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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Pincrete (talk | contribs) at 08:08, 8 July 2023 (→Capitalization of "Marine"). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Capitalization discussions ongoing (keep at top of talk page)

Add new items at top of list; move to Concluded when decided, and summarize the conclusion. Comment at them if interested. Please keep this section at the top of the page.

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Concluded

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2022
2021

Use of "Christ" or "Jesus Christ" not discussed

And yet I thought I'd seen discussion in an MoS at some point. Seems relevant here. Doug Weller talk 08:58, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Doug Weller: there's MOS:JESUS, leading to a paragraph in the Judaism-related MoS. If you prefer a more mainstream venue to expand on this, might I suggest MOS:HON? The current page, MOS:Capital letters, treats the capitalisation of words/names. --HyperGaruda (talk) 19:12, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure I read you're confusion. Other than committing the etymological fallacy of assuming that merely because "Christ" in the context of Jesus Christ was originally not a personal name doesn't mean that English doesn't treat it as one. Basically all of English treats it that way, and it's a novel change to the language to lower-case it merely because it didn't originate as a personal name. The MOS shouldn't be in the business of introducing novel changes to English, even if at some time in the mists of history, Christ wasn't considered a personal name. --Jayron32 19:20, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The Jayron32's analysis is convincing to me, but I think there might also be some difference in how different people, of different religions and cultures, react to it. Some people understand it as a title, and others don't. There are probably people who think it's a surname, and there are probably people who have only encountered it as a swear word. Wikipedia:WikiProject Judaism/Manual of Style#Jesus recommends not using what is/was a title.
Speaking of which, MOS:CAPS is the wrong place to talk about this. I don't think we need to write this down, and I don't think that writing it down will stop the problem, but if we did, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography#Titles of people would probably be the correct place for it. Perhaps if you decide to pursue it, you could deal with the misuse of the US title "President". The US only has one president at a time. Former presidents are properly addressed by their most senior non-unique past title: Governor Clinton, Senator Obama, and Mr. Trump – and in Wikipedia articles, by their names, perhaps with the occasional "then-president" or "the former president" thrown in as an explanation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:13, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, certain things are just going to be sui generis and that's okay. It's not a traditional "Personal Name-Family Name" construction, yes, "Christ" is a title and not a name, but ultimately, playing the etymology game makes little to no difference. I know of exactly zero mainstream English language sources that recommend writing it Jesus christ or even christ in isolation. Usage is always Jesus Christ and Christ in isolation, always capital. You can invent any reason you want for or against that usage, but it's irrelevant to the matter at hand. The prevalence of Christ (capitalized) vs. christ (not) is so overwhelmingly in favor of the capitalized version in all contexts that that's the only reason we need. --Jayron32 16:58, 2 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
But there's not a recurrent "we should lower-case that" dispute about it, so it is not something MoS should address.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:40, 11 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Up & down casing of acronym & initialism expansion

IMHO, our MOS doc is overly tricky regarding our guidelines for the expansion casing of acronyms & initialisms. There are more than a dozen scattered, brief, and muddy paragraphs of MOS guidelines on the topic and very few clear sample expansions showing our preferred casings. It would be helpful to consolidate the MOS acronym paragraphs into one guideline area and also to add more samples. I will expand on this thread with specifics. Right now the fragmentation, muddiness, and brevity of the paragraphs in our MOS cause unnecessary confusion & editing drama. Following our MOS needs to be simpler for mainstream & newbie editors who do not have their Ph.D. in our MOS nuances. Please post shortcuts to all the MOS caps guidance you are aware of regarding acronym & initialism expansion. Hint: the unchecked default on the wild Wiki is title casing, whereas my read is that sentence casing would more often satisfy our MOS. Thank you to all of you here that do the heavy lifting on the technical issues in the MOS department! I truly appreciate your hard work, dedication, and effort. You are all rock stars. Cheers! {{u|WikiWikiWayne}} {Talk} 18:56, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Amendment of guideline for capitalizing foreign personal names

The current text reads (MOS:PERSONAL):

Personal names are the names given to people, but can be used as well for some animals (like race horses) and natural or man-made inanimate objects (like ships and geological formations). As proper nouns, these names are almost always first-letter capitalized. An exception is made when the lowercase variant has received regular and established use in reliable independent sources. In these cases, the name is still capitalized when at the beginning of a sentence, per the normal rules of English. Minor elements in certain names are not capitalized, but this can vary by individual: Marie van Zandt, John Van Zandt. Use the style that dominates for that person in reliable sources; for a living subject, prefer the spelling consistently used in the subject's own publications.

I propose to amend this as follows:

Personal names are the names given to people, but can be used as well for some animals (like race horses) and natural or man-made inanimate objects (like ships and geological formations). As proper nouns, these names are almost always first-letter capitalized, especially at the beginning of a sentence. Exceptions may occur for foreign surnames. Following the advice of the Chicago Manual of Style (Cf. The Chicago Manual of Style (15th ed.). U. of Chicago Press. 2003. pp. 313–17.) the national conventions on capitalization should be followed. Information on these conventions may be gleaned from a number of Wikipedia articles mentioned in Surnames by country, like Dutch name (Flemish name redirects to this), French name, German name, Italian name, Portuguese name, and Spanish name (some of these titles redirect). The conventions may be somewhat confusing to the Anglophone mind. There are particular difficulties with names that contain (separable) family-name affixes. Examples of these are given in List of family name affixes. The technical term family-name affix is not universal. The Dutch use tussenvoegsel; the French and Spanish use a translation of the term Grammatical particle though this term actually refers to a different concept. However this may be, these articles may further elucidate the subject and therefore be useful for a correct application of the conventions. The U.S. as a nation of immigrants, presents a special problem as these immigrants often flouted the capitalization conventions of their countries of extraction. Nevertheless, in this case the American practice should be followed. Example Martin Van Buren (instead of Martin van Buren, according to the Dutch convention), DePaepe (instead of De Paepe), Mrs. Vanmeer (instead of Mrs. Van Meer). Finally, be mindful of the conventions on Maiden and married names for women."

This proposed text could be made more concise by relegating details like the examples, the reference to WP:ABOUTSELF, and the exception referred to in "almost always" ("apostrophed" contractions like d' (French) and 't (Dutch)) to footnotes.

Motivation: This proposal is the result of a discussion in Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Anthroponymy#Capitalising_or_omitting_words_in_Dutch_surnames. To recapitulate the main points in that discussion: The current text of the guideline undoubtedly already intends to promote the observance of capitalization conventions, as used in the countries of origin of the bearers of foreign personal names. Unfortunately, such conventions are very often honored in the breach by unsuspecting Anglophone Wikipedia contributors. It was suggested that this resulted from lack of information about the conventions, and the substitution of "good-faith" guesses by the authors. As an illustration I'd like to use the "Dutch case". The paradigm of a Dutch surname is: "Zero or more (separable) family-name affixes, followed by one or more nouns (possibly intermingled with more affixes)". The "main rule" is that the first affix (if present) is capitalized (but none of the other affixes), as are all following nouns. Example: Van der Duyn van Maasdam. There are four exceptions to this rule: the first affix is not capitalized if the surname is preceded by one or more given names, one or more initials, a title of nobility (but not predicates of nobility, like Jonkheer/vrouwe), or another family name (mainly in married names of Dutch women). (Cf. "Persoonsnamen". woordenlijst.org (in Dutch). Nederlandse Taalunie. Retrieved 12 February 2023.; the guidelines for Dutch language issues and the contents of this useful website are at "Inhoudsopgave". woordenlijst.org (in Dutch). Nederlandse Taalunie. Retrieved 19 February 2023. Tip for almost everybody but Dutch speakers: Google Chrome has a new feature that makes translating webpages from Dutch into English a cinch.) Examples: Frans Adam Jules Armand (F.A.J.A) van der Duyn van Maasdam, general Herman baron van Voorst tot Voorst , Jonkvrouwe Ella Quarles van Ufford-van Heemstra Unfortunately this exception is in many Wikipedia articles apparently taken for the rule as stand-alone Dutch surnames with affixes are used without capitalization. Randomly selected examples: "van Leeuwenhoek" instead of "Van Leeuwenhoek" and "de Zuylestein" instead of "De Zuylestein". It should be admitted that a distinguished historian like Simon Schama (who we certainly recognize as an otherwise "reliable source") makes the same mistake consistently in his "Patriots and Liberators" for instance, but this is of course no justification, as the mistake is easily avoided if one just takes care to obtain the relevant information. The amended version of the guideline may help with this. We have tried to generalize this beyond just the "Dutch case" to other languages, as the problem may also exist for surnames existing in those languages (where the capitalization conventions differ, even between Belgium/Flanders and the Netherlands which share the same language). The U.S. is a special case, as this country has many immigrants of foreign descent, who routinely flout the capitalization conventions from their country of extraction. Of course, in this case the "American" capitalization should not be corrected with the country-of-origin capitalization conventions in hand. The "own preference" guideline should prevail here.

About the technical term "separable family-name affix": I would love to provide a wikilink, but the term currently is redirected to Separable verb and that article does not contain information on "separable affixes", even though the principle is the same. Maybe somebody could put in an edit? To prove I didn't invent the term myself, Wiktionary has an entry. See separable affix.

It was only briefly touched upon in the above-mentioned discussion, but a (sneaky) way out of the conundrum would be to simply omit the affixes in an abbreviated version of the surname. Simon Schama uses this policy to good effect in Rembrandt's Eyes (1999), where he uses only the nouns in the surnames of a long list of painters with van der in their surname (after first properly introducing the full personal name), as enumerated (incorrectly capitalized) under the letter "V" in the index of the book. There is no objection in itself to such a policy, but only if it is not used to shirk one's responsibility for proper capitalization. In fact, the policy is widely used in the literature in biographical articles and historical vignettes. Examples: Orange, Oldenbarnevelt and Zuylestein. But one should be circumspect: Gerard Reve preferred it, but his brother Karel not so much. And in some cases, for reasons that remain nebulous to me, except that it is "not done", it is an actual "taboo": Vincent van Gogh is never called simply "Gogh", and Johan de Witt never "Witt. With this in mind I propose (on my own responsibility) the following addendum to the above amendment (possibly as another footnote)

There is no objection to dropping the affixes in the mention of a surname in a text for reasons of brevity, provided there is little cause to fear confusion (a wikilink could be used to refer to the correctly spelled and capitalized personal name) and if there are no objections otherwise.

Ereunetes (talk) 22:14, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

TLDR. Which is not a quality one desires in a manual of style. Aim for greater concision. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:00, 19 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Did you mean TL;DR? I think reading it is the least one could ask. Anyway, I proposed to relegate an appreciable part (TBD) of my proposed text (that is the text in the "talk quote blocks", not my explanation of it) to footnotes. That should make it much more concise. Oh, but you didn't read that. Ereunetes (talk) 23:40, 19 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
For anybody interested in using the new Translate feature in Google Chrome: make sure you have the latest update of the browser. When you encounter a web page in a foreign language, not the same as your default language, highlight a section in the text (in my experience it need not be the entire page) and right-click it (not necessarily on the highlighted section; in my own experience it works best if one right-clicks just outside of the highlighted section). A dropdown menu will appear. Select "Translate to [default language]".The original text will almost instantly be replaced by a translation into your default language. There will be a box enabling you to toggle between the original language and your default language.--Ereunetes (talk) 02:00, 20 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Of course there's an objection to dropping affixes just for brevity. You might use a famous "stage name", but one does not mangle names. Placing Dutch names in alphabetic order goes as follows: Reve; Reve, van het. Gerard van het Reve shortened his name as a stage name, which was made official in later years. It took a Royal Decree to leave out the "van het". Kees van Kooten and Wim de Bie mocked it by calling themselves "Koot & Bie" one television season. De Witt would never be a good option, because it would be confusing as both Johan and his brother Cornelis had fame at the same time. In a text about one of the brothers, you could use De Witt. You only get rid of the "De" if it is official, like Katarina Witt. Emmarade (talk) 18:10, 3 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I feel your pain. I am no big fan of dropping the prefixes like "van" and "de" myself. But when I have to choose between having an undercase "van" and no "van" at all, I opt for the latter. As I wrote in a post elsewhere in this discussion, Simon Schama dropped all prefixes (after he first introduced the full name of the painter) of Dutch painters he treated in Rembrandt's Eyes. That is one approach. Alfred Thayer Mahan consistently calls Michiel de Ruyter "Ruiter" in his The Influence of Sea Power upon History, even though he was a great fan of De Ruyter. So what can one do besides gnash one's teeth? But the recommendation to drop the prefixes has itself been dropped from the proposed amendment a long time ago. Please see the latest iterations far below in this discussion. So the subject is moot. Ereunetes (talk) 22:42, 5 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

When I was writing my book, I spent a lot of effort trying to get the caps right, on names like Van De Water, van de Geer, and van der Heijden. Perhaps I messed up, as I never discovered that rule about when to cap that first "van" or whatever. But I did find a Van der Pol resonator and Van der Pol equation by one van der Pol, or so I thought. My deductions of the underlying logic didn't quite get to the right place, it appears. Publisher was little help. So, yes, we need to include this some place. Make a concise version with footnote or link to more info, and maybe it will fly. Dicklyon (talk) 09:21, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, I think you should try my little trick with Google Chrome Translate to look at the Nederlandse Taalunie citations; that may help you in future, not just for capitalization issues, but for Dutch orthography issues in general. To come to your remark: I will try to comply with your request in the near future. I already indicated a few topics that are ripe to be "footnoted" in my explanation above. I would add that the enumeration of "name" articles is superfluous since I discovered that they are already enumerated in the Surnames by country article, which I had overlooked before. Also the alternatives for "family-name affixes" as a technical term should be in a footnote, though I think it is unwise to completely leave them unmentioned, as some people who contributed to the "name" articles may be "invested" in them, and the "affix" technical term is not mentioned in those articles. Finally I added the citation for the Chicago MOS reference just now. This should be a reference. But ultimately what should be left in, put in footnotes, or completely scratched, is a matter for discussion. So I prefer to wait a while, before I commit myself. Ereunetes (talk) 21:21, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking of Dutch names, I remain fascinated by the Dutch vowel "ij" and the original Mac-ASCII characters ÿ (and uppercase IJ and Ÿ). Iirc, the Mac included the characters ÿ and Ÿ because someone thought they were needed or useful in writing western European languages, but I had a hard time finding anyone who would use them. When visiting Holland, I noticed signs like "ijs" or "ÿs" (which look alike in cursive handwriting, which is what I was working on at the time), and met people with that vowel in their name. I asked van der Heijden about it, but he didn't really clarify anything. I did also find a name with Ÿ carved in the floor of Amsterdam's Old Church, which I think is the only place I've ever seen it. I supposed everyone is happy wiht ij and IJ (like IJzebrand Schuitema), so I should try to forget about all this. Dicklyon (talk) 09:35, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I hope you intended "Van der Heijden"? :-) As to the "Dutch Y" or "IJ" character: when they still had mechanical typewriters, the ones sold in the Netherlands had an "ij" key in which the two letters were connected. That saved one keystroke, so nowadays no one bothers anymore. As it happens my own "real" surname has an "ij" in it. People with almost the same surname have an "y", or even an "i" in that space. It is all pronounced the same, because the "vowel" is almost silent in our names and acts more like a consonant. The Dutch language is full of snares and bear traps like this. Because in words like hij (he) and het IJ (two capitals and not "het Ij"; the name of the river north of Amsterdam) the vowel sounds almost (though not quite) as the "i" in English "high" or "sigh". Please don't forget about "all this" though. You can't imagine how flattered I am with your interest. If you have specific questions, please ask. Ereunetes (talk) 21:09, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Concise version with footnotes

Personal names are the names given to people, but can be used as well for some animals (like race horses) and natural or man-made inanimate objects (like ships and geological formations). As proper nouns, these names are almost always [a] first-letter capitalized, especially at the beginning of a sentence. Exceptions may occur for foreign surnames. Following the advice of the Chicago Manual of Style[3] the national conventions on capitalization should be followed. Information on these conventions may be gleaned from a number of Wikipedia articles mentioned in Surnames by country.The conventions may be somewhat confusing to the Anglophone mind. There are particular difficulties with names that contain (separable) family-name affixes, like Van Gogh and brothers De Witt. Examples of these are given in List of family name affixes. The technical term family-name affix is not universally used. Dutch name uses tussenvoegsel; French name uses particule; and Spanish naming customs uses particle However this may be, these articles may further elucidate the subject and therefore be useful for a correct application of the conventions. The U.S. as a nation of immigrants, presents a special problem as these immigrants often flouted the capitalization conventions of their countries of extraction. Nevertheless, in this case the American practice should be followed, not "corrected". [b] Finally, be mindful of the conventions on Maiden and married names for women. [c].

Notes

  1. ^ Exception "apostrophed" contractions like d' (French) and 't (Dutch) which are never capitalized; the following noun is, however. Examples: 't Hoen, d'Artagnan But at the beginning of a sentence: D'Artagnan (French)[1] and still 'tHoen (Dutch)[2]
  2. ^ Example Martin Van Buren (instead of Martin van Buren, according to the Dutch convention), Mrs. Vanmeer (instead of Mrs. Van Meer) In general, use the style that dominates for that person in reliable sources; for a living subject, prefer the spelling consistently used in the subject's own publications.
  3. ^ There is no objection to dropping the affixes in the mention of a surname in a text for reasons of brevity, provided there is little cause to fear confusion (a wikilink could be used to refer to the correctly spelled and capitalized personal name) and if there are no objections otherwise.

References

  1. ^ The Chicago Manual of Style (15th ed.). U. of Chicago Press. 2003. p. 313.
  2. ^ "Capital letter at the beginning of a sentence". Woordenlijst.org (in Dutch). Nederlandse Taalunie. Retrieved 5 March 2023.
  3. ^ The Chicago Manual of Style (15th ed.). U. of Chicago Press. 2003. pp. 313–17.

I hope this satisfies the people that asked for "conciseness".--Ereunetes (talk) 00:36, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Would it not be far easier (and briefer) to simply say that we should follow how the names are styled by sources written in high-end sources (who will generally get it right). Blueboar (talk) 01:00, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    It would indeed be easier if "high-end sources" generally did get it right. But they don't always. Take my example above of Sir Simon Schama in "Patriots and Liberators" and "Rembrandt's Eyes" who consistently got it wrong. Jonathan Israel on the other hand consistently got it right in "The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall, 1477–1806" (both according to the guidelines of the Taalunie that I referenced). Let us take the case of Joan Derk van der Capellen tot den Pol as an example. Schama's "Patriots and Liberators" and Israel's "Dutch Republic" overlap on the period in which Van der Capellen played a role: the Patriottentijd. At the first mention of Van der Pol Schama writes among others on page 65: "As a matter of plain fact, van der Capellen lacked the native property qualifications for admission...", so a flouting of the main rule that a Dutch surname in isolation starts with a capital letter. On the other hand, Israel writes on p. 1098 of "Dutch Republic: "The moment of disaster, according to Van der Capellen ...", a correct application of the same main rule. Fortunately, the author of the Wikipedia article also correctly applies the main rule. But how is one to decide between the three? The first two are both reputable British historians. But Israel (not necessarily a linguistic prodigy) apparently paid better attention to the Dutch primary sources he studied. Believe me, there is no acceptable alternative to the high road I advocate (and this concerns not just Dutch surnames, but other languages also). Ereunetes (talk) 03:36, 28 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Whenever I'm in doubt about the capitalization or defaultsort property of a name with "van", I consult van (Dutch). May be MOS:PERSONAL could refer to that article. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:50, 28 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    A very good suggestion! I had found the Van (Dutch) article myself, but had lost track of it. But it does give a good explanation of the Dutch rules, as far as the voorvoegsel "Van" goes; there are other separable affixes though, like De and Ter. So it is not just about "Van". However, I think it wise to be consistent in this proposed amendment, and refer to the article that is mentioned in Surnames by country. Nevertheless, I'll put a wikilink to the Van (Dutch) article in the Dutch name article. Ereunetes (talk) 00:38, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, I support a clarification of how to capitalize especially Dutch names, and agree that Ereunetes is on the right track here. It might be wise to start over with a neutral yes/no RFC on a specific proposal if it's not obvious what we're converging on here. I'm OK with the version in green above. Are others? Dicklyon (talk) 07:22, 5 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Fine, although the articles to be cross-referenced could include Nobiliary particle and specifically von. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 07:37, 5 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I put in Nobiliary particle underneath my reference to particule in my proposal above (conform the way French name itself treats it) Please click on the wikilink to check. I was trying to be "concise". Von could be mentioned in the same context. Ereunetes (talk) 00:52, 6 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • To some extent, this looks to me like a solution looking for a problem. As with everything in Wiki, our decisions are source based. The solution is to use the form that predominates in sources, except for living people, where we tend to give preference to the persons own choice (within reason). Perhaps the guidance could be improved but it should remain both brief and simple and I don't think the proposal does this. The only real issues are capitalisation of the surname at the start of the sentence and whether (and when) it is appropriate to drop part of the surname - noting that on the first mention, the name should be given in full. Cinderella157 (talk) 01:19, 6 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I beg to disagree. As I replied to Blueboar, not all sources are reliable in respect of orthography. Besides, in a number of countries capitalization of proper names is a matter of official regulation, not of private whim as in the U.S. So, even if the form of capitalizing Dutch proper names that predominates in the English Wikipedia is to leave family-name affixes lowercase, that doesn't make it right. To the informed eye it just looks uneducated. I agree in principle that the guidance should be "brief and simple", but that doesn't mean it is OK if it is balderdash, like this quote in the current text of MOS:PERSONAL:"As proper nouns, these names are almost always first-letter capitalized. An exception is made when the lowercase variant has received regular and established use in reliable independent sources." No, in the case of Dutch surnames, the exceptions are well-regulated by public authority, regardless of what "independent sources" may think.Ereunetes (talk) 07:27, 6 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    While I do understand that individual sources (even high end ones) can get a name wrong, that can be offset by examining multiple high end sources and seeing how they present the name in the aggregate. Blueboar (talk) 13:47, 6 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Blueboar, you beat me to it!. Yes, the consensus in sources. Cinderella157 (talk) 23:04, 6 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Maybe I should try a parable to show the advantages of my approach. Assume a novice wiki biographer who wants to write (another) biography of the mother of Audrey Hepburn, the baroness Ella van Heemstra, and is interested in the capitalization of her married name in her first marriage. They (the novice) only know that married name in lowercase: jonkvrouwe ella quarles van ufford - van heemstra. The novice now looks for guidance and finds the current form of MOS:PERSONAL. This amounts to saying:"You are on your own, squire; go live for a year among the Capitalizationists and try to infer from their contradictory mutterings what it should be. " This is not particularly helpful and may well discourage the novice. My alternative approach assumes that the novice wants to do what so many want: "look it up on Wikipedia". Of course, they could lookup Capitalization and look under "Special cases". There is some relevant info under "Compound names" (which is a misnomer, by the way). But the novice wants more. Back to MOS therefore. What I propose is the following search algorithm:
    • start at Surnames by country and search for a likely article (as the novice knows that baroness Ella was Dutch, they will not go far wrong if they click on Dutch name);
    • peruse the contents (left column) of that article and their eye will come to rest on the heading tussenvoegsel, which is already familiar from the guideline.
    • alight on that section and imbibe its contents; then glean whatever information about capitalization of Dutch personal names with tussenvoegsels seems relevant. That is quite a lot: "In the Netherlands, the first tussenvoegsel is capitalized, unless a given name, initial, tile of nobility, or other family name (e,g, in the married name of women) precedes it. For example: Jan van den Berg, J. van den Berg, but Mijn naam is Van den Berg ("my name is Van den Berg") and de heer Van den Berg ("Mr. Van den Berg"). Herman baron van Voorst tot Voorst. Mrs. Jansen - van den Berg. In Flanders, tussenvoegsels of personal names always keep their original orthography: "mevrouw Van der Velde", "Van der Velde, A.", and "Van den Broeke, Jan". In the Netherlands the first letter of the tussenvoegsel is written with lower case in the above four exceptional cases, whereas in Flanders it is written according to the entry for the person in the population register and on his official ID. This implies that in Belgium it is usually written with an upper case with the exception for names of nobility or the royalty; for those they are always in lower case, also in Belgium. See for an alternative discussion of the capitalization and collation issues around separable affixes in Dutch Van (Dutch)."
    Finally, this section also contains a reference to support these assertions: "Persoonsnamen". woordenlijst.org (in Dutch). Nederlandse Taalunie. Retrieved 19 February 2023.;
    • with this information the novice should be able to decide that the correct capitalization of the married name of Ella van Heemstra was: "Jonkvrouwe Ella Quarles van Ufford - van Heemstra". QED
    I think this ought to convince even the most skeptical defender of the status quo ante. Ereunetes (talk) 22:06, 6 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ereunetes, since concision is an issue raised, can you say in one hundred words or less the key take-away of the amendment? Cinderella157 (talk) 23:09, 6 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly: Conform the guidance given for non-English names in The Chicago Manual of Style, the spelling of those should follow the spelling guidelines for personal names extant in the countries of the bearers of those names (Cf. CMOS, pp. 313-17). The remainder of my proposed text just gives a method for helping Wikipedia editors implement that guidance in a practical manner, using the resources of Wikipedia itself. I would have no problem with putting that remainder in a footnote to the "key take-away."
I should like to add (but the 100 word limit then comes within reach) that the current MOS:PERSONAL actually does the same thing. But I think the current guidance is useless (Cf. mhy "parable" above) whereas my guidance is actually helpful in my humble opinion. Ereunetes (talk) 22:44, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
CMOS does not have free access, so referring to it doesn't do much. Let's forget about your example bits for the moment. On my screen, the present guidance is about 3.5 lines of text. How would you improve the existing text without increasing its size by more than 10%? Cinderella157 (talk) 00:58, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I already have indicated that above: Put everything in the "remainder" in a footnote. As you object to a reference to CMOS. the guidance could become "The spelling of foreign personal names and surnames should follow the guidelines extant in the countries of the bearers of those names." And in the footnote it would already say that anything goes for American immigrants. Ereunetes (talk) 18:15, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Ereunetes, a major issue lies in the concision of the proposal. I am trying to facilitate a proposal that addresses this. It would therefore be useful if we could see how this might actually read. A more focused example is much more likely to achieve consensus than those already proposed. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 23:57, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Cinderella157I understand and sympathize with what you are trying to achieve. A problem with the "conciseness" issue, is that I think we should preserve some part of the old MOS:PERSONAL text as I already did in my proposal, though I am not enamored of that. That leaves even less space for what I try to achieve.

Personal names are the names given to people, but can be used as well for some animals (like race horses) and natural or man-made inanimate objects (like ships and geological formations). As proper nouns, these names are almost always first-letter capitalized, especially at the beginning of a sentence. Foreign names, especially the ones containing separable family-name affixes (footnote: examples in List of family name affixes) may pose special problems, as national capitalization conventions may provide exceptions to the above-mentioned main rule of capitalization, and from the conventions in use in Anglophone countries. These often differ by language community. It is strongly suggested to orient oneself about the specific conventions pertaining to a particular foreign personal name of interest so as to achieve a correct application of those conventions.

And then the rest can be put in one or more notes. Or someone could write an article containing a discussion of the relevant permutations that could then be recommended. Ereunetes (talk) 00:26, 10 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to have to oppose this change, as a bunch of WP:Instruction creep that also has a WP:Wall of text problem (as does the proposer's writing in general, judging from what's posted here). To address the "parable" above, the novice would be instructed to "Use the style that dominates for that person in reliable sources". If they can't find any reliable sources, then the erstwhile biography subject is not a topic WP should be covering (WP:Notability). WP itself is not a source, and especially cannot be used circularly to verify itself (WP:CIRCULAR) so the raison d'etre here, "My alternative approach assumes that the novice wants to do what so many want: 'look it up on Wikipedia'", simply isn't an option. Only offsite sources are going to tell us what some biographical subject's name properly is.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:01, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In discussions with OP (on my talk page) I came to realize that my attempt to follow source usage, when I wrote my own book, didn't lead me to discover a key rule of Dutch names, namely the the prefix (e.g. Van) would be capitalized when the surname is used alone, but lowercase when the first name comes before it. If we don't articulate that somewhere, attempts to "follow the sources" aren't going to get us to a great place. But yes, it's rather too wordy. Maybe there's a short way to say follow the best rules and sources. Dicklyon (talk) 09:46, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The shorter the better. I would welcome constructive suggestions. Ereunetes (talk) 22:27, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I actually tend to agree with SMcCandish. But "Use the style that dominates for that person in reliable sources" is in the original MOS:PERSONAL. I simply copied that (as I copied the opening sentences). So I think the criticism should be addressed to the framers of the original version. I also agree that "Only offsite sources are going to tell us what some biographical subject's name properly is". This statement should be separated in two: the actual spelling in official sources like the Dutch and Belgian population registers, for instance. (Nobody, least of all myself, wants to change that). And the spelling when the name is used in the text of an article. My problem with the way the latter is often used in Wikipedia articles is that they diverge from official speling guidelines. To be specific: "van Leeuwenhoek" in e.g. the lede and elsewhere of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek is simply a spelling error, according to the rules of the Dutch Language Union It should be "Van Leeuwenhoek". (Cf. the reference given in the passage I quoted from Dutch name) I am sure SMcCandish does not want Wikipedia to be a den of misspellers sanctioned by the Anglophone Wikipedia community? Wouldn't that be a little arrogant on the part Of Wikipedia? It says actually: "We don't care about the spelling rules for Dutch names extant in that country. We will ourselves decide how we want to spell names of "darned furriners". That certainly is not the attitude of e.g. The Chicago Manual of Style. (Cf. the references I have given in several posts). Ereunetes (talk) 22:21, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think the key question is the extent to which the Dutch rules are customary and correct in the context of English writing, and that SMcCandlish's point is that maybe they're not. I'm not sure. If you at book stats, it appears that English writers are pretty much completely ignorant of the Dutch capitalization rules. Is that OK, or is that something we should aim to do better on via style guidance? Dicklyon (talk) 23:37, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to make two points in reply to Dicklyon. I think that most of the "abuse" I signalize is based on a basic misunderstanding of the Dutch practices of capitalization. Anglophone writers are used to immutable spellings of names, as are the Belgians. But in the Netherlands (and France, Spain, and other countries), though the "main rule" is that all surnames are capitalized including the ones that contain one or more affixes, there are a number of exceptions (four in the Dutch case) to that main rule, that lead to a certain "mutability" of surnames, under certain circumstances. "Unfortunately", if one is first confronted with a Dutch personal name (i.e. a combination of one or more given names and a surname), one immediately encounters one or two of the exceptions: lowercase for the leading affix after a given name, or after an initial. So one may jump to the conclusion that "therefore" Dutch surnames that start with an affix, start with a lowercase letter. But however understandable, this remains an epic misunderstanding. The exception is taken for the rule. And even if one is indifferent about what other peoples may think, it is never a good idea to build on a basic misunderstanding of the facts, even if one subscribes to a solipsistic model for English writing. My second point is that unlike other rules promulgated by the Dutch language Union in recent years, this complex of main rule and exceptions has grown organically in the course of Dutch history. It is not the product of an official edict, but the official edict codified what already existed since time immemorial. But I think that only strengthens the import of cleaving to those rules as they are ipso facto also applicable in historical cases. Ereunetes (talk) 00:06, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe the following perspective is helpful: Do not longer bend over backwards to respect the sensibilities of foreigners (as the Chicago Manual of Style would have it) and only follow American rules for capitalization. "President van Buren" would then become "President Van Buren" and "Dutch microscopist van Leeuwenhoek" would become "Dutch microscopist Van Leeuwenhoek". But that is precisely what the Dutch would like you to do. Because their "main rule" is also "Surnames are capitalized". So what is the problem exactly? Some might say: "Yes, but the personal name is spelled with a lowercase letter". True. But that is a consequence of the quaint Dutch exception to their main rule. Please explain why we should ignore the main Dutch rule in Wikipedia, but enforce an isolated Dutch exception? In America the rule for surnames is also not that certain surnames should start with a lowercase letter; why only for certain Dutch names? To put it a different way: I understand that for Portuguese names like Vasco da Gama it is perfectly alright to spell the affix with a lowercase letter, according to the Portuguese themselves (I have this on the authority of the CMOS; cf. CMOS, p. 314 ). So writing "da Gama" in a sentence is perfectly alright according to the guidance I propose. But that is a Portuguese convention. Why should everybody else have to follow that? On the other hand as an immigrant I am used to "adapt" to American mores. So I write my name "Ereunetes" and not ερευνητής like I was used to do Ereunetes (talk) 18:51, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Further revision

@Cinderella157I understand and sympathize with what you are trying to achieve. A problem with the "conciseness" issue, is that I think we should preserve some part of the old MOS:PERSONAL text as I already did in my proposal, though I am not enamored of that. That leaves even less space for what I try to achieve.

Personal names are the names given to people, but can be used as well for some animals (like race horses) and natural or man-made inanimate objects (like ships and geological formations). As proper nouns, these names are almost always first-letter capitalized, especially at the beginning of a sentence. Foreign names, especially the ones containing separable family-name affixes (footnote: examples in List of family name affixes) may pose special problems, as national capitalization conventions may provide exceptions to the above-mentioned main rule of capitalization, and from the conventions in use in Anglophone countries. These often differ by language community. It is strongly suggested to orient oneself about the specific conventions pertaining to a particular foreign personal name of interest so as to achieve a correct application of those conventions.

And then the rest can be put in one or more notes. Or someone could write an article containing a discussion of the relevant permutations that could then be recommended. Maybe I could add the following posts I made on Talk:List of family name affixes#Affixes and Separable Affixes and Talk:Capitalization#"Compound name" unfortunate, does not cover subject for consideration: if these edits were made to the respective articles, that would lessen the "burden" of explication in our own remit. Ereunetes (talk) 00:26, 10 March 2023 (UTC) Copied from above to facilitate further discussion. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:34, 11 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Cinderella157 I have in the meantime followed up on my "threat" to revise the subsection "Compound names" of Capitalization. This should solve a lot of the problems with the incorrect capitalization of Dutch surnames with separable affixes, if the revision is not reverted by the irate "owner" of the article, and if people read the article and the section in question. Which is not guaranteed. I therefore propose the following footnote at the end of the above proposal:

Footnote. Information about these capitalization conventions may be found in Capitalization subsection Compound names and in the "country" articles (like Dutch name etc.), that are mentioned in Surnames by country. Note that the technical term "separable affix" is not universally used in those articles; alternative terms with a similar meaning are tussenvoegsel in Dutch name; particule (sometimes nobility particle) in French name; and particle in Spanish naming conventions.

Ereunetes (talk) 23:25, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Ereunetes, sorry if I have been a bit tardy in getting back to you. I think I get what you are trying to do and it isn't a bad thing but ... There are a range of languages such that there is nuance both across languages and within which cannot be succinctly documented. This page really isn't the place for such intricate detail. I acknowledge your limitation to take such a thing on. Paraphrasing CMOS isn't a bad thing. If CMOS was open access or accessible through the Wiki library, citing it would be a solution but it isn't? Perhaps WMF could do something about that. The link you add to Capitalization#Compound names has a narrow focus on Dutch, Belgian and German names. When I read the modified text for here, It uses a lot of words to say not much. I could do a copy edit but I think the result would be to use less words but still say not much. I might give it a go nonetheless. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:32, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
By all means give it a try. But the current MOS:PERSONAL says even less. I put the operative phrase into my edit of Compound names under "American names" just to show that it only makes sense in that context; not for personal names in general. Here, in my proposal, the meat is in the footnote, because I was not allowed to put it in the guideline itself, "because of conciseness". The more concise, the less information. It is Hobson's choice, I am afraid (or is it Sophie's? ) So I think the question boils down to: if we want to have a guideline at all in MOS, do we hold onto the inadequate formulation we have now, or do we try to find something more useful? You'll probably guess my answer :-) Ereunetes (talk) 06:39, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Seems entirely reasonable as a footnote. But I'll repeat that for any given biographical subject, we should be treating the name as it is treated in most reliable sources; not everyone with, e.g., a Dutch name follows the common Dutch capitalization habits.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:02, 10 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And that is exactly the problem because of which I started this discussion. Like I said before, many Wikipedia editors honor the capitalization rules of the Belgo-Dutch Taalunie in the breach, mostly from pure ignorance. Did you actually read the preceding discussion? Ereunetes (talk) 01:00, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, and opposed adding a bunch of wall-of-text rulemongering about it. Do what the majority of sources do for the individual in question. Not sure how else to say it. If someone has been "over-correcting" in a particular case, then fix it, and ask them not to robotically do that to Dutch-descended (or whatever) names.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:58, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So why have a Manual of Style then? Because that is certainly a prime example of a "bunch of wall-of-text rulemongering". If we followed your advice a MOS would be superfluous. One practical question though: how do you decide what "the majority of sources" is? And what if "the majority" is simply wrong? Or is the majority never wrong? Ereunetes (talk) 23:59, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There's a big difference between having a concise rule and having a blathering, tumid, opinionated rule. Majority: typically determined by n-grams and other ways of aggregating results. In something like this, a very strong majority (across all the source material not just stuff that's not independent of the subject) is basically "never wrong"; see the first few sentences at the top of MOSCAPS. But even that's not quite right; for a living subject, we'd defer to their own preferred spelling, per WP:ABOUTSELF. This has come up many times; e.g. RMs to remove the accent mark in a name that is conventionally, generally, usually González but in a specific celeb's case is spelled without the diacritic; and so on. I've said elsewhere to you, in user talk, that this stuff isn't just my opinion but is years of RM and other consensus precedent, and is important for not repeating old "style fight" shitshows. You ignoring it all because it doesn't suit your desire to enforce a false "hyper-consistency" is why you are getting so much pushback here. (That, and your verbosity, and your combative attitude, which you also dragged with you into the user-talk discussion at Dicklyon's page. Even with that unnecessary baggage, I think there's still room to work to a compromise, though, or I wouldn't bother to continue this discussion.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:17, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Behind the scenes Cinderella157 and I have been working on a more concise version of the proposed amendment. This was the result:

Personal names are the names given to people, but can be used as well for some animals (like race horses) and natural or man-made inanimate objects (like ships and geological formations). As proper nouns, these names are almost always first-letter capitalized, especially at the beginning of a sentence[a]. Compound names may contain separable family-name affixes [b]The capitalization conventions for such affixes vary between (foreign) language groups.[c]. In some cases they are capitalized, in others not, depending on the language group. The capitalization conventions for the relevant particular subject's language group should be followed.[d]

  1. ^ Exception: Dutch contractions formed by an apostrophe and a single letter like 't and 's are not capitalized, even at the beginning of a sentence: 't Hoen and 'sGravesande.
  2. ^ See examples at List of family name affixes.
  3. ^ For example, the conventions differ between Belgium and the Netherlands, though they share a language.
  4. ^ Alternative terms for separable affixes include: "particle" in Spanish naming conventions; "nobility particle" in French names; and "tussenvoegsel" in Dutch names. More information on capitalization of compound personal names can be found at the Capitalization article, and at articles linked from Surnames by country (e.g. Italian name).

In addition I have edited Capitalization#Compound names to operationalize many of the reforms that were embedded in the original version of the proposed amendment. Also, in those edits a number of the comments and criticisms made in the above discussion this far have been taken into account. For instance, SMcCandish's preferences for the treatment of American subjects of foreign extraction with non-conforming ways of capitalizing their surnames have been met in a special sub section. I hope many of the objections made above have thus been met in a satisfactory fashion.--Ereunetes (talk) 19:51, 28 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

To repeat what I said in user talk: It's missing two key components (in underline below) which were established by consensus at multiple (and sometimes acrimonious) RMs and other discussions. I would re-do it like this (including some re-wording in the first case that better matches the language used at the top of MOS:CAPS):

Personal names are the names given to people, but can be used as well for some animals (like race horses) and natural or man-made inanimate objects (like ships and geological formations). As proper nouns, these names are almost always first-letter capitalized, especially at the beginning of a sentence[a] Compound names may contain separable family-name affixes[b] The capitalization conventions for such affixes vary between (foreign) language groups.[c]. In some cases they are capitalized, in others not, depending on the language group. The capitalization conventions for the relevant particular subject's language group should be followed by default.[d] However, for modern subjects, this can vary by individual, especially outside the country where the surname originated: Marie van Zandt, John Van Zandt; use the style that dominates for that person in reliable sources, and for a living subject, prefer the spelling consistently used in the subject's own publications.

  1. ^ Exception: Dutch contractions formed by an apostrophe and a single letter like 't and 's are not capitalized, even at the beginning of a sentence: 't Hoen and 'sGravesande. Another exception is made when a lowercase variant has become the dominant one for a specific subject in a substantial majority of reliable independent sources: k.d. lang, will.i.am. In these cases, the name is still capitalized when at the beginning of a sentence.
  2. ^ See examples at List of family name affixes.
  3. ^ For example, the conventions differ between Belgium and the Netherlands, though they share a language.
  4. ^ Alternative terms for separable affixes include: "particle" in Spanish naming conventions; "nobility particle" in French names; and "tussenvoegsel" in Dutch names. More information on capitalization of compound personal names can be found at the Capitalization article, and at articles linked from Surnames by country (e.g. Italian name).
I could even see putting the "for modern subjects" part in another footnote.

I'm not at all convinced that because Dutch would begin a sentence with 't Hoen that English should, or regularly does, but I'm willing to see if the proposal flies. I'm not willing to see provisions removed when they exist because they forestall repetitive shitshows. That's mostly what MoS is for.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:21, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Dear @SMcCandlish. I think I see a basic misunderstanding here. The real dividing line is not between old and modern biographical subjects but between genuine foreigners with "foreign" (i.e. non-Anglophone) names, containing separable family name affixes on the one hand, and people living (sometimes for generations) in the U.S. with the same names. I agree that these groups should be treated differently, as does the Chicago Manual of Style in pp. 312-313 (15th ed.; later editions may have different pages). The CMOS starts with the treatment of "Americans" in an Anglophone context and they follow what you suggest (i.e. consult Anglophone Biographical Dictionaries, for the idiosyncratic spelling of these names, because there is really no alternative in view of the Total Chaos that exists in the US in the field of orthography and capitalization of names). And then they continue with the "genuine foreigners" (pp. 312 ff) where they in essence advise to follow the capitalization conventions of the countries, or "language communities" in question, and proceed by giving examples by country (distilled from capitalization guidance given by the respective official authorities by country, like the Dutch Language Union). I have followed this policy when I edited Compound names in the Capitalization article. The downside of this approach is that it plays havoc on the principle of "concision," so highly valued by Cinderella157. Because in the CMOS this approach takes five pages in small print. We therefore tried to achieve the same objective as the CMOS by using the resources of Wikipedia that already exist (i.e. the Capitalization article and a number of country-specific articles referenced in Surnames by country) to which we have pointed in footnote d. of our "concise" version (even though I would have preferred to put it in the main guidance, as in the original version). If you look at the "Compound names" subsection of the Capitalization article you will see that I there used the exact same language for the "American names" subsection as you now propose to include in the "concise" version (it was already in the previous "not-concise-enough version").
As to footnote a: this was provoked by the wishy-washy clause "almost always" that we inherited from the current version of MOS:PERSONAL, i.e. " As proper nouns, these names are almost always first-letter capitalized,..." It would be better to delete this clause, which would obviate the need for the explanatory footnote with examples of the exceptions. In the name of the principle "The exceptions prove the rule."
In sum: it is either the "concise" version, or the "long" version. If you insist on putting back the addition you propose, in the concise version, I have to insist on putting back all the things that were in the long version and that I have sacrificed on Cinderella157's altar of "concision". Ereunetes (talk) 22:09, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the material that SMcC would indicate does make this less concise. However, I acknowledge their reasons for including it. It would also be better if it could be retained in a more concise way but the way of doing this is not immediately apparent to me. We are substantially closer to reaching a consensus on changes to the section. It is a case of what the involved parties can ultimately live with. A position of only this or nothing is most likely going to result in nothing. Cutting off one's nose comes to mind. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:10, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If expanding the proposal to accommodate the amendment by SMcC is not objectionable to you, you cannot object to an expansion to accommodate an amendment I would like to make to the "concise" version, I think. I would like to include what is now footnote d.into the main text. Also, I'd like to drop "almost always", together with the explanatory footnote a. from the text. Also, all the nonsense about racehorses etc could be dropped from the text (Or moved to a footnote). This would give us the following draft:

Personal names are the names given to people. As proper nouns, these names are first-letter capitalized, especially at the beginning of a sentence. Compound personal names may contain separable family-name affixes [a]The capitalization conventions for such affixes vary between (foreign) language groups.[b]. In some cases they are capitalized, in others not, depending on the language group. The capitalization conventions for the relevant particular subject's language group should be followed. More information on capitalization of compound personal names can be found at the Capitalization and Maiden and married names articles, and at articles linked from Surnames by country (e.g. Italian name.[c]) For Americans with such foreign surnames the conventions in question may not be applicable. In that case use the style that dominates in reliable biographical sources, and for a living subject, prefer the spelling consistently used in the subject's own publications.

  1. ^ See examples at List of family name affixes.
  2. ^ For example, the conventions differ between Belgium and the Netherlands, though they share a language.
  3. ^ Alternative terms for separable affixes include: "particle" in Spanish naming conventions; "nobility particle" in French names; and "tussenvoegsel" in Dutch names.
Ereunetes (talk) 22:16, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have a problem with removing some of the guff in the introductory sentence. However, it is far from just me that needs to be convinced. You have omitted the case exampled by k. d. lang. I have recently seen discussions directly relating to this. On reflection, this is a significant piece of guidance and a point of contention in discussions. The issue of names away from their country of origin is not just an Americanism. What was fn a/1 has been omitted totally and my understanding is that the exception underscored in the first part of the fn is a substantial point being addressed by the amendment. I'm not convinced the part moved from what was fn d/4 is an overall improvement. What remains is now misplaced. It is too far removed from that which it is meant to qualify (ie separable affixes) so it is now out of context. It most certainly isn't a qualification of Italian name, which is where its current placement points. Overall, I see this as a step backwards. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:02, 3 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It gives me much satisfaction that you suddenly are convinced of the need to give explicit guidance in a number of instances, where you previously almost religiously let your preference for "concision" prevail. Far be it from me to stand in the way of footnotes of the kind that you now champion. So if you want the entire footnote a., as proposed by SMcC, restored (including the two Dutch examples with "apostrophed contractions"), you have my support. I would maintain that the "special treatment" of names of immigrants (flouting of conventions from the countries of extraction) is a singularly American problem (an example of "American exceptionalism" so to speak; I say this as a US citizen myself). If you know better, please give examples. As to the treatment of footnote d: I understand that you now propose to restore the entire footnote (including the part that I put into a new footnote) to the main text. Again, I have no objection. It was you who always insisted on the utmost concision. I am glad that you now share my viewpoint that "concision", though in theory to be applauded, should not stand in the way of "completeness". So, do you now support the amendment of MOS:PERSONAL with inclusion of the restorations you propose? Ereunetes (talk) 21:18, 3 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As you asked, my own family name is not as it would have been written. While you treat this as some sort of personal competition in which to score points instead of a collaboration, you are likely to get nothing. Cinderella157 (talk) 22:58, 3 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Aw, you sound angry Cinderella. What did I do? I have conceded all your points. Didn't you notice that? What more could I do to earn your vote? Or were you always going to be opposed (as your previous posts on this page suggest) and was the "concision" ploy always that, instead of a serious attempt at compromise? As to your own family name being rewritten, the question then becomes: are you a non-US citizen or not? I was asking for an example of flouting of capitalization conventions outside the US. Ereunetes (talk) 20:27, 4 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Suggest you read WP:AVOIDYOU and focus on content instead of casting aspersion. There was no point in referring to my own family name if I were a US citizen. Cinderella157 (talk) 23:12, 4 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Could we avoid the ad hominem style of discussion? It is so unproductive. If I offended you, I offer my Unreserved and Abject Apologies. And I won't ask for your apologies for offending my feelings. Could we now return to the matter at hand? Would the formulation with all the "restorations" I conceded be acceptable? Ereunetes (talk) 18:19, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrary break (foreign personal names)

I have yet again formulated a version of the amendment incorporating the "restorations" demanded by @Cinderella157 and @SMcCandlish. I hope we can now finally come to an agreement.

Personal names are the names given to people. As proper nouns, these names almost always[a] are first-letter capitalized, especially at the beginning of a sentence. Compound personal names may contain separable family-name affixes.[b] The capitalization conventions for such affixes vary between (foreign) language groups.[c]. In some cases they are capitalized, in others not, depending on the language group. The capitalization conventions for the relevant particular subject's language group should be followed. More information on capitalization of compound personal names can be found at the Capitalization and Maiden and married names articles, and at articles linked from Surnames by country (e.g. Italian name). For Americans with such foreign surnames the conventions in question may not be applicable. In that case use the style that dominates in reliable biographical sources, and for a living subject, prefer the spelling consistently used in the subject's own publications.

  1. ^ Exception: Dutch contractions formed by an apostrophe and a single letter like 't and 's are not capitalized, even at the beginning of a sentence: 't Hoen and 'sGravesande. Another exception is made when a lowercase variant has become the dominant one for a specific subject in a substantial majority of reliable independent sources: k.d. lang, will.i.am. In these cases, the name is still capitalized when at the beginning of a sentence.
  2. ^ See examples at List of family name affixes. Alternative terms for "separable affixes" include: "particle" in Spanish naming conventions; "nobility particle" in French names; and "tussenvoegsel" in Dutch names.
  3. ^ For example, the conventions differ between Belgium and the Netherlands, though they share a language.

--Ereunetes (talk) 23:01, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's getting there, but "American" is wrong. This has nothing to do with the United States, and the same pattern of not following the "old country" capitalisation style can also be frequently found in the UK, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, etc., etc. I used "outside the country where the surname originated" for a reason. :-) You've also vague-ized in other ways, e.g. "In that case use the style that dominates in reliable biographical sources" should read something more like "In that case use the style that dominates in reliable biographical sources for that specific person", or people are going to misunderstand completely and think that we mean "follow the style that dominates in sources for all people with this surname, averaged out", which is not the case at all. And it really only applies to modern subjects, another caveat you dropped. Really, I don't know why you keep changing the wording I put back in. It was selected to be quite precise, for good reasons. If you're concerned about length, I'll repeat that this part about modern subjects can be shoved into another foonote. You're kind of re-editing at cross purposes to your own interests. The wording I used created an extremely narrow exception, and kept your general rule, and you've turned it into a broad and confusing exception that applies to everyone not just modern subjects (except then re-narrowed in a completely incorrect way to Americans only) that few will parse correctly. Please just accept the revision wording give above instead of trying to leaving your personal mark on it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:18, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It was probably too optimistic to expect you to accept my compromise offer, but was it really necessary to be so rude about it? You all but accuse me of bad faith, which I think is undeserved, as I bent over backwards to copy your version of note a. verbatim (including your hidden formatting). I think you should moderate your tone somewhat, if you want to be taken seriously. Now to the matter at hand. I had a good reason to reject your proposal for an addition to the main text of the amendment. Your proposed addition has the (intended?) efect of nullifying the reform I proposed. If you go back to what I wrote at the very beginning of this Section of the talk page, under the heading "motivation", you'll find that I pointed out that in many Anglophone Wikipedia biographical (and other) articles about Dutch persons with "compound names" the "Main rule" of MOS:PERSONAL (as it now reads), namely As proper nouns, these names almost always are first-letter capitalized, especially at the beginning of a sentence is flouted. Example: in Antonie van Leeuwenhoek the name is consistently spelled "van Leeuwenhoek", where according to this "main rule" (and also the Dutch capitalization conventions that I have repeatedly cited) it should be spelled "Van Leeuwenhoek". There is no justication for this misspelling, except for the fact that all Anglophone sources of said article that I could check online commit the same error. So the majority of your "reliable sources" (however impeccable they may be as biographical sources) give exactly the wrong capitalization advice. This could have been avoided if they had followed the advice of authoritative Anglophone Manuals of Style, like the Chicago Manual of Style, which says: "Dutch names. In English usage, the particles van, van den, ter, and the like are lowercase when full names are given but usually capitalized when only the last name is used" (15th ed. (2003), p. 315). Please explain to me why Wikipedia should not follow this sage advice that has been followed by generations of American college students? It is so utterly simple in my view. Why invent your own version of "Dutch" that has no basis in linguistics, but is just based on an erroneous interpretation of the exception to the Main rule (cited above) that applies to "full names" (in the CMOS parlance), but not to "last names"? My version of the amendment proposes to avert such mistakes, not only for Dutch names, but also for other non-Anglophone "compound" names, from other language communities, that all have their own capitalization conventions, as the CMOS also recognizes. And my version gives practical advice on how to implement this. What could be a rational objection to this? Ereunetes (talk) 21:28, 19 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The point of contention would appear to be For Americans with such foreign surnames the conventions in question may not be applicable. In that case use the style that dominates in reliable biographical sources, and for a living subject, prefer the spelling consistently used in the subject's own publications compared with the previous (original) wording: However, for modern subjects, this can vary by individual, especially outside the country where the surname originated : Marie van Zandt, John Van Zandt; [. Use] the style that dominates for that person in reliable sources, and for a living subject, prefer the spelling consistently used in the subject's own publications. [simplified by removing example] CMOS is an American publication writing primarily for an American audience. Not surprisingly it describes a matter in an American context but this does not ipso facto make it exclusively an American phenomenon. As I indicated previously and as SMcC points out most recently, this is a phenomenon that applies broadly to any country where there has been mass immigration. To the rest of the passage, SMcC would point to the less restrictive language which actually works against the stated intention of the revision. I share this view, that it actually works against the stated intention of the revision. While SMcC is advocating their wording, they are also explicitly stating that that their preferred version need not be adopted verbatum - even if this might be the simplest resolution. They state, should read something more like and offer that detail might be placed in a footnote. I see nothing in SMcC's comment that is not colegiate, constructive critique. I certainly do not see rudeness nor allegations. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:26, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Noted. Thanks for your explication. Ereunetes (talk) 18:02, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I would like to say that this problem of personal name capitalization extend to other areas like objects named after a person. Is it van der Waals force or Van der Waals force? both can be found in literature, however in this example the former is more popularly used but it does not mean it is the correct use, it could be just negligence. Half of physics equations in Wikipedia use one convention or another when dealing with Dutch.--ReyHahn (talk) 13:08, 28 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Groan. It should be "Van der Waals force" but I think you are right that "van der Waals force" may be more prevalent. Which is exactly my point. This is just a manifestation of the misunderstanding of the correct application of the convention. Ironically, the Americans of Dutch extraction with a prefix like "Van" in their name almost always insist on using a capitalized "Van", even when the Dutch exception allows a lowercase. E.g.Martin Van Buren who insists his surname is Van Buren and not "van Buren", disparages the opportunity to use the lowercase in the spelling of his full name. My point: the use of lowercase in the stand-alone surname is completely idiosyncratic. It should always be uppercase in the stand-alone surname, so: "Van der Waals". Ereunetes (talk) 22:54, 5 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Conference Finals and Semifinals capitalization

Some of my sports case fixing edits got reverted with the assertion that "Conference Finals" and "Conference Semifinals" are proper names (I presume he meant just "Eastern Conference Finals", etc.). There is indeed a trend toward more capitalization in recent decades, but overall the book n-grams don't make these look like proper names; that is, capitalization appears to be very optional, per book sources. It's clear that "Eastern Conference" and "Western Conference" are proper names, but I can't see why we'd extend that to their finals and semifinals. Thoughts? Dicklyon (talk) 22:28, 20 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Best to leave'em as they are. GoodDay (talk) 22:56, 20 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
MLS's playoff rounds are given proper names (except the First round and final). Much like how we capitalize "Playoffs" in "MLS Cup Playoffs", since they are not a generic term like semifinals would be in other competitions; MLS based their structure on other American sports leagues, where the penultimate playoff games are given proper titles (e.g. AFC/NFC Championships in NFL, League Championship Series in MLB). SounderBruce 23:20, 20 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Where can I find more about your interpretation that "MLS's playoff rounds are given proper names"? Are they listed as such somewhere? Actually, I see in some (most?) of your reverts (like this one), you're actually asserting that "Conference Semifinals" and "Conference Finals" are proper names, even without the conference names. This is highly contradicted by source usage. And I'm not arguing about what MLS calls them, just whether they are proper names, as evidenced by consistent capitalization in sources -- which they're not. Similarly plenty of books use lowercase playoffs in MLS Cup playoffs, the playoff tournament leading to the MLS Cup. Dicklyon (talk) 00:26, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note that nbcsports.com writes "The final will be held on Saturday, Nov. 5. There will be three rounds – the first round, conference semifinals and conference finals – before the ultimate showdown." Dicklyon (talk) 00:31, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And espn.com similarly in their "MLS Cup playoffs conference finals preview". And nytimes.com with "The conference semifinals, which are single-game elimination matches, start on Thursday and will wrap up on Sunday. The conference finals are scheduled for Oct. 30, and the M.L.S. Cup final is ...". Dicklyon (talk) 00:39, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
One local NBC website and an autogenerated ESPN report are not good enough sources; the New York Times has their own style guide (hence "M.L.S.") and cannot be used as a benchmark. I'm not sure where ngrams is pulling their data from, but there certainly weren't MLS books written before the league debuted in 1996. The round names are not generic terms due to the league's structure, and the league's website (which has editorial independence) uses the capitalized form. The league's own materials (season preview, match report, MLS Cup media guides, etc.) use it as well. SounderBruce 00:43, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The older hits are mostly NBA basketball, I think. The ones I cited from common modern publishers are about MLS; not as definitive style guidance, but as evidence that these are not consistently capitalized in independent reliable sources. The preferred style of the MLS is of course to cap stuff important to them; there's nothing for us in those observations. Dicklyon (talk) 04:24, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I agree with Dicklyon. We should not slavishly follow boosterism-by-caps. If we capped everything that companies (and NASA and the military and many government agencies) cap, we'd be poking readers' eyes out. Tony (talk) 05:44, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Tony, I like your metaphor (if that's what it is) of "poking readers' eyes out". That's pretty much the way I feel when I see the capped fragments in table cells, too (see section above). Some editors think caps make it look more "professional" or something. To me, they make it look more like the "poke your eyes out" 1999 web look. Dicklyon (talk) 09:12, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Finals and Semifinals etc are common nouns. They might be preceded by an attributive noun phrase that is capitalised - in this case for example, "Eastern Conference". There is often a presumtion that a capitalised attributive phrase confers capitalisation in full. It doesn't. Unlike most other European languages that only capitalise proper names, English also capitalises for emphasis, significance and distinction - but WP doesn't per MOS:SIGNIFCAPS. Sometimes however, such phrases are consistently capitalised - and then, WP capitalises such phrases. The ngram evidence isn't telling us that though. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:59, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Concur with Cinderella157, et al. We have clear evidence of major, mainstream sports news sources not capitalizing these, so we should not be doing it either.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:50, 23 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm with Cinderella too. MOSCAPS says that capping out there needs to be overwhelming for us to cap; which is in the same spirit as Chicago MOS and Hart's in the UK. Tony (talk) 12:34, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose: Given the three sub-discussions that have concluded or are about to conclude and in all of those discussions the consensus is clear that North American professional sports use these as proper nouns. The group of editors pushing this need to find a more constructive way to contribute to the site, as all this does is waste the time of productive editors on general nonsense. Deadman137 (talk) 18:16, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The worst part is they're going to claim consensus here among their little circle and then go bulldoze discussions elsewhere claiming to be the sort of broader consensus described in WP:CONLIMITED when it's literally only four guys in an obscure talk page as opposed to the larger numbers disagreeing in the actual articles. oknazevad (talk) 21:25, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Who is "they" and why are you bringing an us-versus-them WP:BATTLEGROUND attitude here?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:57, 10 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Finals capping again

@Deadman137: who reverted me fixing some of these [2] [3], asserting "proper nouns". Given the lack of consensus on events with "Finals" and such in their names, can we at least agree that when used alone (e.g. "Lost in finals" or "Lost in final", also "semifinal", "preliminary round" etc.) they should not be capped, even in article where that "finals" signifies a capped version such as Stanley Cup Finals?

@Deadman137: If you just keep reverting (e.g. capping "Lost in Semi-Finals" this time) and not discussing, that's not going to converge, because I'll just fix it again. It's obviously not capped thus in books, so what are using to assert "Proper noun"? Dicklyon (talk) 02:28, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

We've had this conversation before and you've had this same conversation with many other editors and yet you continue to persist because you refuse to accept the arguments of other editors that disagree with you. Perhaps you should find something else to do around here that would be less disruptive and provide more value to project than this. Stop wasting people's time with your nonsense. Deadman137 (talk) 02:34, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Other than the open discussion that this is a subsection of, I see a claim in 2020 that "NBA Finals" is a proper noun; so I'm not messing with that one. But for purely generic terms like "conference semi-finals" and "division finals", where we don't have conference or division as part of a larger name, I thought the results were pretty clear, but logically and by source usage (e.g. on this book search, 28 of the first 40 book hits use lowercase "the conference semi-final"). If you have a reason to assert that these are proper names, please do share the reason, rather than just say you've complained about it before. Dicklyon (talk) 04:10, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You refer in the previous subsection above to discussions concluded or about to be concluded. Looking at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Capital_letters#Concluded, I find one "no-consensus" re Grand Final when part of a named event; I'm not touching anything like that. All the rest concluded lowercase. So I'm in the dark about what your complaint is. Dicklyon (talk) 04:15, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think what's wasting people's time is the edit-warring assertion that common nouns should be capitalized because they're proper nouns. A table-cell entry like "Lost in Preliminary Round" has no proper nouns and so the only uppercase letter should be the "L" at the beginning. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 09:56, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Words like finals and semifinals are basic English words in a standard dictionary. When used as standalone words, they make perfect sense lowercase, and there is no added meaning to the reader if they are capitalized.—Bagumba (talk) 10:24, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Sbaio: Another set of reverts now (e.g. this one and this one) with edit summary You have been told more than once to stop messing with official names. Not just Lost in Final, but even Lost in Final AHAC Challenge, a term that appears nowhere else on the web as far as I can find. He's not even claiming "proper nouns" or "proper names" – just "official names", which seems clearly irrelevant. Even if "Preliminary Round" is an official name, we don't cap that per MOS:CAPS, per long consensus and sources. Dicklyon (talk) 20:45, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Why do you care so much about this? Is it hurting someone? Like if I turned in an essay using capital letters on Finals vs finals, I think my English teacher would understand the sports term vs a final series of something. The other thing here is, NHL editors are very keen on consistency. One change here needs to be made to all. Also, these articles are written in Canadian-English [4], which I'm not sure if there are additional nuances to be aware of. That being said, just make another RfC. It helps gain consensus from everyone. Conyo14 (talk) 21:49, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We care about it because we want the encyclopedia to look good and use standard English as part of a professional presentation. Uppercasing common nouns and lowercasing proper nouns is non-standard and inhibits clarity and easy understanding. Your English teacher may be patient and permissive, but we have established a manual of style specifically to make it easy to produce a standard look, and mis-capitalizing random words runs counter to that. It's not just understanding what was meant, it's being able to parse it easily. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 23:28, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We need consensus on this then, since it's not explicitly written as a rule. This statement from MOS:SPORTCAPS, "Specific competition titles and events (or series thereof) are capitalized if they are usually capitalized in independent sources: WPA World Nine-ball Championship, Tour de France, Americas Cup. Generic usage is not: a three-time world champion, international tournaments" will need to include "Ordered names of series such as 'First Round', 'Preliminary Round', or 'Semifinals' cannot be capitalized." Stanley Cup Finals will remain capitalized as it is the official and proper use of the name by the NHL and its sources, but use of the word Finals is a reference for Stanley Cup Finals in the context of an NHL article and I suppose that is more up to interpretation of the editors here. I, along with a few editors, successfully changed the round names from 2014–onward to be First Round, Second Round. etc. So, it can be done here regarding capitalization. RfC please. Conyo14 (talk) 00:00, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Conyo, why do you care why I care? I don't care if you turn in an essay styled to your own preferences. But in WP, we have a manual of style. The interpretation seems pretty clear here. I'm struggling to think what question could be formulated and put to an RFC to clairify what has been clarified so many times already. Dicklyon (talk) 06:36, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Where can I learn more about this changing of round names? Was it discussed some place? What was the motivation? Dicklyon (talk) 06:37, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
RfC in 2016 here: [5]. Interestingly, we mentioned the use of silly caps, but it was brushed aside as it was merely about the name change than the grammar associated with it. The main reason for the change was because the NHL changed it for its official Guide and Record Book in 2014 and then the site also changed it. By 2016, there were more hits around Google showing secondary sources also conformed to the change.
I see now, where you said "Capitalization of the round names, not including the preceding word (conference or first/second would stay capitalized), can be changed after the RfC is over, but this topic is merely the discussion of just the names, not the grammar." I thought you were saying it was decided to cap these terms; not the case. Dicklyon (talk) 04:35, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW, I care why you care because to me it's not an eyesore. In an RfC just state, "We need a consensus on whether the names of sports series when not used in a proper way are to be lowercase. We have some editors who are not conforming to MOSCAPS due to a misunderstanding of the vague rules on WP's MOS regarding capitalization in this case. All sports that do not have proper or official use of the series names in accordance to the primary source and/or a majority of secondary sources will therefore be decapitalized." If no consensus, editors will war, if consensus for change, no one will mess with this. I'll make sure to it. If consensus for no change, sorry bud. If the rules were more specific on this, I think we'd be better. Conyo14 (talk) 17:06, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We have a manual of style. It has been developed over the years through consensus. Your RfC would effectively say: "Should we ignore the Manual of Style in the case of sports capitalization?" Many people believe that their area of work should have a different style because they like it that way or because the specialist sources they read follow a different style. We don't need to reach a consensus that the Manual of Style should apply in sports; we already have that consensus. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 21:21, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't it a guideline and not a set of laws? Also, is it written there was consensus on this? If there is, then there is no debate. Conyo14 (talk) 21:28, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's right, it's a guideline, not a set of laws. Nobody is going to be punished for getting capitalization wrong. And yes, the consensus has been written down in numerous move decisions over the years, just not precisely on "Preliminary Round" or "in the Semi-finals". Those terms are just like so many others; the RM on "Name <sport> tournament" seems most analogous. Look at discussions in the last couple of years under #Current for example. It's also written pretty clearly in MOS:CAPS (... only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia) and WP:NCCAPS (one should leave the second and subsequent words in lowercase unless the title phrase is a proper name that would always occur capitalized, even mid-sentence); note the "even mid sentence" – the caps you see at the top of event listing, in news headlines, etc. don't count toward this criterion. With few exceptions, there has been a strong consensus to follow this guidance. The exceptions have been in cases where large numbers of editors asserted their preference, in spite of evidence that the term is not usually capitalized in independent reliable sources. Dicklyon (talk) 23:57, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Also, is it written there was consensus on this?: Which "this" are you specifically contesting? —Bagumba (talk) 01:03, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to know where it is written in consensus whether semifinals, quarterfinals, etc. as a shorthand/reference to Stanley Cup Semifinals, Northeast Division Finals, Eastern Conference Quarterfinals, etc. should be lowercased when referenced. As far as I can tell, we have "no consensus" from a few months ago. So, yeah, it would be nice to reach a clear consensus. Not just editors saying "iT's rIgHt hErE iN MOSCAPS" (apologies for being facetious). Like where does it say that? It's all so vague and not specific enough for us. Please just do another RfC. End this war Dicklyon. Conyo14 (talk) 04:34, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
One reason we're having this discussion here is to hear from people who care about what MOSCAPS says, and how to interpret it. It seems that there's a clear consensus that it's clear enough on the guidance already, and there's no exception for shorthand phrases that are not consistently capped in sources. And even thing like "Stanley Cup semifinals" don't usually have capped Semifinals in sources so it's a real stretch to make such an excuse for capping semifinals. Dicklyon (talk) 04:40, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not arguing with you on this, because this is a stupid argument to have. You can probably relate being on the sense of reason. We hockey editors are so religious on keeping things consistent. An RfC will help strengthen everything though. Either that, or idk, maybe we pull a roll vote here with an additional week to officially, or properly, resolve this. You know if a majority of editors agree, then I mean, wow, all this fighting is over. Conyo14 (talk) 04:51, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair he's just mad that two of his proposals in the last year were not accepted. [6] [7]
He's just trying to force his viewpoint when others have decided to move on. In both conversations he also had to be reminded about WP:BLUDGEON. Deadman137 (talk) 21:23, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In light of this discussion and time passed, I went ahead and restored the case corrections that were reverted, and a few more. But Deadman137 is reverted those again ([8], [9]); is there more to say abuot them? Are these terms (Quarterfinals, Preliminary Round, Division Semifinals) claimed to be proper names? Any support for that? Dicklyon (talk) 00:32, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The edit summary says Stanley Cup Quarterfinals are an official round name. It might be, as a full phrase (but that's a separate matter). But the capitalization in question is for the standalone word quarterfinals. In this case, there is no difference in meaning for the reader if it is capitalized. —Bagumba (talk) 01:29, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If all it takes to resolve this just removing the hockey shorthand, we could consider that request. The terms Stanley Cup Semifinals and Quarterfinals date back to the 1920s and were used in some form or another until 1981 and one of the terms was brought back once for use in 2021. The Division rounds from 1982–1993 can also be expanded to their proper name as well.
Dicklyon I'm surprised that your actions haven't earned you some type of block at this point. I thought that it was a fairly serious policy violation to use a bot to add your preferred edit into multiple articles when you're involved in an active content dispute, some might even call that edit warring. I will remind you that Wikipedia does not have a strict time limit on how quickly a person is required to respond to you. A day or two is acceptable as some people are busy outside of this site. Deadman137 (talk) 02:56, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not using a bot, and not doing high-speed editing of anything controversial. We haven't heard anything here to suggest that these terms are proper names (even if there are some proper names that contain words like Finals and Semifinals and Division Finals, those aren't what I'm editing). Even re "Stanley Cup Quarterfinals", book don't cap that. Dicklyon (talk) 03:51, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If all it takes to resolve this just removing the hockey shorthand, we could consider that request: I'm not a hockey editor. However, as an active editor in other sports, I don't see the advantage of being repetitively verbose and prefixing Stanley Cup. —Bagumba (talk) 04:04, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Deadman137: So far your comments above amount to nothing but personal attacks on me. And nobody is supporting your notion (expressed in edit summaries, not claimed or backed up here) that these words are proper nouns, or proper names. There's a pretty obvious consensus that this is a run-of-the-mill application of MOS:CAPS. So can we just fix them and move on? Dicklyon (talk) 06:30, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

More evidence

MOS:CAPS starts with "Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization." Caps are unnecessary if a number of independent reliable sources avoid them. Examples of sources/outlets that have styles similar to ours, i.e. that cap proper names but do not cap things like "semifinals" in ... include:

The fact that lots of other sites would use "Conference semi-finals", "Conference Semi-finals", "conference Semi-finals", or even "Conference Semi-Finals" is not relevant to how we conform to Wikipedia style. Dicklyon (talk) 06:25, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Let me start by apologizing to Dicklyon, you're right you did not use a bot to engage in your edit war, you used a wikipedia gadget and I have the receipts to prove it. Also holding someone accountable for their actions is not a personal attack. You know that in this case that these terms are used as proper nouns and you've known that for about a year now. Your sources are so good that we cannot determine who actually wrote two of your sources and the other two are local beat writers that are not considered to be experts in their field.
As oknazevad noted in this thread, this overarching policy of yours is WP:CONLIMITED. You've tried get your changes with North American sports through many times and you've not gained consensus at any point. As Randy Kryn noted in opposition: "per the decisions at the recent baseball RMs which kept the uppercasing of their end-of-season playoff schedules. That, along with the uppercasing of NFL conference championship games, seems to have set the style for consistent Wikipedia casing of North American high-level professional sport playoffs. Besides that, the discussion indicates that there is nothing broken here." Given that you do not have consensus the only thing that we can use is the edited consensus and that does not agree with your stance.
As Bagumba said in this thread: "But the capitalization in question is for the standalone word quarterfinals. In this case, there is no difference in meaning for the reader if it is capitalized." The problem with this argument is that you can argue the opposite as well and it is just as valid, "this part of the heading isn't capitalized, we should capitalize it as there is no difference in meaning to the reader." This flawed rule of yours could not be a better argument in support of WP:IAR than I've ever seen on this site. Also of concern is that during the process of coming up with this idea, it was decided to limit qualified sources to only independent ones as the only things that could refute your arguments, this generally is not supported by the community as primary sources are perfectly acceptable under the accepted standards of this site.
So to resolve this issue and end all the fighting we should rescind the current horribly flawed and under scrutinized rule and replace it with a reasonable argument made by GoodDay in 2020: "May not settle with many here, but perhaps a compromise is required. Leave those that are capitalised, as they are & leave those that aren't capitalised, as they are." So to take this just a little further, if a company or league capitalizes any names of their event, we do the same, if they do not capitalize, we do not capitalize. This is likely the only reasonable compromise that we'll be able to come to as what is currently in use is just going to cause further conflict. Deadman137 (talk) 02:10, 8 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Leave those that are capitalised, as they are & leave those that aren't capitalised, as they are". Wowsers, I sometimes forget, just how logical I can be :) GoodDay (talk) 02:23, 8 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Have you taken this to the idea lab? Nemov (talk) 03:36, 8 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with this argument is that you can argue the opposite as well and it is just as valid, 'this part of the heading isn't capitalized, we should capitalize it as there is no difference in meaning to the reader': This is contrary to MOS:CAPS, which begins:

Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization

Also of concern...it was decided to limit qualified sources to only independent ones as the only things that could refute your arguments, this generally is not supported by the community...: The use of independent sources is also per MOS:CAPS (emphasis added):

Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia.

—Bagumba (talk) 04:17, 8 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We could rewrite MOS:CAPS not just for sport events, but for capitalization of important topics of all sorts, as "Wikipedia embraces unnecessary capitalization. In English, capitalization is often used for emphasis of important terms. Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what might be capitalized; any words and phrases that are sometimes capitalized by promoters of a topic are important enough to be capitalized in Wikipedia." That would keep us busy for a while, putting all the caps back into the sports articles, the bird and plant names, and the all the rest. Dicklyon (talk) 10:41, 8 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Except, that's not actually what Wikipedia does. Just because people disagree with your particular approach doesn't mean that there are no standards, or that they aren't applied. --Jayron32 13:11, 8 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is our time to determine what Wikipedia should do. What it currently does is the mess we're trying to solve. O.N.R. (talk) 01:42, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Conyo wrote above, "NHL editors are very keen on consistency". Consistency is good. And the best way to get there, when things are inconsistent, is to move in the direction indicated by guidelines, especially those of very longstanding consensus about what we should do. For example, if you search for "Preliminary Round" in WP (using regular expression search), you'll find is less than a tenth of the use of lowercase "preliminary round"; the capped version is not all concentrated in hockey, and hockey has never been anywhere near consistent on this internally. So I've been moving toward consistency, per the guideline. What would you propose instead that could be less of "mess"? Why not just help? Dicklyon (talk) 22:17, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The NHL's "preliminary round" only existed for around a decade 40-odd years ago, so it may not be a good sign of usage for the modern-day rounds. O.N.R. (talk) 00:40, 11 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Let me know if there's some other kind of round you'd like me to check. Dicklyon (talk) 03:37, 11 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If we're limited to NHL, the obvious option would be the conference finals. Is it "Eastern Conference Final(s)" or "Eastern Conference final(s)" in a hockey context? O.N.R. (talk) 17:09, 11 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think we're accepting that it would be "Eastern Conference Final(s)" as the proper name of that event, like "Stanley Cup Finals". That's not one we've argued about. But "the conference finals" when the conference is not named, like in books. In Wikipedia, I count 230 articles with "the Conference Final" (optional s after that) and 160 with "the conference final" (plus 27 "the Conference final") so really not many in total and pretty well mixed. Dicklyon (talk) 18:23, 11 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Per Dicklyon, there's a difference between Eastern Conference Finals, which is a proper name for the event, and merely "conference finals", which is a generic noun phrase. In the context of, say, the NBA, the Eastern Conference Finals are the proper name of a specific event, whereas "conference finals" is a generic term that can refer to any number of conference finals, like the difference between "King Charles III" (a specific king, for which the title is considered part of the proper name) and "king of the United Kingdom", a generic noun referring to any of a number of such kings. --Jayron32 18:30, 11 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a given to me that "Finals" should be obviously capitalized: The Tampa Bay Lightning entered their Eastern Conference finals matchup against the New York Rangers after a well-executed sweep of the Florida Panthers and as a well-rested team, getting nine days off between series. (ESPN) A reader won't interpret the meaning any differently if it was finals vs. Finals.—Bagumba (talk) 10:44, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
My language "I think we're accepting that it would be 'Eastern Conference Final(s)'" was carefully chosen to allow that I also don't think it's a given. Particularly in examples like yours where I'd interpret "Eastern Conference" as modifying "finals matchup". If you said "the Eastern Conference Finals was held ..." then maybe the caps are appropriate. I'd want to check sources. My point here is just that that's not the subtle question being argued, where even "conference finals" has got pushback from a couple of editors, particularly Deadman137. Dicklyon (talk) 16:35, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Looking more at sources, I'm more inclined to question those. In book stats, "Eastern Conference semifinals" in more common than "Eastern Conference Semifinals" except in a couple of recent years, likely influenced by Wikipedia's capitalization. Same with final and quarterfinals and Western. Dicklyon (talk) 02:39, 14 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

And again

@Deadman137: Another revert today claiming "still no consensus", capping "the Qualifying Round" and "the First Round". Have I read this wrong? I thought we had pretty clear consensus above, with Deadman137 pretty much alone in his objections, and still not saying exactly what his objection is or why. Plus the cited sources there use "the qualification round" and "the first round", so it's hard to see what he's getting at. Dicklyon (talk) 18:12, 11 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Dicklyon: You may want to go to WT:HOCKEY#Round_names_capitalization, as the editors are discussing a potential t-ban. I'd rather we didn't go there, so I'll just open an RfC there. I'd rather we not have an edit war of this magnitude over something so silly (pun intended). Conyo14 (talk) 02:42, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it seems totally inappropriate that a thread for notifying about this discussion forked into its own hockey-fan-centric discussion with explicit canvassing, but there it is. Dicklyon (talk) 03:27, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, we support Caps fans ;). But this does affect all of WP:HOCKEY, so let's involve more editors than MOS and hockey. Okay? Okay. Conyo14 (talk) 03:32, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I see you have indeed launched an RfC at the forked discussion at the WikiProject: WT:WikiProject Ice Hockey#RfC: NHL round names capitalization. I suppose I better ping all the respondents here to go there now? Post it more centrally, too? Dicklyon (talk) 03:36, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The RfC will ping random editors within 24 hours, but yes, please bring everyone and post centrally. Conyo14 (talk) 03:55, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I listed it at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Capital_letters#Current. We should ping previous disccussants, too, But I'm pretty pooped right now, having flown from SYD to SFO today (a very long Thursday). Dicklyon (talk) 04:17, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the gist of the rationale to (arguably) support the capping of Final (and similar) in sentences and sentence fragments like Lost in Final is that Final is being used as a shortened form of a full name (eg Stanley Cup Final). The argument would continue, that there is no evidence of the broader community having reached a consensus on this particular matter; therefore, there is a need to arrive at a consensus on this. Please see Use of capitals in a shortened title, where this very matter was discussed. There was clearly consensus against this being a case where capitalisation would be permitted. Cinderella157 (talk) 03:35, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for finding that from 2015. Also note that even in the full term Stanley Cup Final, "final" was most often lowercase until a few years ago; same with plural Finals; this shift was likely influenced by Wikipedia capping it since 2007. Dicklyon (talk) 05:02, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Final in Stanley Cup F|final is a descriptive noun. There is no reasonable reason capping it is "necessary" per MOS:CAPS. I was not arguing it was. I was only speaking to the capitalisation of shortened forms of a full name which is presumed to be a proper name (ie capped in full). :) Cinderella157 (talk) 08:54, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No doubt that some sources who use Stanley Cup Finals, NBA Finals, etc. might also refer to the series with a standalone capitalized Finals. But what is gained over lowercase finals, if the context is clear which series is being referred to? For example, this New York Times source uses standalone lowercase finals and conference finals in an NBA article.—Bagumba (talk) 09:28, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Another one

At User_talk:PeeJay#Wrong_how? we're discussing "FA Cup third round" vs "FA Cup Third Round" and such.

Here's the item in question: They needed three games to defeat Queens Park Rangers in the FA Cup Third Round, before hitting four past Oxford United in the next round.

@PeeJay: let's see if we can get more eyes on this question; I already it fixed it back to lowercase, but you're still saying that's wrong and capped it again. Dicklyon (talk) 14:09, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Go the RFC route. Gets more editors involved & ends the content dispute, one way or the other. GoodDay (talk) 14:35, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we need a new RFC every time an editor doesn't understand MOSCAPS, do you? Dicklyon (talk) 14:52, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's best to have one, as RFCs tend to solidify consensus. GoodDay (talk) 15:21, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So far it's just one guy who doesn't understand MOSCAPS. If someone wants to make a case that this is a proper name, or that for some other reason it should be capitalized, let them say so and we'll see if we have clear consensus. It's hard to me to imagine who would still think it's not clear, after all the discussion at hockey and elsewhere. Dicklyon (talk) 17:27, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I reckon it's up to @PeeJay:, which route he chooses :) GoodDay (talk) 21:36, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not making a case for the round names in any competition other than the FA Cup. If other competitions don't capitalise, that's fine, but we have to go with what the evidence supports on a case-by-case basis. In both the competition regulations and the competition calendar, the rounds are capitalised. I can't explain why some pages on the FA website don't capitalise, but the regulations supersede random news articles. – PeeJay 13:05, 28 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That calendar doesn't have sentences. The rules include sentences such as "The Clubs competing in each Round of the Competition shall be drawn in couples..." This does not mean the WP should cap "Clubs" and "Round" and "Competition". Their style is to cap what's important to them, for emphasis. Our style manual says we don't do that. I'll go ahead and fix it again, given the lack of any good reason for capping. Dicklyon (talk) 15:31, 28 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Or you could wait until the end of the discussion… you've made a pretty big assumption regarding the FA's motives for capitalisation. – PeeJay 15:48, 28 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Your response indicates a clear lack of understanding of MOS:CAPS. The provision only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia is specifically to not put weight on "official" docs, where being too close to the subject means they're likely to be capitalizing for emphasis (at the FA do in the rules you linked for lots of other common nouns). Read it through, look at some of the precedents collected at the top of WT:MOSCAPS, and see if you don't agree. Dicklyon (talk) 15:41, 28 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Re my "big assumption regarding the FA's motives", you're right, I shouldn't try to make such inferences. My point rather is that their capitalization of "Club", "Round", "Competition", "Players", "Commercial Contracts", "Copyright Materials", etc., shows that they are not using a style in which capitalization is reserved for proper names, and therefore you can't infer from that doc that they treat anything capitalized in it as proper names. Since they often use lowercase for the round names in most other docs on their official site, the evidence is clear that even thefa.com does not support your interpretation. Dicklyon (talk) 19:56, 28 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Use lower-case, per all these other discussions. It's been observed many times that wikiproject-based fans of particular subjects (mostly sports, like football and hockey and tennis) work themselves up into a state of "discouragement" when they go the route of protracted squabbling to maintain their "capitalize this because we think it's important" bad habit. RfC after RfC about the same thing is the primary source of this, and is a general drain on editorial productivity. The WP:RFC process should be used for settling genuinely controversial matters involving a large number of editors to get to a consensus; not by one won't-drop-the-stick editor to delay the inevitable.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:56, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it could be a case of boosterism, such as organisations that cap job titles (Garbage Collector Grade 2). Our readers will find it so much easier to distinguish the proper name (FA Cup) from whichever round it is: ""FA Cup third round". "FA Cup Third Round" pokes my eyes four times and lacks the distinction. There is utterly no need for an RfC. Tony (talk) 08:20, 28 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

More case fix reverts

@SounderBruce: who reverted about 17 of my last 1000 or so sports case-fixing edits, for reasons that remain unclear. See User talk:SounderBruce#Capitalization reverts. He suggests another RFC, but hasn't said what the question is. Looks like mostly hockey round names, which we just re-settled with an RFC. Dicklyon (talk) 03:16, 9 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@SounderBruce: let us know if you need time to explain, before I restore my case fixes. Dicklyon (talk) 00:53, 10 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Lacking any response from him as he edits other things and ignores the pings, and in light of the recent RFC at WT:WikiProject Ice Hockey#RfC: NHL round names capitalization, I'll go ahead and re-do those fixes that SounderBruce reverted. Dicklyon (talk) 03:24, 11 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I checked out of this discussion a while ago. It isn't logical to use a hockey decision to decide how soccer terms are used. If you must continue being an annoyance to editors who are here to create content and not squabble over whether words should be capitalized based on whether 49.9999% of a selected number of sources use which form, I just ask that you do things with more care and consistency. Mass JWB-ing without care is hurting the project. SounderBruce 03:39, 11 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The failure of the hockey exception suggested that other sport exceptions would also not be in order. If I make mistakes in my edits, it would be useful if you would point them out instead of just reverting. I still have no clue what you're objecting to. I see you're mass reverting again, but have still not pointed out what I got wrong, if anything. Dicklyon (talk) 04:04, 11 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@SounderBruce: Wikipedia has had a style of avoiding unnecessary capitalization for longer than I've been around (over 15 years). It's not a real big deal like WP:NPOV or WP:V, but it's something worth attending to for people who enjoy such things. When someone writes "It isn't logical to use a hockey decision to decide how soccer terms are used", it's clear that there's a misunderstanding. The style decisions were made long ago and the vast majority of the encyclopedia follows them. They still sometimes surprise people who are unaware of them, but re-litigating them every time is not productive. Like many others (including me), @Dicklyon is doing the boring but satisfying work of making the encyclopedia use a consistent style throughout. It's gnome work, not for glory or barnstars, but it makes the encyclopedia better. SchreiberBike | ⌨  20:31, 11 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
With SounderBruce being a lone voice against what appears to still be a solid consensus, can I go ahead and re-fix those he reverted? Dicklyon (talk) 17:42, 13 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not a peep about this at several FACs about American soccer in the past few years, where MOS compliance is actually checked carefully. I'm opposed to any actions that are not discussed with the wider community with input from editors who actually have some subject knowledge, rather than simply using the ever-worsening search abilities of Google. SounderBruce 05:26, 14 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe invite someone from WT:MOSCAPS to check next time. Dicklyon (talk) 02:38, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, there was a peep, but you squashed it by asserting they are proper names. Dicklyon (talk) 02:47, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Also note that near the top of this talk section I asked you Where can I find more about your interpretation that "MLS's playoff rounds are given proper names"? You didn't answer. Dicklyon (talk) 02:50, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

His reverts' edit summary (MLS round names are proper names) e.g. here is just like what a couple of ice hockey editors were claiming for their sport. A perusal of sources does not support this; e.g. for "MLS Cup playoffs", it's easy to find lots of uses in reliable independent sources with lowercase "playoffs". For round names in isolation, even more so. It's not clear what SounderBruce means when he asks me to "do things with more care and consistency"; consistency takes time and he's just interfering by random reverts. And if more care is needed, I could use an example or two of where I got it wrong (I do make mistakes now and then, but I own them and try to fix them quickly). Dicklyon (talk) 21:34, 11 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I also did a handful of page moves to downcase "playoffs", thinking those would be uncontroversial as they seemed to be in lots of other sports I had worked on in the last year, but SounderBruce moved them back (e.g. here) with edit summary "Proper name of the tournament". So I suppose we need a multi RM discussion now, which will be another numbers game of soccer fans/promoters versus people who prefer to follow WP guidelines. Dicklyon (talk) 21:41, 11 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Year NHL playoffs

FWIW, I've attempted to implement the recent WP:HOCKEY RFC decision, at the (ya gotta start somewhere) 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs page. Don't know if I got it correct. Feel free to look it over. GoodDay (talk) 21:55, 11 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for doing that. I did a few more there; and still more. Sometimes it seems it will never end. Dicklyon (talk) 04:35, 12 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What next for capital "T" in The Gambia?

I'm starting a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#What next for The Gambia? about how to followup on the RfC which changed Wikipedia style to use a capital "T" for The Gambia mid-sentence and mid-article title. Please participate in the discussion there. Thank you, SchreiberBike | ⌨ 04:02, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

As noted over there, that RfC has been changed to "no consensus", so do not go around putting "The Gambia" in mid-sentence.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:41, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Per SMcCandlish. Tony (talk) 10:15, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Of course, the "the" in these cases (including "the Ukraine") is colonial: it originally referred to territory. So, "the Sudan (territory)". Tony (talk) 07:27, 14 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The RfC was later changed to "no consensus". The discussion referenced above is now archived at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 227#What next for The Gambia?. I should have noted that change here when the closure was changed; my apologies for any confusion. SchreiberBike | ⌨  00:51, 16 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Person of Color

The page currently includes "... person/people of colo[u]r is not offensive, and not capitalized". I venture that instead the phrase should be with black/Black and white/White in that it can be "Person of Color" or "person of color", and the choice depends upon the same considerations. I propose to edit the article accordingly. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 14:57, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have evidence from well-respected style guides that the term "person/people of colo(u)r" is supposed to be capitalized? Generally Wikipedia strives to reflect existing scholarship on the topic; what do other style guides (the Chicago Manual of Style, Strunk and White, MLA, APA, AP Style Guide, etc.) have to say on the matter? --Jayron32 16:01, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent question! My quick search gives the answer ... indeed I do not have style guides to back this. It is either the case that the folks I work with are ahead of our time and it will take the rest of you a while to catch up ... or we are a backwater and can be safely ignored for our straying from the norm. Time will tell. Pending finding it in a reputable style guide, I withdraw the suggestion. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 16:54, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Finding it in "a" reputable style guide wouldn't settle the question either; we'd want to see it agreed upon in a preponderance of major style guides.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:51, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Person of color" is overwhelmingly lowercase in sources. Dicklyon (talk) 08:59, 2 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:42, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Should we update/hedge "is not offensive"? Our own article on the term observes that "Many critics of the term, both white and non-white, object to its lack of specificity and find the phrase racially offensive" and that "Political scientist Angelo Falcón argues that the use of broad terms like "person of color" is offensive", and there are more examples. EddieHugh (talk) 18:26, 2 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Have at it. Our page probably should not be making such a blanket statement, which verges on an endorsement PoV.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:42, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Does Angelo Falcón and the other examples represent the preponderance of scholarship on the issue? I mean, I can find a non-trivial number of people who find any given thing offensive. I'm not saying it isn't offensive, but we would need more than the say so of a single political scientist to establish that. --Jayron32 18:53, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a lot of reason to use the term in wiki voice anyway? I assume that its potential for offense is outweighed by the fact that its use is always going to be connected to a source or existing discussion of the topics. We shouldn’t be going around using such a nebulous term for our own reasons, whether or not it is offensive (where better writing would favor listing ethnicities specifically). — HTGS (talk) 18:58, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Case-fixing progress

As many of you know, I have been somewhat focused on fixing over-capitalization recently, with about 30,000 edits so far in 2023, and about 200,000 edits in 2022. My typical MO, when I'm not otherwise too busy, is to click through "random articles" looking for obvious over-capping. When I see something, I fix it, like I did here a few minutes ago. Then I do a search on some of the things I fixed to see if they are patterns that repeat in other articles. In this case, I found only one more, and fixed it. But sometimes I find thousands more, so I work on those via JWB. In a few cases (see for example some sections above and some recent or open RM discussions), I get some pushback, so I stop and discuss. This is less than 1% of cases, I think, and has been almost all from sports enthusiasts wanting to cap things that are not so commonly capped in sources (not surprisingly, since most of the over-capitalization I found and worked on was in sports articles). Depending on how discussion goes, my attempts stop, or resume. These edits have fixed well over a million unnecessary capital letters, with very little controversy and pushback, and I think help make the encyclopedia better by having caps really mean something, in conformance with our Manual of Style and the usually strong consensus to follow what it says at MOS:CAPS. I'm not expecting any great kudos for this work, but I'm happy that I've gotten more thanks than complaints. Progress. It's hard to say how much more is to be done, but I find I have to click a lot of random articles before noticing any over-capping problems these days. I hope people will continue to scrutinize my edits, and speak up if I make mistakes, as I sometimes do. Dicklyon (talk) 08:51, 2 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep on keeping on. I do similar work, but not as much and especially less lately as my life has changed in positive ways. I feel like there will always be usage projects to take on, but I do feel like things are getting better. I've no skill as an article writer, so I'm glad I can help the make the content that others add better. On great occasion, there's some pushback, but it's rare. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 03:56, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Quantity-wise, WP:JWB has been an amazing breakthrough. But I've also had to learn to, and agree to, get clear consensus for any bulk high-speed edits, as if a bot. So that sometimes slows it down a bit. Life would be better if JWB was a bit smarter and more flexible, e.g. in providing ways to not match and change patterns in filenames and reference titles. In filenames, changes get quickly fixed by the editors who watch a category that catches such things, so are not a huge problem. In reference titles, even if you check "ignore unparsed contexts" or whatever it's called, it does ahead and makes changes; if you try to lowercase there via the subst:lc: magic, it doesn't subst it and leaves a nasty mess in the article code. Fortunately, therse are easy to find and fix in a second pass. It shouldn't be this hard. If I knew how to build my own scripts, maybe I could make it easier. I'd be happy to collaborate with a better hacker who wants to help. My brother who writes Javascript for a hobby refuses to get involved. Dicklyon (talk) 09:11, 4 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes progress on case fixing is hard due to the shear numbers of sports fans, rail fans, or whatever, that like to capitalize their stuff. For example, the RM just closed with no consensus because "While those in support had a stronger argument, the argument was not sufficiently strong to overcome the numerical opposition to this proposal" as the non-admin closer put it, even those many of the opposers just repeated things that were clearly false. Without more people taking style issues seriously, it will generally be difficult to make progress toward compliance with guidelines in areas that can be dominated by fans of over-capitalization of their special stuff. Oh, well, win some, lose some. Dicklyon (talk) 11:02, 8 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I found another big area of over-capitalization: Stars, Actors, Writers, Producers, Directors, Hosts, Co-Hosts, Narrators, etc. of TV Film, TV Series, etc. I did about 10,000 edits on that in the last few days, fixing maybe 100,000 unneeded capital letters. A few mistakes were reverted (which I gave thanks for), but so far no pushback on this. Further checking is always welcome. Dicklyon (talk) 06:24, 23 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I was over-optimistic on the sports progress, I think. I found and fixed a few thousand more football, and a thousand or so volleyball articles with widespread over-capitalization of staff and player positions and such. Looks like the same will apply to other sports. Dicklyon (talk) 11:28, 7 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Jweiss11: Doing lots more sports case fixing, I ran into this one with a claim of proper name status: BCS National Championship Game. The "logo" and many sources don't consider "Game" to be part of the name, so I could see compromising on BCS National Championship game or just BCS National Championship. Then there are contexts such as "their first BCS National Championship", which should be "their first BCS national championship", right? Dicklyon (talk) 23:59, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I believe BCS National Championship Game is a proper name, and the article is named accordingly. It is specifically the national title game of the Bowl Championship Series. The winner of the BCS National Championship Game wins a "BCS National Championship", also a proper name. A generic "national championship" in college football, referring to a title won in any of a number of eras via a number of different methods is definitely not a proper name though. If you think the capitalization of "BCS National Championship Game" is wrong, you should open a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football or Talk:BCS National Championship Game. Similarly, there is College Football Playoff National Championship, the successor to the BCS. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:12, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Dicklyon:, also note that National Football League Draft (NFL Draft) is a proper noun. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:48, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Why do you say so? Sources disagree. Dicklyon (talk) 00:19, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The Ngram Viewer chart from Google shows "NFL draft" and "NFL Draft" reaching near parity in recent years. And the prevalence of generic references to "draft" does not necessarily invalidate the existence the proper noun "Draft" if it also occurs in substantial volume. Whatever the case, the main article here is National Football League Draft. Until that article is renamed, we should consider it a proper noun here on Wikipedia. Jweiss11 (talk) 05:24, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That "near parity in recent years" is likely driven by people copying Wikipedia's over-capitalization. Either way, it's nowhere near the threshold specified in MOS:CAPS. And if you're saying there are some contexts where it's not a proper name, and some where it is, could you give a couple of examples at least? If we could distinguish difference uses, one of which is a proper name and one of which is not, we could use that to settle the issue (sort of like I suggested on the national championship thing). Dicklyon (talk) 07:28, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Here's another look at recent 50+ years: [10]. Only in 2011 was there a majority capitalization of Draft in National Football League Draft. For NFL Draft, only 2019, the most year for which we have stats. I don't think this means the world has recently promoted this to a proper name, especially considering the hack by which WP decided to re-cap it in 2016. Dicklyon (talk) 11:13, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The BCS thing is more complicated. In some years, lowercase "game" is in a clear majority. And while "National Championship" is majority capped, it's hardly "consistetly" so. Dicklyon (talk) 11:39, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
'Google shows "NFL draft" and "NFL Draft" reaching near parity in recent years' - which means WP will still lower-case it. See the first two sentences of MOS:CAPS. We expect to see near-uniformity of capitalization in sources (and ones that are independent of the subject). 'Until that article is renamed, we should consider it a proper noun here on Wikipedia.' No, it doesn't work like that. WP is not a source for itself (WP:CIRCULAR).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:38, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@SMcCandlish:, I'm not suggesting that Wikipedia is a source here. I'm suggesting that the article's title is principal place where we reflect the common name for the subject per reliable sources. It's stilly to downcase the D in wikilinks and references to National Football League Draft around Wikipedia while the article itself has a capital D in its name. If the D should be down-cased, then propose an article move. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:10, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
On the NFL Draft issue, I've started an RM discussion as suggested. It's linked under #Current above. Dicklyon (talk) 09:25, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Jweiss11: I hope that the source evidence, in combination with guidelines, is convincing enough that you and other football fans will get behind lowercase. Let us know if the case is not clear. Dicklyon (talk) 11:26, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Dicklyon: By "football fans" did you mean to say "football content experts"? Jweiss11 (talk) 12:01, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No, I just meant the fans, the ones who like to make their area look more glitzy by over-capitalization and such. Most editors in this content area, like in most content areas, focus on content and don't fight people who focus on styling; the "fans" are not those. Dicklyon (talk) 22:23, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The main problem is that sports editors don't seem to know about MOS:JOBTITLE. Every player position, every staff position, in every imaginable style or context, is title-cased. I've been fixing these for months; just did a few thousand more in football, from Tight Ends to Graduate Assistants. The over-capitalization of events that aren't capped in sources is small potatoes by comparison, but that's what they fight for. Dicklyon (talk) 13:08, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, good work. You are a great Editor! — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 14:33, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Dicklyon:, the sorts of editors that capitalize generic positions like "graduate assistant" and "tight end" will never be convinced by any argument that you or I make, because they will never read any argument that you or I make. Those sorts of edits are made by IPs, short-lived, fly-by editors, and perennially disengaged silo editors that never engage in discussions. The editors participating at Talk:2024 NFL Draft and those who contribute regularly at places like Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football are a totally different set of editors. These editors, which include me, sometimes have principled objections to your efforts to downcase entities we believe are actually proper nouns. Jweiss11 (talk) 19:23, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The bulk of these over-capitalizations have long been the standard in the sports area, not from fly-by-night editors. It's just that the editors had little interest or exposure to capitalization issues, and there's a general tendency to cap what's important to you. Fortunately, they usually accept the change since it's obvious that you can't claim "Tight End" as a proper name or trademark, so these go OK. And I'm OK with principled objections, but in the case of the NFL Draft, the arguments are being made in contradiction to the evidence; it's OK for you to have and express the opinion that it's a proper noun, but it would be good to temper that in light of evidence that says most sources don't treat it as such. Dicklyon (talk) 21:57, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And there a bit of an WP:OWN issue with the siloing you suggest. Some of us work "horizontally" across projects and should be given as much weight as those who work in "verticals". Dicklyon (talk) 22:02, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, when I used to term "silo" above it was to describe the sort of editor that edits but never engages in discussion with other editors. That's not a good behavior, and I certainly don't support it. I made no comment there about editors who work "vertically" on one topic versus editors who work "horizontally" on a broad range of topics. So whatever "WP:OWN" you see there is your invention born of your misunderstanding. As for "standard in the sports area", the over-capitalization of things like "tight end" or "graduate assistant" are not the work of currently active sports editors with which are you likely to engage in discussion. These are either 1) relics from 10+ years ago when the general quality of Wikipedia was much lower, 2) the work of fly-by/IP editors, or 3) the work of more tenured, but disengaged ("siloed") editors, many of whom do things like create 2023 college football team articles (e.g. 2023 Marist Red Foxes football team) by copying and roughly adapting the analogous 2022 article. Any bad format in the older article tends to get transposed on to the new one. Jweiss11 (talk) 23:15, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That transporting of old errors to new is why I think it's worthwhile to spend my time working on fixing these things. We see a similar transporting of WP over-capitalization to outside sources, as writers trust us too much. Dicklyon (talk) 10:02, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
With the Internet, there's a lot more amateur sportswriters than in the past with sites like SB Nation, Bleacher Report, FanNation, etc. They might see ESPN with "Tight End" in a player profile[[11] and think that is standard, or think "WR" must mean that wide receiver should be Wide Receiver; afterall, even MOS:CAPSACRS warns: Do not apply initial capitals in a full term that is a common-noun phrase, just because capitals are used in its abbreviation Or course, WP is full of amateur writers (myself included)—Bagumba (talk) 11:07, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
For sure. And some of those "amateurs" are actually professionals, book writers, etc. We've seen lots of clear examples of Wikipedia info being copied into books (often correct, but often enough wrong). I'm pretty sure the same is happening with over-capitalization, too. Not that we have a ton of it, but where we have it, it self-reinforces. Dicklyon (talk) 20:57, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Aye. In some of the topics that I "work", I very regularly run into erroneous stuff in "professional" writing that was obviously copied from a Wikipedia article that had wrong, unsourced or badly sourced stuff in it, and the off-site writer/reuser did not bother to check whether it was reliable. Then we get into WP:CIRCULAR problems when the error in the source is cited as evidence to use in the WP article to retain the wrong information. That negative feedback loop clearly applies to bad style choices, too. It's pretty obvious that MoS-noncompliant style (overcapitalization, etc.) – which tends strongly to run in certain topics, due to wikiproject WP:CONLEVEL problems – gets copied by off-site writers, and then fans of the divergent style try to rely on such material to push the over-capitalization (or whatever) as a new norm for WP to adopt. It ties in also with the fallacious idea that MoS should throw out any rule that editors aren't assiduously following, as if editors actually memorize MoS, rather than using it as a WP:GNOME cleanup guide and as a dispute-settling mechanism.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:04, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

RACECAPS CONFORM?

MOS:RACECAPS is our current guidance on capitalizing ethno-racial color labels (e.g. Black/black, White/white), and it emphasizes the need for consistency within an article. How have editors interpreted this when it comes to direct quotations? MOS:CONFORM says "Formatting and other purely typographical elements of quoted text should be adapted to English Wikipedia's conventions without comment" and later describes such recommended changes as "alterations which make no difference when the text is read aloud". Does this apply to ethno-racial color labels? I'm not pushing for a change to this guideline, just wondering what common practice is. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:56, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I would read MOS:CONFORM as meaning that we make the article consistent, as that's what the rules say at MOS:RACECAPS. Capital letters are a "purely typographical element", so we're allowed to change direct quotes in that context. --Jayron32 18:48, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't. Especially sources that apply a "Black but white" double standard; that is a leftist socio-political stance especially in (and mostly confined to) US writing, and is not "purely typographical", but memetically loaded. WP shouldn't be using it in our own voice, but we shouldn't be effectively censoring quoted material that uses it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:04, 10 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ancient, classical

What are the rules regarding the capitalisation of words ancient and classical in language names? I see that the article Ancient Greek uses capitalised Ancient, but this MOS guideline provides examples such as ancient Latin, Gaulish, etc. as well as classical Latin, Greek. --TadejM my talk 00:21, 6 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

See lead of MOS:CAPS: If it's not capitalized near-consistently in most sources, don't capitalize it here. Most of these phrases are not treated as proper names, but are descriptive. Ancient Greek (better Koine Greek or something else more specific) and Classical Latin are generally treated as proper names. So are Old English, Old French, Old Irish (same with the middle versions: Middle English, etc.). But "ancient Gaulish" is just a descriptive phrase (and a redundant one, since Gaulish was extinct by the Medieval period). And "classical Greek" is just a descriptive phrase. If MoS is giving "classical Latin" as an example, that's a mistake.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:54, 10 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the clarification. The text contains "letterforms in classical Latin, Greek, and other unicase scripts". I don't think classical should be capitalised here as it also refers to Greek and is thus descriptive rather than part of a proper name.--TadejM my talk 17:04, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Right.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:55, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

RACECAPS note h

Hello! I have a question about note h, which currently reads:

A June–December 2020 proposal to capitalize "Black" (only) concluded against that idea, and also considered "Black and White", and "black and white", with no consensus to implement a rule requiring either or against mixed use where editors at a particular article believe it's appropriate. The status quo practice had been that either style was permissible, and this proposal did not overturn that. The somewhat unclear proposal closure was refined January–April 2021 and implemented, after a February–March 2021 overhaul of the rest of this section
(bold added to part that's the basis for my confusion).

Perhaps I'm having a brain lapse, but I'm not following the bolded text. Is it saying that there was "no consensus to implement a rule either requiring or prohibiting mixed use"? I ask because there's currently some edit warring going on at Tulsa race massacre on whether mixed capitalization is allowed. I'd note that, in early 2022, there was a subsequent discussion on this talk page as to mixed usage.--Jerome Frank Disciple (talk) 15:06, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Reading the discussions, my conclusion is that its stating that there was no consensus to implement a rule requiring "Black/White" or "black/white" and that there was no consensus to implement a rule against mixed use, allowing for its usage where editors at a particular article believe it's appropriate (which I think is important to note, as mixed use primarily has to do with American race relations, and would be inappropriate elsewhere). Therefore, reverting or changing existing norms in the article over capitalization would fall under MOS:STYLEVAR, which states that When either of two styles are acceptable it is inappropriate for a Wikipedia editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change. :3 F4U (they/it) 05:03, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In general usage for decades now, there's been a tendency for more left-leaning and African-American writers to capitalize "Black" as it has come to name a culture and ethnicity in the African diaspora; notably in the wake of things like the Black power movement. Whereas "white" is not generally a specific culture/ethnicity. Often "white" is capitalized by White supremacists. So, mixed usage, varying with context. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 20:00, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's the "Hitler liked cats so cats must be bad" fallacy. White supremacists also capitalize "Chinese" and "Maori" but we wouldn't consider writing them lower-case because white supremacists use upper-case. Major publishers like The Washington Post routinely capitalize White in the ethno-racial sense, right along with Black.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:36, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Note the use of Blak culture and Blak sovereignty (always capitalised) in Australia. I don't know if these needs a mention in the style guide. SMcCandlish? There will no doubt be at least one full article about either or both at some point. (And as an aside, Indigenous and Aboriginal are always capitalised when referring to First Nations people or languages in Australia). Laterthanyouthink (talk) 02:19, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A bridge to cross when we come to it. Coloured is capitalized in the South African context. The issue at real debate here is the practice of some on the American left to write "Black but white" and whether WP should adopt it. So far there has been no consensus to do so, and I would think that one would not develop. A side matter has been whether things like "the indigenous peoples of South America" or "the native cultures of northern China" should have a capitalized "Indigenous" and "Native", and again we have not reached a consensus to do that and probably will not.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:39, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your response. Yes - in South Africa, Coloured refers to a specific ethnicity though, not all people of colour, so slightly different. The Black vs white capitalisation is also a bit of an issue in Australia (and the term can mean different things to different people see Black Australians), with variation in capitalisation seen in the media and other literature. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 02:55, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Our current de facto practice of being consistent ("black and white" or "Black and White") within an article is probably good enough for now, but I've said before that I think this needs to come to a proper RfC at some point so we have a clearer answer. (My own personal opinion is that these terms should be capitalized as ethnonyms, even if informal ones; and I do it that way. It's especially jarring to see something like "Asian, black, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander, or white", as if two are being de-capitalized to denigrate them.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:14, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

multiple split proper nouns?

Which is correct

or

or is it personal choice? Herostratus (talk) 03:21, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Since book usage (n-gram stats) don't suggest consistent capitalization of either, it's no contest. Even if both were proper names, I'd probably go with the lowercase plural, as stats suggest. Dicklyon (talk) 04:41, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Heritage-listed things

Sometimes (often) we use title-case article titles for things that are listed in title case in heritage listings, e.g. Pyrmont and Glebe Railway Tunnels; other times we don't, e.g. Glebe and Wentworth Park railway viaducts. I've recently been riding the L1 light rail line and exploring both of these areas that are part of the same system finished back in 1922; got lots more photos to upload. But I couldn't help but notice the capitalization inconsistency. My impression is that people who make articles on things that wouldn't be notable except for the heritage listing like to copy the title case from the listing, as there are typically few or no other sources using the same name or description. But does that make it a proper name? Or just a title-cased description? I can't find many sources with names for the railway tunnels in Pyrmont or Glebe. The heritage site uses "Glebe railway tunnel" in text, and just descriptive terms on the other one, so I suppose I'll downcase it. Dicklyon (talk) 08:49, 23 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Similarly, I downcased "building" in Railway Institute Building, and provide the missing article "the" where it seemed sensible. Dicklyon (talk) 12:06, 23 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Any opinions on heritage-listed things more generally? For things like the Smith–Jones House and Farm, we routinely capitalize, even though the title is essentially descriptive, just because it got stuck on a hertitage list that way (though usually listed with a hyphen when a dash is appropriate). There are typically no sources using the name unless it has been made into a park or something, in which case it is more clearly a proper name. I'm not proposing to go and downcase all the houses, but wondering what others think about such things. Dicklyon (talk) 09:22, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I would go lower-case on these things, since independent sources are not near-consistently capitalizing them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:07, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The trouble is that independent sources pretty much don't use the names at all. The heritage listings just took descriptive terms and title-cased them for their own purposes. I think it's a bit nutty to cap "House" in the Smith–Jones House, but I also think it would be nutty to take on trying to change that; it would be a bigger task than the downcasing of "Men's Singles" etc. in tennis was – not something I'd step into again; and some of them do get picked up, e.g. as parks, and appear capped in sources. But I'll downcase some purely descriptive ones when they poke me hard. Dicklyon (talk) 13:15, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Grape varieties

I wish to repost a question which I originally posted on WT:Manual of Style/Organisms but which received no reply.

What's the standard for grape varieties such as Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon or Sauvignon Blanc? For example, currently the article on Pinot Noir apparently consistently does not capitalize ("pinot noir"). Cabernet Sauvignon does capitalize the name of that variety, but otherwise the capitalization appears to be not very consistent: in the lead we have "the grape is ... the product of a chance crossing between Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon blanc ...". Here, both words in "Cabernet Franc" are capitalized, but only the first word in "Sauvignon blanc". Why is that? What would be the official rules? -- 04:58, 24 April 2023 (UTC) 2001:16B8:A8:2900:B834:EF24:15B0:A140 (talk) 04:58, 24 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Book n-grams suggest that capitalization of wine grape varieties really took off in the 1970s and 1980s, but that recently the lowercase usage is making a big rebound. I can see why one would capitalize Franc but not blanc or noir, base on proper-name derivation of the former. Dicklyon (talk) 05:21, 24 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The official rule is that (from the lead paragraph of this section of our Manual of Style) "Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia." (emphasis in the original)
However people who edit in various subject areas spend time with the specialist literature for that area and feel that we should follow the style of the specialist literature. They often feel strongly that Wikipedia looks wrong if it looks different from what they see in their sources. I've read books about butterflies that capitalize the common names of butterfly species, but do not capitalize the names of birds or other species. That's fine in a book about butterflies, but Wikipedia is an encyclopedia about all things.
What I'm saying, to directly answer your question, is that grape varieties, not used as formal cultivar names, which do not include place names or other proper nouns should be in lower case because they are not "consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources". Wine lovers may disagree, but we should follow Wikipedia's long established style. The other question is whether it's worth your time to make the changes and then probably argue about them. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 13:23, 24 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed with SchreiberBike. This over-capitalization is yet another WP:Specialized-style fallacy. They're not cultivar names. I'm not sure even franc should be capitalized; cabernet franc is a French term, and French does not capitalize modifiers derived from proper names the way English would capitalize French. Thus bœuf bourguignon, not bœuf Bourguignon.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:01, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It should be noted that consistently does not mean 100%. Cherrypicking sources that don't capitalize so as to give greater impression that it is more widespread than it is probably is a bad idea. It's trivial to find at least a few sources one way or the other. --Jayron32 13:10, 8 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We expect to see about 90%+ capitalization, in sources independent of the subject, to consider it consistently capitalized.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:19, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Upper vs lower case for Black and White

Have I missed any guidance about whether these can be mixed? I’ve seen occasions where one is upper case and another lower case? Doug Weller talk 08:31, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No; it's been discussed repetitively, and we need to RfC it again. The last RfC on the subject failed to come to a clear consensus, leaving us with the status quo ante by default (which was basically that it could vary on an article-by-article basis whether to use black and white or Black and White, as long as it's consistent within an article). There's no consensus for Black but white, and many editors have observed that this is a usage almost exclusively American and leftist, which would be a WP:NPOV problem in Wikipedia's own voice. But this does not stop various activistic editors from going around changing our articles to read Black but white. I.e., it's an ongoing unsettled dispute that needs firm resolution.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:06, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I hadn’t noticed the discussion above. Doug Weller talk 20:27, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
See the archive pages for several previous rounds of general discussion of this, that have not really gotten us to a clear resolution.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:22, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Newbie here. Thank you for this explication. I'm glad I found this talk page, where it's evident that the issue has been discussed to death. I raised the question on a couple of talk pages (Black people and White Americans), but I now see I should've looked here first. It's all quite clearly a big mess, and I'm happy to just let it go ... for now, anyway.
(This experience has had the benefit of teaching me a lot about WP rules, the MOS (which I must thoroughly explore), RFCs, and much more. I've added the very helpful Wikipedia:List of policies and guidelines to my ever-growing collection of WP bookmarks.) Yesthatbruce (talk) 09:44, 13 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Headings: should content after a colon be capitalized?

Hi all, I'm wondering if there's still consensus that content after a colon in a heading should not be capitalized.

The current guidance, in my opinion, seems counter to many peoples' intuition– I believe this may be because a colon is usually used after a date, so the secondary title includes the first capitalizable text. (I've even had my changes in this issue reverted, prompting me to question the guidance altogether.)

For reference, MOS:SECTIONCAPS gives these examples as guidance:

Use: 1891–1940: early history
Avoid: 1891–1940: Early history

Thanks! Wracking 💬 02:01, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There have been very similar topics discussed in October 2022, March 2022, and August 2021, mostly around capitalizing after numbers, and in all of them it was made clear that section headings, as article titles, use sentence case, in which only the first character of a sentence is capitalized (and proper nouns, of course), meaning that neither the first letter after a number nor the first letter after a colon should be capitalized. —El Millo (talk) 02:10, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I see in the October 2022 discussion that @Spongeworthy93 provided a list of off-wiki examples of sentence case titles with a colon. Personally, I think those are compelling. APA also says to capitalize after a colon in sentence case titles. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Wracking 💬 02:20, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It says that the first word after a colon is also capitalized when what follows the colon is an independent clause (emphasis mine), not in every case after a colon. Still, while APA suggest this, the Chicago Manual of Style suggest using lowercase after colon, unless what follows consists of two or more complete sentences.[1] —El Millo (talk) 02:40, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The rules for sentences and sentence-case titles are different. Both APA and Chicago Manual of Style support capitalizing a subheading (text after a colon) using sentence case.
For titles, APA says "Capitalize the first word of the title/heading and of any subtitle/subheading".[2]
Chicago Manual of Style says, "In headlines or chapter titles or other display type, it’s normal to cap after a colon, even if the title or heading is in sentence case (see CMOS 8.158) and whether or not the part after the colon is a grammatically complete sentence."[3] Examples given by Chicago Manual of Style are as follows:[4]
  • The house of Rothschild: The world’s banker, 1849–1999
  • Crossing Magnolia denudata with M. liliiflora to create a new hybrid: A success story
Wracking 💬 17:43, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, hold on a moment. You say Both APA and Chicago Manual of Style support capitalizing a subheading (text after a colon), but that seems to misinterpret what APA says, at least. APA does not (AFAICS) say what follows a colon constitutes a subheading. They say only, the first word after a colon is also capitalized when what follows the colon is an independent clause. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 22:15, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@JohnFromPinckney: I think you're looking at the wrong APA section. See the link at ref 2 below. Deor (talk) 22:26, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The link at ref 2 below is the one I followed. That's the place I looked and whence I copied the excerpt I pasted here. Where, exactly, do you (or Wracking, who actually made the claim I'm questioning) see that the APA says that what follows a colon is a subtitle/subheading? — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 08:42, 20 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sources generally characterize the bit following the "main" title/heading as a subtitle/subheading.[5] That aside, here's APA: In sentence case, lowercase most words in a title or heading. Capitalize only the following words: [...] the first word after a colon, em dash, or end punctuation in a heading.[6] Wracking 💬 16:38, 20 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WP would not capitalize after an em-dash either. I think what's going on here is APA is interpreting all of these things as titles, and individually applying sentence case to each fragment divided by a colon or em-dash. And we tend to do that with off-site articles' sentence-case titles in citations, e.g |title=Mammal barbering 101: The aerodynamics of shaved weasels – To shave or not to shave (though this would depend on the citation style a particular editor was most used to; some would not use the captal Ts, and some would re-render the entire title in title case). But WP-internal article headings are treated as headings, as dividers, and formatted the same as list items, table headers, image captions, etc.: just plain sentence case as a single string (except where a new full sentence occurs, which is common enough in list items and image captions, but not headings or table headers). Whether that was a great idea or not is kind of moot now, after 20+ years.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:23, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Use lower-case, per previous discussions of this. PS: WP:MOS does not slavishly follow Chicago (which itself changes over time). Otherwise MoS would just consist of a summary of Chicago instead of being its own style guide. MoS is our best community effort to synthesize all style guides into something that works well on Wikipedia. Do not let your head explode when MoS disagrees with something in some particular other style guide.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:41, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate your comments. I'm not confused about the rules or how they work. My argument is that the MOS should be different. I cited other style guides to clear up other editors' confusion about the general understanding of "sentence case" (including off-wiki). I cannot find any style guide that treats sentence case display text as Wikipedia does, and I think that's notable. Thanks. Wracking 💬 03:13, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
SMcCandlish, I'm relatively new to Wikipedia so I apologize if I brought these thoughts to the wrong place. Maybe I'll look at WP:VPPOL for this. Thanks. Wracking 💬 03:23, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This seems as good a place as any. WP decided on a paricular form of sentence case for headings way back in its early days, and changing it now would be a monumental task for no gain. There's not a clear reader-facing reason to do it. Unlike, say, fixing rampant over-capitalization of terms just because they have something to do with a sport or dancing or videogames or the government or some other topic where people like to ignore MOS:SIGCAPS. That kind of stuff is mentally jarring to readers. "Why is this capitalized? Is it a proper name? A trademark? Is this some form of emphasis?" But it's really unlikely that many of them would notice a heading difference between "Blah blah: yak yak yak" and "Blah blah: Yak yak yak").  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:08, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The current rule (do not capitalize after a colon in a header) isn’t being followed, though. That’s why I brought this up in the first place. So I’m not sure how "monumental" this task would actually be, as it wouldn’t involve large-scale changing of articles. :] Wracking 💬 15:06, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, capitalization after dash and colon and quite common, and often well defended. But the way to fix inconsistency is to move toward what the guideline suggests, not change the guideline and start going the other direction. Dicklyon (talk) 18:11, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I think, in this case, Wikipedia should take a descriptivist approach, as the prescriptivist one clearly isn't working. (In my informal survey, about 85% of articles follow APA/Chicago, not WP on this issue. Let me know if you need details on my methodology lol)
I don't think any arguments for the status quo have been very strong, as they've been mistaken about the use of sentence case off-wiki and argued that because the rules are old they shouldn't be changed (even though, IMO, cited past discussion has been not on this topic, shallow, and misinformed). Maybe I'm under a false impression about the changeability of the MOS, then. Wracking 💬 18:27, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see any statistical analysis proving that a majority of colons in WP headings are followed by a capital letter. The fact that you've run into a few cases of it doesn't prove anything, other than what's already been said many times before: No one has to comply with MoS to write here, and no one is expected to memorize MoS. (It primarily exists as a cleanup reference work for WP:GNOMEs and a means of settling recurrent, disruptive style disputes.) There is no line-item in MoS, or in any other guideline or policy, that is not routinely violated by editors, because editors mostly do not read our P&G pages. That doesn't mean we should reverse all the rules to do what the rule-ignorers are doing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:37, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't twist my words. I did not say we should reverse all rules. I said we should reverse this rule.
Here is the informal survey I did:
  • It is not possible (AFAIK) to search article text for punctuation or case sensitivity, so I instead searched for a phrase that often appears in this particular header formation. On 25 May, I searched "early years", a common phrase used in headers that include colons. I reviewed the first 250 results, 40 of which included a colon in the header.
  • The results were as follows: 85% capitalize after the colon, 10% do not.
And here's the data:
Extended content
Thanks. Wracking 💬 00:35, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Capitalization/faq0008.html
  2. ^ https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2012/03/title-case-and-sentence-case-capitalization-in-apa-style.html
  3. ^ https://cmosshoptalk.com/2022/02/15/when-to-capitalize-after-a-colon/
  4. ^ The Chicago Manual of Style 17th edition. 8.158: Principles and examples of sentence-style capitalization.
  5. ^ https://dissertation.laerd.com/style-guides-for-dissertation-titles-p2.php#:~:text=The%20first%20letter%20of%20a,Subtitle%20OR%20Title%20%E2%80%94%20Subtitle)
  6. ^ https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/capitalization/sentence-case

Hmm. That might be a significant enough trend to just RfC this then, to codify a style change. Doing "Foo bar: baz" instead of "Foo bar: Baz" is really a completely arbitrary preference; there's no meaning difference. Changing to "Foo bar: Baz" would mean changing an almost unbelievable number of headings, which is a point against the idea. But it would also be more consistent with our typical treatment of sentence-case titles in citations, which is a point if favor.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:52, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Changing case of, e.g., title, section, per WP:CONFORM?

Often publications have e.g., chapter name, section names, titles, in all capitals. It would be helpful to have explicit guidance on when, whether and how to change the case per WP:CONFORM when citing parts of such works.

If such case change is appropriate, is there a widget to automate case changes to parameters of citation templates? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 10:32, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It says so in the section you cited. To directly quote it "Underlining, spac ing within words, colors, ALL CAPS, small caps, etc. should generally be normalized to plain text." If capitalization doesn't conform to Wikipedia's manual of style, it's okay to alter direct quotes on matters purely related to text formatting. That includes capitalization. --Jayron32 10:58, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yep. Also says so at MOS:TITLECONFORM.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:33, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

List items, alternatives, compounds, etc. of music genres, occupations, sports positions, etc., esp. in infoboxes

I've gotten some pushback in opposite directions recently, like when I capped some music genres in a "flatlist" and when I lowercased alternatives after a slash, (as in Guard/Forward –> Guard/forward), both in infobox contexts. So I'd like to know how others interpret MOSCAPS there. My take has been to use sentence case for comma-separated and slash-separated alternatives or lists, and sentence case per item when they are formatted as a list; and I learned that Template:flatlist doesn't exactly format as a list; see its doc example

@Rikster2: who asked me at User talk:Dicklyon#Slash caps replacement to seek a consensus before doing more on this. He suggests that maybe we need an infobox-specific guideline, or perhaps something specific to player bios. What do others think? Dicklyon (talk) 18:07, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I always assumed capitalizing all items in the list was consistent with MOS:LISTCAPS:

If the list items are sentence fragments, then capitalization should be consistent – sentence case should be applied to either all or none of the items.

—Bagumba (talk) 09:11, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, if a pair of slash separated items is considered a list and if the items are sentence fragments. To me it's not a list, and here they are not sentence fragments, so this doesn't apply; applying sentence case as in "Guard/forward" seems more consistent with MOSCAPS to me. Dicklyon (talk) 15:29, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Also, what do hyphenated compounds like "guard-forward" and "forward-center" mean? Is this a position? Or some relation between positions that would make more sense with a dash or a slash? Dicklyon (talk) 19:00, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's shorthand in (some) sports for players who are skilled enough to play multiple positions. I'd give leeway to using it in an infobox if it's common in the domain. Example prose: "Pat Cummings, a Knick forward, and Michael Cooper, a Laker guard-forward, who served..." (NYT) —Bagumba (talk) 09:14, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
OK, like singer-songwriter. Dicklyon (talk) 15:29, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Use lower-case for both. This is just more excuse-making to over-capitalize things that are subject to fandom urges to use capital letters. A player position like "forward" is not a proper name, so it's "guard-forward" or "guard/forward", which in an infobox would be first-letter capitalized: "Guard-forward". Same with {{flatlist}} or {{hlist}} giving music genres in an infobox:
That's not a list in the sense MOS:LISTCAPS is addressing. We may need to just add a line-item there to not capitalize every entry in a "list" that is put onto one line.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:31, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Let's not overuse the "fandom" rant. See Bill Gates, the first occupation, Businessman is capitalized. I believe capitalizing first items, at least, is quite common on WP ibxs. —Bagumba (talk) 16:08, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
He already agreed "which in an infobox would be first-letter capitalized". There's no issue there. Dicklyon (talk) 17:02, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I must of skimmed after "Use lower-case for both". Thanks. —Bagumba (talk) 17:16, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I just re-fixed one of the Rikster2 reverts. Any objection to my doing the other 70 or so? Dicklyon (talk) 17:10, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hang on a bit for more possible feedback on flatlists and slash lists w.r.t. MOS:LISTCAPS. —Bagumba (talk) 17:21, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Why not give me more than a day and a half to respond before implementing a “consensus” of two and a half editors? Some of us have jobs and some of those jobs are also done on Saturdays. Rikster2 (talk) 18:22, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You had been editing other things since I pinged you here, so I thought I should either go ahead or prod a bit harder to get you to come. Thanks for showing up. But you still haven't said anything. Dicklyon (talk) 21:24, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Another question on that one would be what to do about infobox lines like "2007 / Round: 1 / Pick: 6th overall" (as controlled centrally by Template:Infobox basketball biography). Change to "2007 / round: 1 / pick: 6th overall"? Dicklyon (talk) 17:12, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps discuss at WT:BASKETBALL. While we're at it, maybe streamline to like "2007: 1st round, 6th overall pick" —Bagumba (talk) 17:32, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Probably I won't take that one on; but good idea – you should propose it. Dicklyon (talk) 21:29, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We can all mull over it. —Bagumba (talk) 02:39, 28 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sports positions? Clarify, what's being requested for sports bio infoboxes content. GoodDay (talk) 21:31, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Typically "Position: Forward/center", where Rikster2 wants Center capped. Dicklyon (talk) 21:45, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, I'm not sure where to put this, but in my opinion, positions should be capitalized after the slash. I suppose there's lots of reasons why, but mainly it's just because "Power forward / center" looks, like, really bad... if you know what I mean? As opposed to "Power forward / Center"... Idk just wanted to leave my opinion somewhere, feel free to disregard :) JAX4981 (talk) 03:51, 28 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Opinions are fine. Mine is that we should follow guidelines instead of opinions about how it looks. Let's hear from more... Dicklyon (talk) 04:12, 28 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, that's fine, can you just point me to where in WT:MOSCAPS it talks about cases like this? Because it seems to be largely about actual sentences, which infoboxes aren't... I could be misunderstanding this though. I know Rikster provided 3 sources where both positions are capitalized, here's two more where both are capitalized, one of them being the official NBA website: 1 2
To be clear, I'm only concerned with specifically basketball infobox capitalization, I'm not quite smart enough to understand the rest of what is being talked about here :) JAX4981 (talk) 20:47, 28 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know of any MOSCAPS provisions specifically about basketball infoboxes. The closest bit is about list items, which is why we're talking about interpretations of that here. Dicklyon (talk) 01:34, 29 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I feel like it's kinda different though, because it's not mid-sentence. At the very top of MOS:CAPS it says "Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia." and from these 5 examples (1 2 3 4 5), I would say that those fit the criteria for a majority of reliable sources, and therefore, the position after the slash should be capitalized, no? JAX4981 (talk) 22:22, 29 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Here's what I see at your 5 links:
  1. Position Guard/Forward – an example of infobox-like structure
  2. G/C in a heading – not relevant
  3. This site can’t be reached Forward/Guard in infobox-like setting
  4. Denver Nuggets | #11 | Guard-Forward in a heading – not relevant
  5. Position: Point Guard, Small Forward, and Shooting Guard – definitely sentence-like noun clause, fully overcapitalized.– not relevant
And even if sources do cap in infobox-like contexts, that doesn't mean we do, if the general provision is to avoid unnecessary capitalization, and there's no exception for infoboxes. The "Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is capitalized" is about "what", not "where". Dicklyon (talk) 23:22, 29 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure why the third link can't be reached, it's a USA basketball link with an infobox-like structure that says: "Positions Forward/Guard"
Also, I'm not sure why the fifth link wouldn't be relevant, as it's a source used in almost every basketball player's page.
And as for the what vs. where, I don't see why "what" can't include "where"
Anyway, my point is that I disagree, but I'm going to leave it there because I don't have much more to say. Hopefully someone with more knowledge than me on the subject can chime in here. I appreciate you taking the time to respond :) JAX4981 (talk) 23:39, 29 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That link is working for me now, so I struck the "can't be reached" and noted what it says. As for the last one, title-case phrases like "Point Guard" and "Small Forward" show that they're using title case, not sentence case like WP does, so not relevant to how to apply sentence case across a slash or comma. Thanks for your efforts, too. Let's wait and see who else has opinions or info. Dicklyon (talk) 02:57, 30 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
User:JAX4981 You are right! It does look bad! That was my claim because I told User:Dicklyon that it just doesn’t look proper! ReaganHoang10 (talk) 20:07, 5 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Your reverts with edit summaries like "Help me God" and "You've got to be kidding me" are no substitute for discussing and following the guidelines. Please stop that. Dicklyon (talk) 03:49, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I apologize for those comments but still. ReaganHoang10 (talk) 05:32, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And for genres, things like "genre = Indie rock, alternative rock, folk rock" (no pushback there; WP has a lot like this and also a lot over-capped. Dicklyon (talk) 00:30, 28 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. What's going on here is basically a proposal to change the dominant site-wide practice – on a technicality, a wikilawyering nitpick over what "list" might mean for capitalization purposes. All of us who've been around during most of MoS's formation already know that it doesn't mean to write |genre=[[Indie rock]], [[Alternative rock]], [[Folk rock]]. If we need to clarify the guideline wording to make this clearer, then do it. But see also WP:AJR.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:26, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In the case of genres in infoboxes, I've been fixing away, and there's no pushback. On the basketball positions, I've paused while we discuss. Seems to be the exact same issue, except it's more often slash than comma. Does that make a differrence? Can we hear a few more opinions before consider whether this needs clarifiation in MOSCAPS? A similar question has come up with dash-separated things in tennis tables (discussion linked at #Current. Dicklyon (talk) 15:42, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
For context only, not an argument for one convention over another, but basketball positions are often listed by their abbrev: forward (F), center (C), and guard (G). Multi-positional players would be listed as F/C, G/F. The tendency to want "Forward/ Center" capitalized likely stems from "FC" being in caps, and the belief that also extends to its expansion. Likely not uncommon logic, or a sinister cabal, which is presumably why MOS:EXPABBR addressed the phenomena.—Bagumba (talk) 08:45, 3 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, such thinking is commonly part of the problem, and there's no objection to capitalizing such initialisms. Dicklyon (talk) 03:49, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Stylistic Uppercase similar to MOS:LCITEMS

MOS:LCITEMS says Wikipedia articles may use lowercase variants of personal names if they have regular and established use in reliable third party sources, why is this not also true of uppercase variants? For example MF DOOM, who has specifically requested his name be stylized as such. 2601:603:207E:170:D0E4:8ED5:FBD:A9C5 (talk) 19:36, 3 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Probably because it conflicts with MOS:TM: WP doesn't mimic "MARKETING ALL-CAPS" style. We'd need to find some way to change both guidelines that doesn't cause unforseen problems later, and that could be tricky. Meanwhile zero editors are going to be confused by the current lead at MF Doom, which says "best known by his stage name MF Doom or simply Doom (both stylized in all caps)". I.e., there's not a real problem to fix. The question also comes up whether we should be making the all-lowercase exception at all. E.g., it simply isn't true that nearly all sources write "k.d. lang"; quite a few of them use normal capitalization (several in the first page of Google News hits[12], including BBC News and the official Grammys website).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:53, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Breed capitalization

Is there any appetite for a new RfC on breed capitalization? The reigning RfC seems increasingly out of place/a relic of the early 2000s, considering the stated aim to 'avoid unnecessary capitalization' and that advice on the topic outside of the industry is predominantly to not capitalize outside of proper nouns (perhaps with a few exceptions like 'Old English' and 'Great Dane', plus overriding trademark rules). A lot of effort has been put into this previously (WP:BREEDCASE) by @SMcCandlish. Perhaps a new RfC could avoid straying into the endless debate over what constitutes a standardized breed? To be clear, while I'd certainly help with the potentially resulting cleanup, I'm not all that well versed on RfCs, so I'm likely not the one to put forward a proposal. Star Garnet (talk) 17:00, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think I want to wade back into this. It was very draining, and I'm skeptical that the consensus from the 2019 RfC would change. I tend to agree with you in principle, but the pain won't be worth it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:12, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of RfC

There is a request for comment regarding whether MOS:SECTIONCAPS should advise capitalizing after a colon in a heading. Discuss it here. Wracking talk! 05:57, 9 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

TsNIITochMash

Thoughts on this title. Cinderella157 (talk) 08:20, 17 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Google books search has it all over the place, including all caps and first letter caps (and different combos in between). Cinderella157 (talk) 08:28, 17 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Capitalization of "Marine"

Should a member of the U.S. Marine Corps be referred to as a "Marine" (or, if retired, "Marine veteran") with a capital M? – .Raven  .talk 02:19, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Re MOS:MARINE ("Military terms"): currently brought up at Talk:Killing of Jordan Neely...

The U.S. Marine Corps prefers the capitalization of "Marine", even applied to individual members (and also deprecates "former" or "ex-Marine" in favor of "Marine veteran"; "Once a Marine, Always a Marine") — and reports have generally complied:

We also rely on actual news reports as sources. Some of the cites actually in Killing of Jordan Neely:

At some point, shouldn't Wikipedia follow RSs as well as current off-Wiki style guides, and capitalize "Marine"? I so move. – .Raven  .talk 02:19, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support capitalization. I see little purpose in swimming against the tide. I think it's safe to assume most editors won't think to check the MOS against the conventions of their citations, and those of us who have will go nuts bringing articles into compliance. Even gnomes have better things to do. ;-) Xan747 (talk) 03:05, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I oppose capitalization. Reading the arguments below has convinced me. Updated 18:00, 22 June 2023 (UTC) support capitalization - it's a proper adjective, after all, and as Xan points out, is contrary to essentially all conventions that cover this usage I have ever been aware of. I am hesitant to support the "once a Marine, always a Marine" styling - it isn't Wikipedia's place to uphold what is basically a vanity title - not to be disrespectful, but it makes it unnecessarily ambiguous to refer to both active and discharged Marines as simply "Marines." PriusGod (talk) 03:17, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Discharged Marines are "Marine veterans", as distinct from "Army veterans", "Navy veterans", "Air Force veterans", and "Coast Guard veterans". (I suppose someday soon there will be "Space Force veterans".) – .Raven  .talk 08:23, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    "Marine veteran" is not actually good writing. "Army veteran", "Navy veteran", "Air Force veteran" are all using noun phrases, and might be capitalized when they are short forms in a specific context of a longer proper name ("US Army", "Royal Navy", etc.); and not capitalized when generic (e.g. "Many of the immigrants were army veterans of their respective countries"). But the "marine" equivalent would be "Marine Corps veteran" (or in UK, "Royal Marines veteran", though "Marine Corps veteran" can actually apply to the UK as well; the full name of the division is Corps of Royal Marines). Just using the adjective as "Marine veteran" is like just using the adjective from "Air Force" and writing "Air veteran". "Marine" used as an adjective like that is generic: "marine unit", "marine tactic", "marine troops"; it is directly equivalent to "amphibious unit", "naval tactic", "air support", etc. That some people like to over-capitalize it anyway (probably in all of those cases) isn't really of any concern to us, other than a "capitalize everything with a military connection" bad habit to avoid. "Marine" as a noun is a modern back-formation from the adjective and has limited usage ("Jones was a marine", "Jones joined the Marines in 1947", capitalized in the latter case again as a short form of "Marine Corps" of a specific country (whereas "marine" in the former construction, "Jones was a marine", is not such a shorthand: expanded to "Jones was a Marine Corps", it would not parse).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:15, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    > "'Marine veteran' is not actually good writing." — As I cited above, it is preferred by the Marine Corps itself, and used in multiple news agencies' reports. At some point, we concede our own preferences to outside sources.
    > "'Marine' used as an adjective like that is generic: 'marine unit', 'marine tactic', 'marine troops'" — With lower-case "m", "marine" as an adjective can simply refer to matters of the sea (Latin mare), e.g. "marine vehicle" generally means a boat or ship, not a car or truck belonging to the U.S. Marine Corps. The chance of being mis-read follows from that ambiguity. So lower-case "marine veteran" could be taken as referring to any "sea veteran," any retired (or even "old hand") sailor, including civilians or Coast Guard. We shouldn't leave doubt of our meaning. – .Raven  .talk 18:06, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    If you think that governmentese and journalism for that matter are paragons of good writing, especially in an encyclopedic context, you really don't have much business participating in MoS discussions, LOL. With lower-case "m", "marine" as an adjective can simply refer to matters of the sea, yes "can" not "does". An enormous proportion of the words in English have multiple meanings, and we do not use capitalization as a signifier to distinguish them (MOS:SIGCAPS), we use clear writing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:32, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    So do you also insist that members of the Coast Guard should be called "coast guardsmen" rather than "Coast Guardsmen"? Hmm. Interesting. Actual usage in the real world, as by government and journalism, doesn't matter! We get to write our own language! – .Raven  .talk 22:01, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose This has been discussed ad nauseam (better get me a bucket) and the status quo upheld each time. Unless there is something new or novel, this is just another WAFTAM doing the same thing over and expecting a different outcome. If used alone, it is a descriptive common noun. A marine is a nautical soldier. Capitalising for a US nautical soldier would fall to MOS:SIGNIFCAPS and we don't do that. If preceding a name and it is being used as a rank (equivalent to private), it is an attributive noun and title. In this case MOS:JOBTITLES also applies and it is capitalised when used as such. Cinderella157 (talk) 04:19, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Marine expeditionary force: A Marine expeditionary force (MEF), formerly known as a Marine amphibious force, is the largest type of a Marine air-ground task force. ... larger than a Marine expeditionary unit (MEU) or Marine expeditionary brigade (MEB). / Each MEF consists of a MEF Information Group (MIG) as the command element, a Marine division (MARDIV) as the ground combat element, a Marine aircraft wing (MAW) as the aviation combat element, and a Marine logistics group (MLG) as the logistics combat element.
    Notice that only one of the words in the acronymic phrases is capitalized, each time.
    An aerodynamically alleviated marine vehicle is a kind of boat; "a marine thruster is a device for producing directed hydrodynamic thrust mounted on a marine vehicle, primarily for maneuvering or propulsion"; the lowercase "marine" conveys "of, found in, or produced by the sea".
    That's distinct from a Marine vehicle... unless Title Case makes it a Marine Vehicle. – .Raven  .talk 08:50, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The fact that you can find over-capitalized examples doesn't really tell us anything.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:59, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Your calling them "over-capitalized" presumes your case. What if all of them are right? – .Raven  .talk 18:09, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The question of this RfC is capitalisation of marine and the guidance at MOS:MARINE - in reference to an individual or group of marines in the same context as using soldier, sailor or airman. Whether the examples provided are right or wrong is immaterial to this discussion because they fall outside the scope of this particular guidance being discussed. The comment is a WP:STRAWMAN. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:06, 19 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The ambiguity of lower-cased "marine" is one good reason for capitalizing the word when it relates to the Corps.
    "He operated a marine vehicle" and "He operated a Marine vehicle" do not convey the same meaning. – .Raven  .talk 06:26, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Once again, good writing can solve this issue. Surely you would write, "He operated a Marine Corps vehicle." Primergrey (talk) 07:40, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Even without this, sentences are not written in isolation. Context establishes meaning. We don't hear capital letters yet meaning is still conveyed when spoken because of context. If it is not, policy tells us that we should refactor to accommodate the vision impaired relying on text readers. However, the example represents a red-herring argument, since we are considering the advice at MOS:MARINE, which is the use of marine as a term for particular service personnel. Cinderella157 (talk) 08:20, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    > ""... we are considering the advice at MOS:MARINE, which is the use of marine as a term for particular service personnel."
    We are considering an RfC on whether to amend  MOS:MARINE on that very point.
    The ambiguity created by lower-casing marine is among the reasons to do so. – .Raven  .talk 08:28, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    By that reasoning we can also say "He was a Marine Corps veteran", leaving "He was a marine veteran" to cover old sailors, whether civilian or from other branches of service (e.g. Coast Guard).
    It's a pity then that the real-world usage, as seen not only on that USMC webpage but also in a number of those RS headlines, is "He was a Marine veteran" or even "He was a Marine vet". – .Raven  .talk 08:22, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The RfC would state: Should a member of the U.S. Marine Corps be referred to as a "Marine" (or, if retired, "Marine veteran") with a capital M?. We are considering the advice at MOS:MARINE, which is the use of marine as a term for particular service personnel. Examples of A Marine expeditionary force (MEF) and He operated a marine vehicle do not address the question of particular service personnel. They do not evidence an ambiguity relevant to the question of the RfC. They are red-herring strawman arguments. There is no evidence of ambiguity presented when referring to personel. We would not refer to old sailors as a marine veteran. This would be an argument fallacy of unnatural, fabricated or false example. We would call them: a veteran mariner, a veteran sailor or a naval (coast guard) veteran if we wished to specify they were a military veteran. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:22, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    > "address the question of particular service personnel."
    That's precisely why the capital M for members of the Corps — because "marine personnel" or "marine crew" or "marine crewmember" all might refer to any personnel or crew or crewmembers on a sea vessel, including "marine biologists" and other "marine scientists" on a boat off Bar Harbor. – .Raven  .talk 21:12, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. I concur entirely with Cinderella157. This is tedious rehash of something that is rehashed so often it should get listed at WP:PERENNIAL. We have MOS:SIGCAPS and MOS:MARINE for a reason. We do not capitalize something just because it's American (even if some American journalists do).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:52, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    American usage shouldn't apply in articles about American events involving American people? – .Raven  .talk 18:29, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Maybe we should start ignoring all those ENGVAR tags in articles, then. Just because it's British doesn't mean we should do it that way, after all. Historians also tend to use Marine as opposed to marine, but as always I suspect Wikipedia's own twisted style preferences will prevail. Intothatdarkness 01:06, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose on the same basis as Cinderella157, we follow status quo and reliable sources. We don't follow job title minutiae of the U.S Marine Corp but instead what is generally accepted. LoomCreek (talk) 09:57, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    You mean the New York Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch are no longer reliable sources? – .Raven  .talk 18:25, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    On how to write encyclopedically, no news organizations are reliable "sources"; we do not mimic other writing styles. WP is not written in news style as a clear matter of policy (WP:NOT#NEWS), and MoS has borrowed very close to zero elements of any kind from news style guides. It is based 99.99% on academic style guides.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:36, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    On how to write encyclopedically?
    Encyclopedia Britannica: "The Marine Corps was founded on November 10, 1775, when the Continental Congress ordered that two battalions of Marines be raised for service as landing forces with the fleet. Marines have participated in all wars of the United States, being in most instances first, or among the first, to fight. In addition, Marines have executed more than 300 landings on foreign shores and served in every major U.S. naval action since 1775." – .Raven  .talk 22:05, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Dictionaries:
    Oxford Learners' Dictionary: "The Marines became well known during the Second World War when they successfully attacked the Pacific islands occupied by the Japanese."
    Cambridge Dictionary: "He's in the Marines."
    (Neither of those being American  dictionaries.) – .Raven  .talk 23:47, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, also per Cinderella. I don't care what the US Marine Corps thinks (their name can be capped, but not "Marine", nor "Officer", nor "Soldier". Definitely no to that boosterism. Tony (talk) 13:24, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    You also don't care what the press style-guides used by our Reliable Sources say? – .Raven  .talk 18:21, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Regulov (talk) 18:18, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: Please review the history of the issue in the archives. If there's something new to be said, I'd be surprised, but I'd read it with an open mind. Repeating old arguments gets us nowhere. SchreiberBike | ⌨  19:52, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - We are no more bound to using news agencies' style guides than they are to using ours. Primergrey (talk) 04:55, 19 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, .Raven has proven their case here, societal and journalistic usage uppercases the term, and uppercasing seems to be the common name. The fact that "marine biology" and the like are lowercase separates the word from military service (unlike army, navy, air force, which have no common usage outside of military use). Randy Kryn (talk) 09:32, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This seems an odd placement for an RfC on the topic, could have been done at the U.S. Marine page. Have that talk page and the talk pages of military WikiProjects been notified? Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 09:35, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Now done. Thanks for the suggestion! – .Raven  .talk 21:29, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose again. Absolutely no reason to make an exception from standard English (and Wikipedia) usage. What the USMC prefers is utterly irrelevant. They're marines, just like soldiers, sailors and airmen. And police officers, teachers, bricklayers, accountants, firefighters, doctors, etc, etc, etc. If we followed US military preferences, we'd capitalise pretty much every term relating to the military, as the military loves capitalisation. Also note that the USMC isn't the only marine corps in the world, and this applies to all of them. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:17, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per pretty much everything everyone else who has opposed has said. Necrothesp gives a really good explanation if you want more details. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:33, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Every time this issue comes up, it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what the MoS is. It is, merely, our own internal style guide. Unlike our content rules, we have zero obligation to follow any other style guide. We could decide to style our articles in SaRcAsM fOnT if we wanted to. For that reason, and for many others highlighted above, I oppose amending the MoS to reflect the preferences of the US military. Parsecboy (talk) 22:11, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per Parsecboy. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 22:18, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak oppose. This is like a house style or legalese, where a common noun like “the Directors” is capitalized in an annual report, contract, or promotional literature. NY Times uses it, so maybe it’s becoming customary in US publications. I’d consider using it in articles on United States subjects, but then there would be inconsistency in the many articles about military matters and events that are multinational. I don’t think we want to end up arguing over “the conference was attended by naval infantry from allies, including ten Marines from Virginia, six marines from Manchester, and two dozen marines from European capitals.” If British, Canadian, and international publications start to always capitalize the common noun marine, then we should revisit it.  —Michael Z. 00:58, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Mzajac: "... British, Canadian, and international publications...." —
– .Raven  .talk 07:09, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That’s useful but recognize it is a mix of different meanings. “The Marines” refers to an organization in several, and there’s at least one attributive use of the organizations name: the “Marine parade deck.” How common is the capitalization? Is it ever used for British or other marines?  —Michael Z. 15:01, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  1. > "one attributive use of the organizations name: the “Marine parade deck.'" — Which, please note, is also not "Marine Corps parade deck", contra @Primergrey:'s comment above.
  2. The British have the Royal Marines, and I've only ever seen that capitalized (i.e. never "royal marines"); for example, "An Afghan double killer was able to sneak into Britain posing as a 14-year-old schoolboy before going on to murder an aspiring Royal Marine, it has emerged." [telegraph.co.uk]
    They've fought alongside U.S. Marines, and those prefixes to "Marines" can disambiguate the two. Cf. "Allied Marines in the Korean War".
– .Raven  .talk 16:11, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think we're all on the same page that when Marines or Marine is short for US Marine Corps (or Royal Marines), it's capped. What's under discussion is if marine as a word for individual military persons, analogous to soldier, sailor is capped. My opinion is that if sailor, soldier is lc, so is marine. Indefatigable (talk) 16:28, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Just as even a single "aspiring Royal Marine" is capitalized, a single (U.S.) "Marine" is capitalized.
If referring generically to 'seafaring infantry' not of any particular nation, then the generic term "marine[s]" could apply. For specific nations' forces, we should use their format, e.g. "A Spanish marine, left, explains how her weapon works to a U.S. Marine...." — and in fact I'm willing to start a separate RfC for that generalization (rather than change this one mid-!voting).
ETA: Done, below, as a placeholder pending this RfC's conclusion. – .Raven  .talk 16:58, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support capitalization, or at the very least the creation of an AMVAR tag to use in articles dealing with the USMC. If we can have a tag intended to preserve spellings and other things considered British English (often for no other reason than the article subject happens to be British), this feels like a similar situation. Intothatdarkness 13:51, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • I hardly think the preference of the USMC can be regarded on the same basis as a national variety of English! Note that many of those opposing above are Americans. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:32, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      The nationality of supporters and opposers doesn't matter to me. I think the nom has demonstrated that Marines is in fact in common usage, and has been for some time. And, really, ENGVAR is also about preference, isn't it? Wikipedia is often a walled garden and echo chamber. Intothatdarkness 15:47, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      > "Wikipedia is often a walled garden and echo chamber." — It sometimes seems to me as though some of us are trying to create a conlang (constructed language) just for Wikipedia, as though we weren't writing for the outside world. – .Raven  .talk 16:23, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You do realize that description applies to literally every style manual, yes? There isn't a style guide in existence that isn't constructed, and CMoS clearly doesn't care what AMA says about how to format citations, for example. Why you think Wiki's MoS needs to follow usage elsewhere, I don't know, but to be clear: it does not.
What this boils down to is, some of you like following the US DoD's idiosyncratic capitalization styling, and some of us don't see the need to do so. Parsecboy (talk) 17:57, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Then maybe this should extend to things like ENGVAR as well, which some of us think is silly while others will enforce to the last ditch and breath. And as the nom has demonstrated, this usage isn't restricted to DoD. I realize this is probably going to fail, but that doesn't mean it makes sense or is in line with what's happening outside the walled garden. But Wikipedia also perpetuates things like Comanche campaign...something that exists only as an arbitrary designation used by the Army for lineage purposes. Intothatdarkness 18:09, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Again, that other organizations' style guides also happen to follow DoD's capitalization preferences doesn't mean we have to.
And again, supporters of the proposal are conflating following common usage for article content with following common usage for article style. The two are not the same thing. And as a tertiary source, we must do the former, but we are by no means bound to the latter. Parsecboy (talk) 18:25, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So because we've always done it this way we should keep doing it this way just because we've always done it this way (even though almost no one else seems to, and we end up modifying sourced content to make it comply with our idiosyncratic style)? I'm not conflating anything...I just happen to disagree with what Wikipedia does here. Last time I checked that was still permissible. Intothatdarkness 18:38, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We can do without strawmen, thank you very much.
Why are we copy/pasting content from other sources? Formatting in a quote can obviously be maintained; anything else deserves the banhammer for copyvio. If we are paraphrasing content, as we should be, your comment is irrelevant, since all of the source content should be modified. Not sure I understand the complaint on this one. Parsecboy (talk) 19:19, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Please confine your pedantic responses to something else. And you know as well as I people copy and paste content from other sources quite often. Sometimes it's public domain, other times it's people who can't be bothered to paraphrase (or don't know they're supposed to). We don't agree on this issue and aren't likely to. I'm leaving it at that. Intothatdarkness 21:00, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, yes, strawman my argument, accuse me of being a pedant for pointing out the gaping hole in your statement, and then take your ball and go home, all the while ignoring any substantive point I've made. A real tour de force. Parsecboy (talk) 23:27, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We could in theory agree, just among ourselves for Wikipedia usage, on a style that allwordsshouldberuntogetherlikethis, PeRhApSwItHaLtErNaTeCaPs, but that would not help our readers from outside understand our articles' meanings.
If readers from outside, used to seeing "a Marine" for a member of the USMC, but "a marine" for a generic reference to no particular nation's 'seafaring infantry', sees us write "a marine" in reference to a member of the USMC, they will not correctly understand our meaning, because we will have unilaterally departed from the outside world's usage. – .Raven  .talk 19:42, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Do you really believe readers can't be trusted to understand context? Are you suggesting that someone who reads United States Marine Corps would be confused by the current capitalization of "Marines from Ceremonial Companies A & B, quartered in Marine Barracks, Washington, D.C., guard presidential retreats, including Camp David, and the marines of the Executive Flight Detachment of HMX-1 provide helicopter transport..."? Come now. Parsecboy (talk) 20:03, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes context will clarify meaning (as that quote did); sometimes not.
Just having the word at the start of a sentence, so the reader can't tell why it's capitalized, might make meaning ambiguous, so the opportunity for confusion would remain.
But a sentence like "A marine was found on the beach." — if we never capitalize it mid-sentence — will unnecessarily leave that meaning ambiguous.
A sentence like "He traveled in a marine vehicle." — even more so. – .Raven  .talk 07:13, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
> "There isn't a style guide in existence that isn't constructed" — I note that the AP Style Guide adopts a socially conscious policy in its editing, e.g. re "deadnaming" ("The practice, widely considered insensitive, offensive or damaging, of referring to transgender people who have changed their name by the name they used before their transition."), and does not refuse to take note of outside sources' recommended usage.
> "CMoS clearly doesn't care what AMA says about how to format citations" — I note that citation formatting is not a topic of social consensus, or indeed of much social concern. – .Raven  .talk 19:17, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You've again missed the mark; that the AP has adopted a specific position on deadnaming has nothing to do with whether it's a constructed system or not. Nor does it mean that AP is obliged to follow anything beyond what its internal decision making body decides. Parsecboy (talk) 19:24, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think perhaps you may have missed my point: that the AP's social consciousness includes heeding outside sources' recommended usage means they are very much aware they write for the readership outside their own organization. This is quite distinct from creating "a conlang (constructed language) just for [them], as though [they] weren't writing for the outside world." – .Raven  .talk 19:30, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The only justification you seem to have is your rather condescending opinion that readers can't handle context (and you've picked most of your examples completely out of context to justify your argument, as if readers would encounter "marine veteran" all by itself floating in the ether). No, I don't think I've missed your point at all. Parsecboy (talk) 23:27, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So if you see "A marine veteran sailed across the Atlantic by himself." — which is meant? – .Raven  .talk 07:16, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose (Summoned by bot) per arguments of Necrothesp and others Absolutely no reason to make an exception from standard English (and Wikipedia) usage. What the USMC prefers is utterly irrelevant. They're marines, just like soldiers, sailors and airmen. And police officers, teachers, bricklayers, accountants, firefighters, doctors, etc, etc, etc. … Also note that the USMC isn't the only marine corps in the world, and this applies to all of them. Or incongruously and perversely, we would have one rule for US marines and another for marines from everywhere else and stylistic chaos whenever they meet in the same article space. Pincrete (talk) 04:02, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Pincrete: Will the next section (currently a placeholder for an RfC) address your concerns? – .Raven  .talk 07:19, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No, it worsens the stylistic chaos whenever they meet in the same article space. IMO, with no tangible benefit for us AFAI can see. National papers may wish to defer to the conventions of their own national forces, but we have no reason to do so and it is not disrepectful to apply the same stylistic conventions to all forces and all professions everywhere.Pincrete (talk) 08:08, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Any participant here may wish to participate at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Marines_RfC,_and_two-week_site_block_proposal. starship.paint (exalt) 08:06, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Placeholder for RfC: National armed forces members' capitalization

Placeholder for RfC
[In view of the above RfC's discussion, following its conclusion I will propose this:]

Should the capitalization of titles for specific nations' armed forces members follow their own nations' practices, e.g. "Spanish marine" but "[U.S.] Marine" and (U.K.) "Royal Marine" for individuals? For instance:

This presumes the terms not attached to any specific nation remain uncapitalized, e.g. "Many countries around the world maintain marines and naval infantry military units."

– .Raven  .talk 19:01, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Fee/Notes?

In this revert, User:SounderBruce says "separate statements". Mostly, it doesn't seem true that this table column has separate statements for fee and notes, but even if it did, would we capitalize both? I changed the column heading to "Fee/notes", and he reverted me (so far no reverts from lots of other articles besides Sounders). Dicklyon (talk) 03:32, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Across WP:FOOTY articles, that column is used to note the transfer situation for players, which may or may not include the fee (sometimes this is undisclosed) or other notes (such as intra-club transfers that are calling up from reserve teams). Separating them into different columns would create a pointlessly wider table, whereas combining them is more efficient so long as the distinction is made (through capitalization). Please try to look around at the project standards before making mass changes without consensus. SounderBruce 03:40, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I do understand the point and the use of the heading. I don't understand what provision in MOS:CAPS would lead one to cap "Notes" in this context. Dicklyon (talk) 03:48, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Un-capping "Notes" implies that the column is solely for fee notes and not transfer notes in general. SounderBruce 03:57, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Capital_letters&oldid=1164191431"
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