in mimicry of record-label marketing materials, but its been my experience that changing any "the Album Title Tour" instance to "the Album Title tour" in a band article generally goes unreverted, along with other decapitalizations like "Jim-Bob Jones – Guitarist" → "Jim-Bob Jones – guitarist". The same pattern of fannish over-capitalization yet unresisted cleanup thereof is also common in sports ("the 2018 Season" → "the 2018 season"; "Jim-Bob Jones – Linebacker" → "Jim-Bob Jones – linebacker"). Same goes for corporate, military, political, educational-institution, and other capitalization-happy topics.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:39, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

MOS:DOCTCAPS

I have a question about this bit:

Doctrines, philosophies, theologies, theories, movements, methods, processes, systems of thought and practice, and fields of study are not capitalized, unless the name derives from a proper name: lowercase republican refers to a system of political thought; uppercase Republican refers to a specific Republican party (each being a proper name).

I'm a bit confused by the example, since it seems to be saying that 'republican' and 'Republican' are proper names, but in fact 'republican' is an adjective, not a proper name. And 'Republican' can be either a common noun (as in 'Many Republicans voted at my polling place') or an adjective (as in 'That was a very Republican thing to say') depending on context. But it's not really a proper name ever, though 'Republican Party' is a proper name of a party. Can someone clarify what this is supposed to mean? Shinealittlelight (talk) 17:35, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

@Shinealittlelight: I believe the (each being a proper name) is meant to refer to uppercase Republican refers to a specific Republican party only, i.e., each of Republican Party (Liberia), Republican Party (Malawi), Republican Party (United States), etc..
As you said, as an adjective, it can be either "republican ideology" (common, lower-case), while in "the Republican candidate for the 99th district of Ohio", it is proper and upper-case. Both noun examples could go either way, depending on the exact meaning, too. In the US, at least, common usage of the term would usually refer specifically to members of the party (and be cap'd). —[AlanM1(talk)]— 21:26, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
@AlanM1: Thank you for the clarification; that definitely makes sense. The other question I have about this policy relates to these examples: the Me Too movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, the Occupy movement, and so on. Do you think that these should be capitalized according to this policy? I can't tell whether these are cases that should be capitalized under the "derives from a proper name" condition. Shinealittlelight (talk) 23:27, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
@Shinealittlelight: It doesn't seem so, but the articles are at Occupy Wall Street, Me Too movement, and Black Lives Matter, probably because they are normally cap'd in sources (not always [ever?] a good reason for style choice here, though). The capitalization does seem to help in parsing a sentence, especially when parts of it are cap'd for other reasons, e.g., "... the occupy Wall Street crowds ..." is confusing if the term is not already familiar to the reader. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 23:52, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
@AlanM1: I see, so you would see these cases as exceptions to the quoted policy? I'm new to policy discussions; are we just providing a rule of thumb here? Shinealittlelight (talk) 00:52, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
Shinealittlelight, it is well worth remembering that the Manual of Style along with all its numerous subsections is not policy. It is instead a guideline which begins with the following sentence: "It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply." This is such a case. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 01:02, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
Got it, thank you. Fwiw, I think a guideline which says that proper names of movements ('Me Too', 'Occupy', 'BLM', etc.) should be capitalized, while descriptions referring to movements (e.g., 'the environmentalist movement', 'the feminist movement', 'the conservative movement', etc.) should not be capitalized. It seems to me that this would fit all of the examples without exceptions. Shinealittlelight (talk) 01:17, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
It is already well-established, Shinealittlelight, that proper names are capitalized. Why do we need special language for "movements"? Cullen328 Let's discuss it 02:53, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
Well, the way this is currently written, it says that "...movements ... are not capitalized". So then when we have a proper name of a movement (like 'Me Too' or 'Black Lives Matter'), if we want to follow sources and capitalize, we have to make an exception to this MOS guideline. But on my approach, no such exception is needed, since these are examples of proper names of movements. So, in effect, I agree with you that proper names should be capitalized, and I'm suggesting that the guideline here be restricted to accord with this fact: restricted, in other words, so that it only applies to definite descriptions that refer to movements--descriptions like 'the environmentalist movement' and so on.Shinealittlelight (talk) 11:07, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

But then it's not entirely clear why it should be "the Me Too movement", as in our article Me Too movement, rather than "the me too movement". It's not one specific organization, which argues against capitalizing, but on the other hand it's not as general as "environmentalist". Peter coxhead (talk) 11:24, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Another example is 'Protestant'. This term is capitalized because it derives from the proper name of a movement: the Protestant Reformation, though this is not the name of a specific organization. As Cullen328 says, it is well-established that proper names are capitalized. And of course anything can have a proper name, whether it's a movement, an organization, or whatever. Shinealittlelight (talk) 11:47, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
  • Black Lives Matter now has a formal structure, and is therefore a proper name. #MeToo is not a proper name. But, it started as a hashtag with caps. It's also difficult to parse in a sentence with no caps as the words are so common. I would call that an exception. I believe environmentalist movement, feminist movement, etc. are compound nouns and not proper. The explanation in MOS:DOCTCAPS looks fine to me. Obviously, there are exceptions, and RS are where one looks for such. O3000 (talk) 16:35, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
Sure, they're compound nouns, glad we agree about that. My idea is that those ones should not be capitalized, but that proper names--whether of movements or organizations--should be capitalized, like BLM (which has always been capitalized, even before it was a mere movement), Occupy, Me Too, and the Protestant Reformation. Shinealittlelight (talk) 17:44, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
The problem that brought you here (Talk:Antifa_(United_States)#RfC:_Capitalization) is with the definition of proper noun, not capitalization. We all agree that proper nouns are capitalized, but antifa is not a proper noun as it is a movement, not an organization. It is a class, not a single entity. O3000 (talk) 18:22, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
I don't know whether movements are "single entities" and I don't think it's relevant. Movements, whatever they are, can have proper names; definition not needed, see examples above. Shinealittlelight (talk) 18:30, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
I don't know your purpose. But, you are spending a great deal of editor time on trying to capitalize one word that highly respected RS aren't capitalizing and the RfC is currently 7:2 agin. Let me politely suggest that it's WP:deadhorse time. O3000 (talk) 22:01, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
I've expressed an opinion on how to improve this style guideline. You expressed a contrary opinion. We'll see if others have something to say. Shinealittlelight (talk) 22:21, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
  • I hope I'm not repeating anyone when I say that it seems fine to have a conservative Conservative Party member. Also, there is another way of looking at the "only proper names should be capitalized" and that is to write "the occupy Wall Street movement". That's a viable interpretation (though not necessarily mine). Primergrey (talk) 03:11, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Remember that overwhelming source usage will always trump a general rule of thumb. If Black Lives Matter, MeToo movement, Protestant Reformation, Occupy Wall Street movement, etc., are almost always capitalized in independent English-language reliable sources, then capitalize them here. But do not capitalize method acting, rock 'n' roll, the far left, American conservatives, the environmental movement, the civil rights movement (which one?), millennials, etc., since they are not capitalized with near uniformity in sources.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:37, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
Thanks SMcCandlish. Sure, that seems right. But ideally we could discern the principle guiding all or almost all the sources in each case and make that our rule, don't you think? And I've proposed such a change to the rule above. Didn't generate any agreement, I guess, but I did make such a proposal. Namely, I favor a guideline which says that proper names of movements ('Me Too', 'Occupy', 'BLM', etc.) should be capitalized, while descriptions referring to movements (e.g., 'the environmentalist movement', 'the feminist movement', 'the conservative movement', etc.) should not be capitalized. It seems to me that this would fit all of the examples without exceptions. Can you think of a counterexample to this? Shinealittlelight (talk) 04:46, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
We already have the guiding principle; it is MOS:DOCTCAPS, which is intentionally broad and general, setting a lower-case default, in agreement with the rest of MOS:CAPS and with WP:MOS generally (don't apply a stylization that isn't very strongly dominant in the independent RS – thus Deadmau5 and iPhone are okay, but Ke$ha and CLIEИT are not). As with all WP guidelines, "some exceptions may occasionally apply" to DOCTCAPS, thus Black Lives Matter. That has served us very well on this and everything else. The inherent problem in trying to define this in terms of "proper names" is that no one knows what that means. Even among academics, there are radically different definitions and criteria (see Proper noun and Proper name (philosophy), and cf. many academic books on the topic, which are still coming out fairly regularly). If you spend any time at WP:RM, you'll notice that people all the time make arguments that this or that "is a proper name" when it is not, by either formal definition. To the average person, it seems as if "proper name" means "something that is usually capitalized in the kind of stuff I like to read". (Meanwhile, many things that qualify as proper names in the more common philosophy definitions are not capitalized in English, and many things that are capitalized in our language are not proper names [proper nouns and modifier derivatives of them] under the usual linguistic definitions; capitalization and proper-nameness are not very closely linked despite generations of elementary school teachers – with usually not background in either discipline – confusing us into believing otherwise.)

So, trying to define movements and the like in "proper name" terms in the guideline simply begs the question and turns the reasoning circular. E.g., trainspotters frequently argue at RMs related to transit/transport topics that "Foo Bar station" or "Aybeeseeville–Eckswyzeetown line" must have capitalized "station" and "line", because they "are" proper names, because signage has the words capitalized. (Meanwhile, the same signs actually capitalize every single word on them in many cases, even "of" and "the".) There is no end to the tortured reasoning that misc. editors will use to arrive at a "my pet topic must be a Proper Name" result. MoS rarely uses "proper name" [or "proper noun"], and generally does so only in contexts in which the meaning of the notion is not regularly bound up in disputes about the exact style question addressed by the line in which MoS is using the term "proper name". But in this case, the fallacy of equivocation runs thick and hot in virtually any thread about whether this or that movement, school of thought, doctrine, philosophy, etc., should or should not be capitalized. "Proper name" will be taken to mean whatever someone wants it to mean so they can be WP:WINNING. :-/ The still-practical way out of this is the status quo to default to lower case unless for a specific topic the sources overwhelmingly capitalize it.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:18, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

That's interesting. I hadn't realized that arguing that such-and-such is a proper name was common across lots of areas here. I also wouldn't have thought it's controversial whether a given expression is a proper name. Can you give me an example of a proper name that isn't capitalized? That would definitely undermine my proposal. Shinealittlelight (talk) 15:53, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Hmmm...

This sentence on this section of the Manual of Style contradicts what I read on the specific section about music:"In English, capitalization is primarily needed for proper names, acronyms, and for the first letter of a sentence." See? It clearly says "the first letter of a sentence" but does NOT talk about "the last word of a sentence" as the section about music does. What is wrong with whoever wrote this? --Fandelasketchup (talk) 15:08, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Where are you seeing anything about capitalizing "the last word of a sentence"? WP:Manual of Style/Music‎ mentions capitalizing the last word of the English title of a piece of music, but that's just our (and almost everyone else's) style for the title of any sort of work, whether it be a poem, a novel, an essay, a song, or anything else. It says nothing about capitalizing the last word of a sentence. Deor (talk) 18:18, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

NRHP style

Do we have a guideline about whether and when to adopt the title-case capping of NRHP listings? Quite a few things are capped only because they are on the register; e.g. Laconia Passenger Station, Alton Bay Railroad Station. Dicklyon (talk) 22:00, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

If it's not consistently capitalized in independent reliable sources, we shouldn't be capitalizing it, either. Governmentese capitalizes all sorts of things just to make them seem "more official" or important, and that's not a style we use, or we'd be capitalizing many thousands more things than we do, just to match bureaucratic writing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:12, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
One trouble is that often the names they make up don't appear at all in independent sources, capped or not. I've noticed that in some of the US rail stations, station correctly follows WP:USSTATION in the title and article, but there's also an HRHP infobox where editors insist on the NRHP's listing title, in title case. I can see the logic of keeping title case there if it's just a title of a registraction document or something. Do we have a guideline about that? Dicklyon (talk) 19:38, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
Here's an example: "New York MPS Simpson Street Subway Station and Substation #18 (IRT)" or just "Simpson Street Subway Station and Substation #18 (IRT)", as rendered at Simpson Street station. You won't find that any place that didn't copy it from the NRHP. Dicklyon (talk) 04:01, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Hope this is the best Talk page for this.

This sprang out of the article title discussion on Talk:Four_Past_Midnight and is ref Titles of Works connected to printed works, esp novels, poems, and also plays, musical/opera libretti etc.

A writer's choice of grammar, spelling, capitalisation, and so on, is just as much protected by copright law under the Berne Convention as any other authorial choice.

The 'right to make reproductions' aspect of the convention prohibits alteration of those authorial choices. When we italicise the title of a novel, we are stating it as the actual title of the work, and therefore essentially reproducing the author's work, including their choices with regard to capital letters.

They have the right to make choices of how things appear on the page; and even when they don't particularly exercise that right, they still have it.

Publishers only impose their house or some graphic style if the author has agreed to that, even if by tacit acquiescence. That aspect is part of the negotiation with a publisher, and sometimes an author makes it clear that they have made a different creative choice for the work. For an example of this, see books such as House of Leaves, where the text is printed in many different directions on the pages, and in specific fonts.

Where there is a question about this, our policy really ought to be that we check to see if we can find the author's intention for the title before we apply any other case or style. Which might be a little more work, but seriously, Four past Midnight should never have happened in the first place. -- BessieMaelstrom (talk) 22:15, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

I totally agree with the sentiment of your post that the title of a work is like a person's name and should be given exactly as written. But, I doubt there are any legal issues with us not doing so as titles lack the length or complexity to be copyrightable , aren't addressed in any laws on moral rights and whilst they may be trademarked, laws on trademarks and passing off wouldn't apply to a content about them (such as in an encyclopedia).
Llew Mawr (talk) 22:41, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
He seems to be presenting us with some interpretation of copyright law, without saying where he got it. I've never heard of anything like this. Dicklyon (talk) 22:54, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
That's right, you can't copyright a title in abstraction. If I write a book and call it George & The Dragon I don't suddenly have the right to stop anyone else from using that phrase, even as the title of their own book. But it is part of my protected copyright for the book as a whole, in that nobody could publish my book with another title on it. At least, not without my permission. In connection with my work, the title is part of my copyright. When we title articles with the name of a novel, for example, we are using italics to scribe the actual title of the novel. Part of that is the writer's choice of grammar and punctuation. If I want to call it George and "The Dragon" for some specific narrative reason, then the quotation marks are part of my copyright in connection with the work. A publisher cannot remove them without my permission. I think we need to make that a clear policy, that the way the writer has titled a work is the way we title it here, and that over-rules our house style. (Or we don't put titles in italics, and we use our house style. But not both.) -- BessieMaelstrom (talk) 03:12, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
But you're doing the same thing as OP: stating a legal restriction without saying where you found that interpretation. If you're right, maybe I can sue the ASA for mangling the title of my book in their review... Dicklyon (talk) 03:24, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
I am the OP. You definitely should sue them: there's a picture of the book right under the title! I'm not using the legal stuff to scaremonger us into doing it. Copyright is an umbrella for all authorial choices, including title: it's all the same thing, is all I'm saying, as evidenced by the fact of copyright. Also, now I want to read your book. -- BessieMaelstrom (talk) 03:52, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
Adding - UK Copyright Law, which is governed by the Berne Convention to which we are signatories, states that nobody can adapt your work without your permission, which means they cannot change it, including the title because that is part of the work. More info [13] -- BessieMaelstrom (talk) 04:02, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
Oh, sorry, didn't notice you're the same poster. Anyway, I don't think anyone copied and or modified my work when they accidentally mangled the title (the review was copied from the Journal of the ASA where they had it right). Dicklyon (talk) 04:04, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
(It's all good.) They did modify it, by mangling the title, even by accident. You have the right to ask them to change it, if you want. We're making considered choices here, and should be more considerate than they were! -- BessieMaelstrom (talk) 04:09, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
And if you really want to read it, there's a free version online; see my user page. Dicklyon (talk) 04:12, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
Have browsed through. Too technical for me to really understand, but fascinating, and presumably invaluable in a world where tech increasingly listens. Did you really pay people a dollar? -- BessieMaelstrom (talk) 09:56, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
Speaking of St. George & The Dragonet, here's a variation. Dicklyon (talk) 17:44, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
That is completely brilliant. -- BessieMaelstrom (talk) 18:05, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
Here's a legal analysis: [14]. Bottom line seems to be that "Single titles - the title of a particular work - are not protected by copyright law". Dicklyon (talk) 04:18, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
Yep, that says pretty much the same thing as the link Llew Mawr gave, and I don't want us to go round in circles, so I withdraw any reference to the legality of this. Plus I spent a joyful few minutes this morning wondering what title changes publishers could legit have made over the years without telling the author. After my own suggestion of George & "The Dragon", which sounds like a porn movie, my other half and I arrived at "Mary Poopings" and called it a day. The title is certainly protected by a publishing agreement, which is not a thing Wikipedia has with any writers. Nonetheless, my point stands: if we are going to put titles in italics, we're implying that that is the actual title of the book (or whatever) as scribed by the author. If we're prioritising other rules over that, we shouldn't italicise. Right now, it's just not clear enough what our policy is, and as per what happened with "Four Past Midnight" we could really use some clarity. -- BessieMaelstrom (talk) 09:28, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Request for comments

Greetings to all,

A Request for comment has been initiated regarding RfC about whether to allow use of honorofic 'Allama' with the names or not?

Requesting your comments to formalize the relevant policy @ Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Islam-related articles

Thanks

Bookku (talk) 17:53, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia Manual of Style contradicting itself

Please see

Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Abbreviations#Wikipedia Manual of Style contradicting itself

regarding a contradiction between

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Abbreviations#Formation and usage

and

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Expanded forms of abbreviations.

96.244.220.178 (talk) 03:57, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Is "The Academy" a proper noun as used in Mountain State University?

Can someone please look into the recent edit history of Mountain State University? An unregistered editor is insisting that "The Academy" is a proper noun and refuses to discuss the issue in Talk so it would be helpful to have the opinion of another editor. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 04:32, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Nope. It's the same as "the university". The sub-institution is question has had proper names of: the Academy at Mountain State University, and later Mountain State Academy. But per WP:THE and MOS:THECAPS we should not even render the former as The Academy at Mountain State University. A possible exception: I have noticed over time that we've been ignoring this rule for cases in which the official acronym of the entity in question includes a capital-T for The in it. I recently codified this exception in the relevant section, to better reflect actual practice. TICA (which is never known as ICA) can properly be referred to as The International Cat Association, and it is also a case in which WP:THE would not be applied to remove the The from the article title. But almost every US college and university pretentiously capitalizes the leading "The" in front of their names in their own materials, while using acronyms that do not start with T for The. So, it's the University of Where-ever.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:16, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Capitalizing 'Black' w/re racial/ethnic/cultural terms?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Closing duplicate thread.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:28, 16 July 2020 (UTC)
Moved to § Proposed update to MOSCAPS regarding racial terms

Multiple news outlets, including AP and NYT, have recently moved to capitalizing 'Black'. Does that mean we should discuss moving to that? —valereee (talk) 22:31, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Did you see the above thread proposed update to MOSCAPS regarding racial terms? Peter Gulutzan (talk) 22:44, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
Peter Gulutzan, honest to god I have no idea how I missed that lol...I searched the archives! :D Thanks —valereee (talk) 23:19, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Is "college" a proper noun in this context?

An administrator has begun an edit war at Georgetown University, insisting that "college" in the article is a proper noun and thus should be capitalized. Can someone else please provide an opinion? Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 22:43, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

You are right that it should be lower case in that context. I'm sure that in Georgetown's own publications, they capitalize, but in Wikipedia which has many colleges and universities, we wouldn't because it's not a proper noun. I'd suggest following the WP:BRD process and bringing it up on that article's talk page. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 
Thanks. I'm really surprised that an administrator began an edit war over this so I wanted a sanity check before I pursued this further. I've opened a discussion in the article's Talk page if anyone would like to participate. ElKevbo (talk) 23:17, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
It's weird that this is still coming up, given that we settled this question over a decade ago (and many times since then), and the style is almost extinct in reliable, independent sources; it's mostly confined into internal business writing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:34, 17 July 2020 (UTC)
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