Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters/Archive 9

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Stage names of South Korean K-pop musical groups/bands/musicians

From what I've just read, "Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is a proper name; words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in sources are treated as proper names and capitalized in Wikipedia." Therefore, since the names of K-pop musical groups/bands/musicians are usually capitalized, I am requesting an addition of K-Pop bands to be included in the list of exceptions to the "unnecessary capitalization" rule.

  • Example 2: Wikipedia lists the South Korean K-pop group Exo with small letters according to the no "unnecessary capitalization" rule. But the band's stage name is "EXO" and many other respectable sources including The New Yorker, Billboard, Grantland, etc, have used "EXO" instead of "Exo"
  • Example 4: Wikipedia lists the South Korean K-pop group Shinee with small letters according to the no "unnecessary capitalization" rule. But the band's stage name is "SHINee" and many other respectable sources including The New Yorker, The Associated Press, ITN News, The New York Times, etc, have used "SHINee" instead of "Shinee"

Of course, Wikipedia's rules can be overridden as per WP:IGNORE, but Im just wondering if it would be a good idea to explicitly add an exception and allow the article names of South Korean K-pop bands and musicians to be capitalized according to their stage name since its more frequently used in proper English? -A1candidate (talk) 15:57, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

UPDATE: Since nobody has said anything yet, Im thinking of adding the following new section :

  • Stage names

Stage names of musicial groups and K-pop bands in particular are capitalized in accordance with standard usage.

Incorrect: Big Bang
Correct: BIGBANG
Incorrect: Exo
Correct: EXO
Incorrect: Shinee
Correct: SHINee
Incorrect: Will I am
Correct: will.i.am

If anyone has any suggestions/feedback/objections, please let me know! -A1candidate (talk) 18:04, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, since its almost a month and nobody has voiced any objections/suggestions, I've made the following edit, so please discuss it here if you any feedback -A1candidate (talk) 15:31, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

So I just reverted your change; thanks for being bold. As far as I can tell, this goes against several other MOS guidelines. I'm not necessarily opposed to your change, but I think it does at least deserve more attention. Personally, I think "standard usage" is a good standard, but hard to define. I rather like "regular and established use in reliable third party sources". -- Irn (talk) 16:36, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
I understand that "regular and established third party sources" would be more precise than simply "standard usage", but I personally think WP:MOSTM isn't a well written guideline that reflects what is normally used in most sources. For example the article "will.i.am", seems to ignore Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Trademarks#Trademarks_that_begin_with_a_lowercase_letter, not to mention the fact that a stage name (which is also a Pseudonym and therefore sort of like a "second name") shouldnt be classified as a trademark -A1candidate (talk) 17:09, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
Actually, I got the "regular and established" bit from WP:Manual_of_Style/Proper_names#Personal_names, which applies to will.i.am (in terms of the non-capitalization of the 'w', anyway). There was a lot of discussion (and a lot of resistance) that went into carving out that exception. Now, the proposal is to expand that exception to include not just individuals but also bands and not just initial lower-case but also all-caps and other orthographic irregularities. Considering the discussions when making the lower-case exception, it seemed to me that such a change should have more discussion. (And that we should then make the appropriate change to WP:MOSMUSIC and WP:ALLCAPS.) -- Irn (talk) 18:20, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
Well I've waited a month now, hoping for someone to join in the discussion but it seems nobody cares. Its EXTREMLY frustrating to have to go to every single article and point out more than 10 authoritative sources on the Internet which blatantly DO NOT conform to Wikipedia's rigid rules and guidlines, only to see fellow editors reject everything and simply point back to the same inflexible Wikipedia guideline. -A1candidate (talk) 21:50, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

WILL.I.AM is in fact a registered trademark (the uspto.gov database ignores case, apparently). He says several registrations for goods, and this one for his services as a performer: 

Word Mark	 WILL.I.AM
Goods and Services	IC 041. US 100 101 107. G & S: ENTERTAINMENT SERVICES, NAMELY, LIVE MUSICAL PERFORMANCES 
 BY A MALE ARTIST; AND FASHION DESIGNER. FIRST USE: 19890630. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19890630
Standard Characters Claimed	
Mark Drawing Code	(4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK
Trademark Search Facility Classification Code	NOTATION-SYMBOLS Notation Symbols such as Non-Latin characters,punctuation and mathematical signs,zodiac signs,prescription marks
Serial Number	77666402
Filing Date	February 9, 2009
Current Basis	1A
Original Filing Basis	1A
Published for Opposition	 August 25, 2009
Date Amended to Current Register	 July 20, 2009
Registration Number	3707981
Registration Date	November 10, 2009
Owner	(REGISTRANT) ADAMS, WILLIAM INDIVIDUAL UNITED STATES 450 N. Roxbury Drive, 8th Floor 
 c/o Hertz & Lichtenstein, LLP Beverly Hills CALIFORNIA 90210
Attorney of Record	Jill M. Pietrini, Esq.
Type of Mark	SERVICE MARK
Register	PRINCIPAL
Other Data	The name(s), portrait(s), and/or signature(s) shown in the mark identifies a living individual
 whose consent(s) to register is of record.
Live/Dead Indicator	LIVE
erm...I dont quite understand what all that stuff above is supposed mean, but my point is that Wikipedia should list names according to proper usage in reliable sources, and not according to its own rigid rules. -A1candidate (talk) 10:36, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Military terms: Marines

When referring to individuals who are a member of a branch of service, such as the Marines (ie. members of the United States Marine Corp), should they be referred to as marines or Marines? Apteva (talk) 06:33, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

I need help when it comes to capitalizing the word Marine. There is a mini edit-war (but one that is civil and in good faith) going on for the article 1983 Beirut barracks bombing regarding the question of whether or not to capitalize the word "Marine" when referring to members of the U.S. Marine Corps. This article notes that the USMC itself wants the word capitalized, and more and more U.S. print policies (AP, New York Times, etc) are following that policy. However, when I reverted an edit that had changed the word to lower case, PaulinSaudi reverted my revert (so that the article now again shows "marines," not "Marines") with this comment:

00:51, 23 September 2012‎ PaulinSaudi(talk | contribs)‎ . . (48,164 bytes) (0)‎ . . (Undid :revision 514045809 by NearTheZoo. Oddly the Wiki Manual of Style is not in agreement :with the USMC) (undo).

I have searched the wikipedia Manula of Style (section on CAPS and section on Military Terms) but have not found the relevant portion. So-- two questions: (1) where in the Wiki MOS is this issue presented? (2) If PaulinSaudi is correct and the Wiki MOS indicates that the word should NOT be capitalized, how can I make the recommendation that it be changed? Thanks! NearTheZoo (talk) 11:44, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

PS to my note on "Marines": After a very gracious exchange with PaulinSaudi, I have learned that the current Wiki MOS does not strictly prohibit capitalization of "Marine/s," but instead only does not establish capitalization as required. I would like to recommend that the "Military Terms" section in the MOS be changed to establish Wiki style consistent with the rules of style now used by AP, NYT, Chicago Tribune, and others--to capitalize "Marine." Here is the NYT explanation for their 2009 e to begin capitalizing "Marines." Their editors decided that since Marine is a word for a member of a larger organization that is normally capitalized that (like Democrat, Catholic, or Rotarian) the word should be capitalized when referring to individuals within that organization, as well. The NYT change would also apply to "Coastguardsman" (and I assume to "Guardian," the new term that is sometimes used for a member of the USCG), but not for "soldier" or "sailor," since these terms are not directly linked to the capitalized title of the larger organization. For many Marines, this is a matter of pride (a fact also pointed out in the NYT article). I recommend this issue be discussed and (of course) I am on the side of clarifying our MOS to reflect the fact that "Marine" should be capitalized. Thanks! NearTheZoo (talk) 17:41, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
The relevant section is "Thus, the American army, but the United States Army. Unofficial but well-known names should also be capitalized (the Green Berets, the Guard)." It can be tweaked to make it more clear (the distinction between "American army" and "U.S. Army" is about as clear as mud), but I would say that Marine would be just as capitalized as Army or Coast Guard. Apteva (talk) 05:58, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
The relevant section speaks about the corps, not members. "It was decided that the Marines should be participating the operation, so 20 marines were sent", but not It was decided that the Marines should be participating the operation, so 20 Marines were sent", and not "It was decided that the marines should be participating the operation, so 20 marines were sent". — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk•track) 10:56, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
I can see what they are doing in the article. Where marines appears it is not capitalized just as soldiers would not be capitalized, but where Marine appears it is capitalized as it refers to the branch of service. "220 marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers" is not capitalized, but "Marine landing force" is. Apteva (talk) 06:09, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
Probably the best way to resolve this is to open an RfC and see if anyone has any opinions on using 220 Marines, 18 sailors, one Green Beret and three soldiers instead of 220 marines, 18 sailors, one green beret and three soldiers. Apteva (talk) 06:33, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Lowercase: I don't see any ambiguity here – the words "marine", "pilot" (just as well as "police officer") should be spelled in lowercase. The New York Times' explanation of their change is pretty convincing in that there is no good reason for capitalization. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk•track) 10:50, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Capitalization:I am pretty confused by the last comment by Dmitrij D. Carkoff. He says the NY Times article is "convincing," but then he writes that he is convinced there is no good reason for capitalization. Perhaps he meant that the NY Times explanation so "so unconvincing" that it actually convinced him to believe there is "no good reason for capitalization." If that's what he meant, I understand, but just don't agree -- since I see their editor's rationale as convincing: that "Marine" is capitalized when it refers to an individual in the U.S. Marine Corps, just as words like Rotarian, Catholic, or Democrat are capitalized, as members of an organization that would be capitalized. In any event, here is the direct quote from the article:
"We will now capitalize Marine and Marines when referring to individual members of the United States Marine Corps. Under the previous rule, we capitalized references to the service as a whole, but lowercased “marine” in referring to individuals. We used to say, “Three marines were wounded in the fighting.” Now we’ll say, “Three Marines were wounded in the fighting.” (We’ll make a similar change to capitalize “Coast Guardsman,” though that comes up less frequently.)" NearTheZoo (talk) 12:16, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
The word "marine" is possibly only ever used to mean "member of the US Marine corp". Mariner is a general term for sailor, and sailor could be either someone who sails a sailboat or a member of a navy. Many countries have navies, so when Navy is capitalized it refers to one countries navy, which normally would be clear by context or identified. I am not sure that any other country has so many armed forces that they have grouped them into separate forces as the US, although there are certainly countries with a larger army. The US Constitution only allows two branches, Army and Navy, and specifically prohibits a standing army. Apteva (talk) 16:22, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
The current MOS uses "Formal names of military units, including armies". By implication, a member of that formal name would also be capitalized. The Rockettes, A Rockette. No one would use a rockette.[1] This is just a matter of following what sources use, and has nothing to do with military terms, and the entire "Military terms" section can, be deleted, as it adds nothing to the MOS (it has four sections, the first says "Military ranks follow the same capitalization guidelines", the second says proper nouns are capitalized, as does the third and fourth). In the case of marines vs. Marines, after 2009 there were fewer sources that used "marine". Consistency within an article should be maintained, though, and where sources conflict, the most likely choice is used. I say delete the section "Military terms". Apteva (talk) 16:50, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
@Apteva: I actually don't see how the rules for the units make implications about members of units. Per this logic the soldiers of 13th Brigade should be capitalized as Soldiers, which is obviously not the case.
@NearTheZoo: the main rationale NYTimes cites is a preference of consistency in US news media over consistency in prose. While such choice may somehow appear as making sense in US news media (though I don't think it indeed makes sense), it is obviously wrong for international non-profit collaboration effort. I strongly prefer the consistency in text, which is completely incompatible with capitalization scheme "220 Marines, 18 sailors, one Green Beret and three soldiers". — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk•track) 18:26, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
Hi, Czarkoff! One more disagreement: the primary reason for the NY Times change (at least, according to that paper's own explanation) is NOT consistency with other news media, although the editors do admit that the change (capitalizing Marine or Marines) will "also" bring that paper into agreement with other manuals of style, such as that used by the Associated Press (and AP articles are used by papers in many parts of the world). The main reason is consistency in terms of capitalizing members of organizations who take their names from those organizations, when the organization itself is capitalized. The NY Times editors give examples such as Catholics, Rotarians, and Democrats. Unlike soldiers and sailors, Marines take their name from the organization: the U.S. Marine Corps. That's why the NY Times rules show consistency between Marines and Coast Guardsmen on the one hand (capitalizing both), and consistency through non-capitalization when dealing with occupations that do not take their names from organizations, such as soldiers, sailors, pilots, voters, etc. Thanks! NearTheZoo (talk) 18:38, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
One PS to Czarkoff -- re your response to the comment by Apteva. Maybe you're completely separating your response to Apteva from your understanding of the NY Times "rule" -- but in terms of the NY Times rule, soldiers in the 13th Brigade would be referred to as soldiers (not capitalized), but on the other hand, if the members of the 13th Brigade were known as "13th Brigaders," then "Brigaders" should be capitalized. Whether or not you like or agree with the NY Times rationale, it is based on a very consistent approach! Thanks again! NearTheZoo (talk) 19:12, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
Though the "taking names from organizations" approach may seem logical, it is merely a workaround for disambiguation between different meanings of the word, which is perfectly valid in context of newspaper (it saves lines), but it isn't applicable here, as we have wikilinks for this level of disambiguation. Anyway, this luckily didn't become a language norm and we are not bound by it, so the ugliness of mixed case in the enumeration of similar objects may be avoid. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk•track) 19:48, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
My point was just that - that "soldiers of 13th Brigade" if referred to as "soldiers" would be lower case, and as Brigadiers would be capitalized. The rule though, is not to look in the guideline to see if "soldiers of 13th Brigade" appears, and possibly has a separate rule than say "soldiers of 14th Brigade", but to look in the sources that were used to create the article to see if Brigadiers are capitalized, or if they are called Brigadiers, Brigaders, Brigades, Soldiers, soldiers or who knows what. The Military terms section adds nothing to the MOS and can be deleted. If someone is concerned with "the ugliness of mixed case in the enumeration of similar objects", then the sentence can be re-written as "242 Americans, including 220 Marines and one Green Beret." The words "workaround for disambiguation between different meanings of the word" confuse me, because when writing an article about the iPhone simply capitalizing Apple makes it clear that we are talking about the company, not a fruit. Besides, it would only be wikilinked at its first occurrence, and if Rockette appeared one or a hundred times in an article it would always be capitalized because The Rockettes is a proper name. It is not good writing to use ambiguous language and expect that a wikilink will make it understandable. Apteva (talk) 20:15, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Neither the force nor the members are capitalized unless they refer to a specific organization. So, capitalization like He may tell that to the marines, but the sailors will not believe him or A commission in the marines has been in use since at least 1800. The US Marines and the Royal Marines are capitalized as proper names, but a marine regiment or the marine forces are not. A marine is a soldier in the marines. You may want to capitalize it as a specific title (Marine = member of the US Marines, not just any old marine), but remember that the US armed forces like to capitalize Every Noun to show how Important It Is. It looks like they never made it out of High School, and reinforces the 'dumb grunt' (or is that 'dumb Grunt'?) stereotype. — kwami (talk) 20:37, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

That supposition can not be decided here. There are clearly many editors who prefer to capitalize "Marine" everywhere it appears. I think the clear answer to this RfC is to remove "Military terms" from the MOS. The use of "marine regiment" would appear in the New York times prior to 2009 because of their style guide, but would not appear in the AP story the article was based on, nor in most other publications, which would instead use "Marine regiments consist of Marines who are in the U.S. Marine Corp". The MOS already says all it needs to say - that proper nouns are capitalized, and capital letters are not used for emphasis. In editing a specific article editors need to work out with other editors what the correct capitalization should be, and an RfC there can help if no consensus can be developed. The answer is likely to be sailor is lower case, soldier is lower case, Green Beret is upper case, as is al-Qa'idian, if there was such a term. Capitalizing Marine is requested to give them respect, but respect has nothing to do with the real reason that it is capitalized, just as Democrat or Republican are capitalized - not to show them respect, but because Democratic Party and Republican Party are proper nouns. Apteva (talk) 21:12, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
  • This is an obvious – even open-and-shut – case, per existing MOS rules. We must use lower case, except when the title is used with a name, is itself a proper name, or is an acronym. The title is actually generic when not used that way. There are US and foreign merchant marines, and military marines in other countries as well as the US, who are referred to generically and collectively as "marines", just as there are air forces and air force lieutenants within them, by contrast with the U.S. Air Force and a U.S. Air Force Lieutenant (but not a U.S. Air Force Pilot which isn't a real title, but a description of partial job duties). It has to be modified by a preceding name, e.g. U.S. Marine, or a following name, e.g. Marine Johnson (or in certain formal/tabular contexts Johnson, Marine but not in running text, as in "said Johnson, Marine since 1991"). In the first case, U.S. Marine is an abbreviation of a U.S. Marine Corps serviceman; in the later case, it would be capitalized anyway as a job title, as in "said FooBar corporation Vice-president Gutierrez", per WP:MOSCAPS. That Johnson's real official title is actually "PFC" is irrelevant; an abbreviated stand-in is always capitalized when used with a name: "Gutierrez's new title is FooBar V.-president", and Vice-pres. Gutierrez and even Veep Gutierrez, plus of course VP Gutierrez. "Marine Johnson" used unbroken as Title Name is such an abbreviation, in this case of U.S. Marine Johnson, itself an abbreviation of U.S. Marine Corp PFC Johnson, itself an abbreviation, in turn, of United States Marine Corp Private First Class Emil Xander Johnson, Jr, [USMC serial number here]). Per MOS, we don't capitalize when the title and name are separated, as in Gutierrez, the new vice-president or "vice-president of the company since July, Gutierrez" (unless the title is given as an acronym or itself is/contains a proper noun: (Gutierrez is the VP, "Gutierrez also served as a New Mexico State Court judge"), thus Johnson the marine, "a marine since 1991, Johnson...". NB: We also do not capitalize things that are not titles, or abbreviations thereof, when used with names, e.g. Divisional Sub-boss Gutierrez, or State-level Judge Gutierrez (which should be state-level judge Gutierrez not state-level Judge Gutierrez here, as judge in this case is part of a longer phrase that is a writer's replacement for, not abbreviation of, the title, as would be judiciary politician Gutierrez, just like pilot Campbell for USAF LT Campbell).

    It's really cut and dry, and this dispute is simply another case of the WP:Specialist style fallacy, one in which certain editors are emotionally but fallaciously invested in the idea that Marine in references to the U.S. Marine Corp must always be capitalized as a matter of pride. We don't all have the right to shout Semper Fi!, however. [And thanks for your service; I come from a military family.] PS: Note also that the proper spelling is "vice-president" (vice- is a prefix, not a word in this context); Vice President of the United States is a US political term of art (and pride). Many US-based companies have become confused (not being usually populated with grammarians) and aped this style, but it's an incorrect usage when it doesn't refer to the VPotUS. Wikipedia should always spell the corporate job title hyphenated regardless of the company's internal usage, just as we always spell president correctly, even if a company insists that they have a "Prezident". PPS: Bonus points for anyone who understands why I used quotation marks in "actually 'PFC'" instead of using actually ''PFC''.

    — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 09:58, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

    That advice fails to recognize that we do capitalize Rotarian, Democrat, Republican, so why not Marine? It is in fact common practice to capitalize Green Beret and Marine, not for someone who is a merchant marine, but someone who is a U.S. Marine, and therefore our MOS should reflect that fact. If other countries have a marine corp and choose to capitalize their marines, we would certainly expect to follow suit. But if they do not, like merchant marine, then lower case would be more suitable. I would suggest looking at sources and finding out what they use. Apteva (talk) 15:53, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
As an international encyclopedia, we shouldn't be using "Marines" as an abbreviation for a particular country's marine corps. But I agree that as such an abbreviation I would expect it to be capitalized. — kwami (talk) 18:03, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
To clarify the point about "if other countries have a marine corps...", I think it's worth confirming that there are, indeed, many marine corps outside the US. Many have other titles, and so are not relevant here, but, by my count there's at least sixteen other "Marine Corps" than the American version. Judging from their website the Royal Marines do tend to capitalise (although not uniformly), but, in the vast majority of cases they prefer the more specific term "Royal Marine" anyway, which I assume we all agree would be capitalised. My recommendation would be to use "U.S. Marine" when you mean a member of the U.S. Marine Corps, rather than the shorter, and more generic term. The term "marine", to my mind, falls into the same category as "soldier" or "sailor", since it's a generic term used by many different countries and organisations. This obviously differ from the NYT's opinion, but then they're a national newspaper, not an international encyclopaedia. Anaxial (talk) 18:52, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

I prefer the NYT/AP/whatever style of capitalization according to the style the organization uses when referring to the organization or its members. There are some potential ambiguities solved by this approach. A marine assault may be something completely different from a Marine assault. I don't think this capitalization rule should apply, however, in a specific case: when referring to an armed force as an army or navy in a generic way, even if the only possible referent is one country's army or navy. For example: He enlisted in the U.S. Army but The army trudged across the desert. and The Cypriot Navy conducted drills but the navy assaulted positions in the south. --Batard0 (talk) 13:41, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

I seem to have caused all this excitement. For some reason, and for quitre some time, I have been demoting common nouns when I find them set with a captial. I suppose everyone has their pet peeve. Please be assured I have no desire to pay anthing but full respect to marines (and soldiers, and sailors). It seems we ought to have a clear-cut rule. Frankly I do not care what that rule might be. If I learned to accept full stops outside quotes, I can learn to use an upper case M in marine. I would ask someone to send me a message on my talk page should the policy be changed. I would then be happy to enforce it. Paul, in Saudi (talk) 07:47, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

117 reverends

This was changed, but the change was reverted. WP:JOBTITLES currently has an example "there were 117 reverends at the pastor's convention". The use of reverend as an adjective is a bad idea to have as an example, since it's often considered poor usage (see The Reverend#Usage). The explanation of the reversion was that we are no endorsing the usage, but this is a manual of style, and there is no particular need to use this example when countless others could be used instead. StAnselm (talk) 09:30, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

The main reason I reverted, though it wouldn't fit into the edit summary, is that the changed version of the example was not illustrative of the point being made in the sentence. The sentence deals with the use of honorific forms of address, such as "His Holiness", not with names of positions such as cardinal and bishop, which are treated in the first paragraph of that section of the page. Although the usage is sometimes objected to, "Reverend" is used, at least in some U.S. Protestant churches, as a form of address ("That was a fine sermon, Reverend"), so it at least illustrates the point that the sentence is trying to make. If you can think of a better example to illustrate the point, you're welcome to replace the "reverends" example; but the "cardinals and bishops" replacement was a no-go (it would have to have been "eminences and excellencies", which sounds a bit awkward). Deor (talk) 10:09, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
Well, maybe it isn't just the example, then - maybe we should say that the generic use of honorifics should not normally be used (or at least omit the clause about generic use). "There were three highnesses at the party; there were eight honourables in Parliament; there were four worships in the courtroom." Ugh! Anyway, "Reverend" as a form of address is one thing; as a generic synonym for "minister" is quite another. StAnselm (talk) 19:01, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

"shorter than five letters" rule / general capitalization rules discussion over at WT:MoS

People frequenting this talk page, please see this. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 19:33, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Compass points

Under "Compass points" should we mention that the abbreviations for compass points — such as NE and ESE, etc. — are capitalized? (I am not aware of any exceptions.) ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:17, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

4-letter prepositions in composition titles

WP:CT is clear that only prepositions of five letters or more should have their first letter capitalized, but I've never seen an uncapitalized four-letter preposition in a title that didn't look wrong. The aforementioned Star Trek RM touches on this; it's definitely against CT, but it just looks sloppy and doesn't appear that way in most sources. I'm not the type to prefer source styling over MOS styling, though, so would anyone be amenable to expanding CT to capitalize four-letter prepositions? And don't tell me how much work that would entail—just whether it would be right or wrong, please. --BDD (talk) 17:33, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

It would suffer from the same problem with different words, such as "with" and "from" (View from the Top, It Came from Beneath the Sea, The Man with the Golden Gun, etc.) I think an explicit list is in order if the rule is to be changed, capitalizing some four-letter prepositions and leaving others uncapitalized. Maybe even capitalize some three-letter prepositions, as we already do in 33⅓ Revolutions Per Monkee. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:40, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
Glad to see someone's talking about this. We've digressed on the "Into" argument regarding Star Trek, and we've opened a whole new can of worms. If, as some sources are suggesting, "into" becomes part of a phrasal verb, should it be capitalised according to the MOS? As far as we can see, it should. If that is the case, there are many articles (see a massive list of examples in the Star Trek discussion, some of which qualify) that may also need the "into" capitalised. Might it be wise for us to discuss the existence of phrasal verbs, and how this affects capitalisation? drewmunn (talk) 12:56, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
Can you provide an example of a phrasal verb using "into"? (The Star Trek problem, IMO, is not one of phrasal-verbness, but instead stems from the use of a subtitle "Into Darkness" without the normal colon or dash or other indication; clever marketing, perhaps, but lousy style; as a sentence, "Star trek into darkness" doesn't work so well, so "Star Trek into Darkness" doesn't either, but neither does "Star Trek Into Darkness"; I'd go with "Star Trek: Into Darkness", and ignore their marketing style. But I realize that perspective is probably just one of many in that discussion.) -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:08, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
Crash into Me and I'm into Something Good are two examples of the word being used as particles of the verb and should be capitalized, but aren't. There are many more. I also found Run Into the Light as one example of "into" being capitalized in a title, yet I'm not really sure it should be since it does look like it's being used as a preposition there. --DocNox (talk) 23:55, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
Whay should "Crash into Me" be capitalised? I don't think this is a phrasal verb. The verb is "to crash", "into" is just the preposition. Not sure about "I'm into Something Good" though - maybe in this context "to be into" is a phrasal verb. "Run into the Light" shouldn't be capitalised though, unless it is about a chance encounter with the light! --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:00, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Be careful as to what is a phrasal verb and what isn't. "Trek into" wouldn't be a phrasal verb. In this example, "trek" is the verb, and "into" the preposition. However, "run into", as in accidentally meet some one, would be a phrasal verb, and in this example "into" should be capitalised in a composition title. However if you "ran into" a shop to get something, this is not a phrasal verb. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:10, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
The fact is it can be interpreted either way and without context we have no way of knowing which is really meant. I doubt the filmmakers even thought about it this much. --DocNox (talk) 23:55, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
The purpose of Wikipedia: think deeply over decisions made in a split second. It's a bit like taking a literature qualification again. drewmunn (talk) 07:22, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
As far as a general phrasal verb goes, "trek into" isn't one. I'm not talking about specifically Star Trek - that's a more complicated problem. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:00, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Having read what you've put forward so far, it's straightened stuff out for me a little more. I agree now that "trek into" in it's pure form probably can't be a phrasal verb; as you say, it doesn't really have extra meaning when combined. "Star Trek Into", however, probably could be, if you take it to mean the franchise gets dark. However, as you said, that complex and not really for this discussion. I know it's simplistic and probably too broad, but as suggested earlier by BDD, could we expand CT to cover "Into"? As suggested by JHunterJ, I don't think all 4-letter prepositions need CT, but some, specifically "into" could probably do with it. It would deal with all cases without the argument on a case-by-case basis. drewmunn (talk) 09:11, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
But what would be the justification for tmaking a special exception for "into"? Surely it should follow the same rules as every other preposition. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:15, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Other than avoiding arguments such as the Star Trek one, I have nothing. drewmunn (talk) 09:17, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
The suggestion at WT:MOS#WP:NCCAPS → "shorter than five letters" rule is to abandon the letter-counting approach to preposition capitalization and instead identify which prepositions get capitalized and which don't. It wouldn't be a "special exception" for any of them. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:30, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
I wasn't aware of that discussion, but I'm against the proposed changes! --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:42, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
The current letter-focused guideline causes many problems and needs improvement. Whether we have special exceptions to letter-counting or skip the letter count entirely yields the same result. What's the downside? -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:54, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
I've just looked through the proposal, and think that, with a little refinement, it'd be a major improvement over the current system. drewmunn (talk) 13:58, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
If it is an established system of usage of the English language, then it's fine, but editors seem to be cobbling together rules based on examples given on other websites, rather than respecting long established guidelines of usage. We should be discussing which guideline to follow in these cases, not make up our own. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:05, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Our manual of style is indeed assembled by editors, but we're not basing it on examples from other websites (although we are using other websites as well as other sources to inform the guidelines). -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:53, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I remember some rule from somewhere (sorry, that's not helpful to anyone), that prepositions with more than one syllable should be capitalized. Thus, "from" and "with" (examples given above) are both one syllable long, while "into" (the other example from above), "wherefore" (although, this exceeds WP's 5-letter rule) are two syllables and should be capitalized. Would this be helpful in this debate, and would it be a helpful rule in Wikipedia MOS? The word "into" is unusual for being two syllables rather than one for its letter length. Also, does anyone know where this rule comes from? — al-Shimoni (talk) 02:27, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

A follow-up on my last (and perhaps my last comment and this should be moved to a separate thread of its own). I was looking at other four-letter English prepositions. "Upon" is a four letter preposition, but two syllables, and I noticed that it is, so-far that I have observed, consistently capitalized in wiki articles (for example, the multiple "Once Upon a Time" articles). Four-letter two-syllable prepositions include: amid (a+mid), atop (a+top), into (a shortened compound preposition), onto (shortened compound preposition), over, unto (formed by analogy of "until", a shortened compound preposition), and upon (a shortened compound preposition). The reason I point out the shortened compound prepositions is that WP asks to capitalize the first word of compound prepositions (regardless of length). That they are shortened forms, however, makes that WP rule no longer applicable (at least, as currently written). But, it seems that since 1) all the two-syllable four-letter prepositions (except over) appear to come from compounds, and 2) their two-syllable nature seems to make them want to be capitalized (and there seems to be a rule somewhere that says one should capitalize such — see previous comment by me), then a rule could easily and reasonably be created to say they should be capitalized. As a note, there are no three or shorter letter prepositions with more than one syllable.
Proposal: Perhaps we should amend the sentence in the article which says "Prepositions that contain five letters or more (During, Through, About, Until, etc.)" to read as "Prepositions that contain five letters or more (During, Through, About, Until, etc.), or more than one syllable."
Thoughts?
— al-Shimoni (talk) 03:17, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
I like it – and I don't: there are problems. Would you mind if I copied this whole section (or parts of it) over to the ["older", longer] discussion at WT:MoS and replied to you there? That way, everything would be centrally in one place – and a place where probably more people stop by than here. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 23:32, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
I haven't had time to read this through thoroughly, but from your last comment, I think we're getting somewhere. I agree with your observation of compound prepositions, and I think it warrants a look into. As for your proposal, I think it covers the purpose well. It may need some streamlining, but in essence I think it's good. drewmunn (talk) 12:30, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
I only just now noticed this section deals with the same issue I first brought up last November here. Everyone's input over there obviously welcome. (Crossed out because I realized the discussion I started is already mentioned and linked further up by JHunterJ. The invitation to head over to and join me at that WT:MoS section obviously still stands. Sorry for the redundancy.) – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 19:42, 27 January 2013 (UTC) (ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 22:57, 28 January 2013 (UTC))
Is there an established style guideline that supports the theory that a two-syllable preposition is a compound preposition, or is this just synthesis? --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:13, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
Except for "over", all the English 4 letter prepositions that I've seen have been shortened/contracted compounds. But being shortened, they are no longer two distinct words, thus the WP:MOS rule about a compound preposition may not apply. "Over" — from every source I have seen — originates as a single preposition (cognate to German "über"). The list of two-syllable four-letter prepositions is quite short (listed above). There are no two-syllable three-letter, 2-syll two-letter, nor (obviously) 2-syll single-letter prepositions. Capitalizing 5+ letter preps, or 2+ syllable preps would cover much of the words in dispute. — al-Shimoni (talk) 06:35, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
Again, would the contributors here mind if I copied this over to WT:MoS, so we'd have everything in one place? I and others could just comment on your points there and link to here to get the context, but this would obviously be very cumbersome. Since I'd copy, not cut, you still could continue debating here if that's what you prefer, but I don't know if my action would be considered impolite or seen as an attempt to hijack your thread. Thoughts? – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 09:32, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
I'm all for copying it over, and nobody seems to be against it, so go ahead. Stick a referral link in here so we can get to the other conversation and hopefully get things moving on both fronts. drewmunn talk 10:00, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

debate continued here.[dead link]

Randall Munroe takes the piss out of us

Behold. — A. di M.  08:28, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't think there's going to be a single talk page not linking to this by the end of the day. drewmunn (talk) 08:43, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
Nobody seems to have added it to Wikipedia in popular culture#Wikipedia in web comics yet. --Boson (talk) 13:03, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Capitalisation of "AT-LARGE" when not the first word of an article title

Please see Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Capitalisation_of_.22AT-LARGE.22_when_not_the_first_word_of_an_article_title. Thanks! -sche (talk) 16:48, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Conflict between MOS:CAPS and MOS

 – Pointer to relevant discussion at the main MOS talk page

WP:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Common names directly conflicts with WP:Manual of Style#Animals, plants and other organisms. A discussion has been opened at WT:Manual of Style#Conflict between MOS:CAPS and MOS to resolve this conflict. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 21:51, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

"Doctrines" and "systems of thought" doesn't quite cover it.

We need to also cover the fact that systems of practice (kung fu, etc.), including professional disciplines (chiropractic, rocketry, whatever) are also not capitalized. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 22:30, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

"Movements" doesn't quite work

We have the problem that artistic movements (Art Nouveau, etc.) are conventionally capitalized, but need to distinguish these from movements in the other sense, like existentialism and veganism, and narrower creative concerns such as music and film genres, which are not capitalized. A further complication is ages/epochs, e.g. the Industrial Revolution on the large scale, and the Jazz Age on the smaller scale; these are almost always capitalized. Meanwhile centuries are not (on WP; actual reliable sources in the wild are divided on that, though increasingly leaning toward lower case). It's important that we clarify this stuff, because people deeply involved in all such topics have a strong tendency to reflexively capitalize them, even when this is clearly inappropriate, and will often resort to endlessly tendentious WP:Specialist style fallacy arguments in defending their typographic quirks, in the absence of something in MOS to point to that specifically contradicts them. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 22:37, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

COMMONNAME should take precedence

I propose a modification to MOS:CT that states simply, WP:COMMONNAME takes precedence to the advice given in this section. Ryan Vesey 01:42, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

But commonname doesn't talk about capitalization. And if it did, what would it say? Go with majority of sources, rather than aim for WP style? Why? Dicklyon (talk) 01:46, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Because it's best when it doesn't look like the project is run by pedantic fools who can't spell. Mackensen (talk) 01:47, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Nothing in commonname says it doesn't deal with style or capitalization. It says we should use the title used by a majority of reliable sources in the English language. The title isn't limited by the words used, spelling and capitalization and style are all part of the style and they can be affected by COMMONNAME without any change in that policy. Ryan Vesey 01:51, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Given that COMMONNAME documents a policy and MOS:CT a guideline, I believe this is already the case, should editors choose to follow policy. Mackensen (talk) 01:47, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Since it is already effectively policy, I have updated. (RV only if you think you can provide reasons why it is NOT policy.)

Incidentally WP:COMMONNAME does not literally cover the letter case case we've encountered. People still need to use WP:COMMON sense or reach WP:CONSENSUS, it seems.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 01:55, 31 January 2013 (UTC) We could do further updates, or should we just go through the entire list of participants at Talk:Star Trek into Darkness and have them (re)take lessons in consensus, IAR, etc? :-)

Well I hope you people who have taken it upon yourselves to change things without having a meaningful discussion are now going to move the literally hundreds of pages on Wikipedia that use lowercase prepositions with the same eagerness that you moved the Star Trek page. -- Scjessey (talk) 03:07, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
No.
2 points:
  • That's not how policy works. Those pages may be changed, as deemed appropriate, at any time.
  • You can always apply WP:BRD and/or WP:Consensus if you like.
If you do wish to discuss rather than obstruct (As I assume you do :-), can you provide an argument, perhaps along one of the following lines?
  • "The MOS actually does override COMMONNAME, because..."
  • "COMMONNAME actually doesn't apply here, because..."
  • "I actually disagree with COMMONNAME itself, and for good reason, because..."
Something like that! :-) We'll try to reach consensus.
--Kim Bruning (talk) 03:34, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes, you were bold. I reverted. Now let's slow down and discuss why you'd want to change a longstanding styling guideline based on an interpretation of COMMONNAME that has been rejected by the majority in the RFC at WT:AT. Dicklyon (talk) 04:09, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Could you please link to the specific discussion? Mackensen (talk) 04:14, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia_talk:AT#RfC_on_COMMONSTYLE_proposal. Dicklyon (talk) 04:35, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
26 support to 2123 opposes (if I counted right) is a majority, granted, but a bare majority doesn't necessarily make for consensus. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 04:59, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
And certainly no consensus to go the other way, as Kim Bruning is trying to do. Dicklyon (talk) 05:04, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Oh, I think Talk:Star Trek Into Darkness is going a long way toward showing that consensus... --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 05:39, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

This page is for developing this MOS guideline, it is not a naming convention (guidelines for naming article). This thread is nothing to do with developing this guideline. As this is a discussion about an article title the MOS is not the place to conduct it. This discussion ought to take place at Wikipedia talk:Article titles as the guidance is given on the policy page at WP:LOWERCASE. -- PBS (talk) 08:24, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

  • I'd like to point out that WP:TITLEFORMAT (which is policy) directs you to WP:NCCAPS in the case of proper names. WP:NCCAPS in turn, specifically mentions composition titles and directs you to MOS:CT. So this whole idea of "COMMONNAME trumps MOS" is absolute nonsense, as COMMONNAME would, it seems, defer to MOS for styling once the title has been decided per COMMONNAME. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:04, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
    Ah, well, that's definitely the next bug to iron out. Would you care to take a look at it? --Kim Bruning (talk) 18:01, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
  • PBS, again I would urge you to not be such a stickler about where discussions take place. It's reasonable to have a discussion about this page on this talk page. And it is not immediately clear anyway why a discussion about titling style not happen at the discussion page for the manual of style. Everyone else, carry on. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:12, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Ok, well, on the basis of the snow close at Talk:Star Trek Into Darkness, I think we've got this covered now. *Phew*, what a lot of noise for such a stupid thing. --Kim Bruning (talk) 18:01, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I've reverted Kim Bruning's change to this MOS page, as I see no consensus for it here and disagree that a local consensus on one article's talk page constitutes a consensus to change this guideline. In most of the recent move discussions I've seen in which it has been argued that capitalization in articles' titles should be determined by an "official" capitalization (i.e., whatever is used on the album cover, movie poster, etc.), that argument has been rejected in favor of following the convention described here and at WP:NCCAPS. I also disagree that WP:COMMONNAME has any relevance to this discussion. Deor (talk) 18:48, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Ok, that's an interesting set of reasons. I'll ponder those and get back to you! :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 19:14, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
To begin with, why do you think COMMONNAME has no relevance here? Others have stated that it is instead of overriding concern, so now I'm wondering if our actions based on that interpretation so far have been correct, or could be subject to improvement?
Can you summarize or link to the reasoning under which the "official" capitalization argument was rejected?
--Kim Bruning (talk) 19:17, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
I can hardly speak for everyone who's participated in such discussions, but might I suggest that (1) capitalization in titles is a matter of style, (2) we have a manual of style that contains guidelines for such capitalization, and (3) if we're going to ignore our manual of style in favor of random examples of usage elsewhere, there's probably no point in having a manual of style at all? Let anarchy (or marketing professionals or graphic designers or whoever happens to be in charge of any particular bit of packaging) prevail! As for WP:COMMONNAME, Robsinden's comment above seems to be on point; that policy deals with what titles should be given to articles, not with how those titles should be styled. Deor (talk) 19:33, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Indeed, what would be the point of a Manual of Style? Though perhaps there are many things where there is no explicit "official" way to style things, where the MoS might yet be of use.
Can you link to some location where people actually formed consensus on this?
I agree that COMMONNAME does not currently explicitly make statements on capitalization style (as you can also see above), perhaps because the authors thought the answer to be WP:COMMON sense, who knows.
Perhaps User:Ryan Veseys suggestion was not the best? Since I think we're coming to a conclusion where we explicitly allow external sources to determine capitalization at least some of the time; where/how would you propose to make the change instead?
I think it's given that we would still need to hash out the rest of the consensus for the above; but let's take it one at a time.
--Kim Bruning (talk) 19:46, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Deor asks what the point of a style manual is if we're going to defer to random usage elsewhere, and that's a fair question.
But to answer it, I think it's worth asking, what do we hope to get out of our style guide in this case?
  • Ensure that all our titles look the same
  • Ensure that when an editor isn't sure how to capitalize something, and there isn't an external constraint, the editor gets some guidance so he doesn't have to make an arbitrary choice.
We have already made exceptions for "eBay" and "iPod", and I think these are perfectly sensible. I think it could be just as sensible to make exceptions for article titles which are (or ought to be) identical to the titles of the works they're about. —Steve Summit (talk) 20:39, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
It's your "and there isn't an external constraint" that bothers me. Book covers, record labels, and such shouldn't be external constraints on people's following the MoS, but some folks seem to think that they should be. One example that someone brought up in a discussion is Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask), where the book's cover has Everything you always wanted to know about sex* with *BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK at the bottom. Should we attempt to reproduce that somehow in the title of our article? The way such things appear in so-called official sources (viz., packaging and promotion) aren't even style decisions at all, nor are they "common names"; they're design decisions that shouldn't affect our styling of titles of works in a consistent manner. Deor (talk) 00:13, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
And it's your "some folks seem to think that they should be" that bothers me -- because I'm someone who thinks that they should be, too! Why am I wrong?
One thing that the whole sad Star Trek Into Darkness imbroglio shows, I think, is that there are (a) not a few, but a whole lot of people who (b) don't just "think", but know that the subject's conventionally-rendered title should obviously be mirrored (in spelling, capitalization, and conventional punctuation) in the Wikipedia article's title. This second point is so obvious that people are now surprised that it wasn't in the MoS all along (or that it needs stating at all). —Steve Summit (talk) 00:36, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
Then again I ask, What's the point of having a style manual (not just ours, but any) at all? Almost certainly, the majority of our articles about artistic works have titles that differ, in capitalization if nothing else, from the titles appearing on the works themselves, since for many, many works the title on the original "product" appears in all caps (e.g., A Christmas Carol, Meet the Beatles!) or all lowercase (With the Beatles, Wildflowers) or some other odd form. I don't know what you mean by "conventionally-rendered title"; but if a whole lot of people "know" that design = style, they pretty clearly know wrong. Deor (talk) 01:54, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Rob Sinden you write "WP:TITLEFORMAT (which is policy) directs you to WP:NCCAPS in the case of proper names." but one can play that game with dictionaries and end up with a silly definition. WP:AT is the policy this page is not policy and is only advisory in relation to policy -- it is not even a naming convention (the guidlines that supplement the AT policy), therefore the place to discuss this is at the discussion page of WP:TITLEFORMAT which is Wikipedia talk:Article titles. The other links you point to are there to supplement and enhance the policy but they should not contradict it. From which guideline do you get the idea from that "COMMONNAME would, it seems, defer to MOS for styling once the title has been decided per COMMONNAME"? -- PBS (talk) 20:04, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Because WP:COMMONNAME points to WP:NCCAPS for styling of proper names, and WP:NCCAPS points to MOS:CT for styling of composition titles. Therefore the policy tells us to use the guideline. --Rob Sinden (talk) 23:00, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
So, if we point the editor from here back to WP:COMMONNAME, we'd just be going round in circles! And to quote WP:NCCAPS: "Wikipedia strives to become a leading (if not the leading) reference work in its genre, formality and an adherence to conventions widely used in the genre are critically important to credibility". --Rob Sinden (talk) 23:08, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
This is not like looking at the main MOS page and its subsidiary pages. AT is policy. A naming convention or any other guideline can explain and enhance policy, but they can not contradict it (this is exactly the same relationship as exists between WP:V and WP:RS "In the case of inconsistency between this policy [V] and the WP:IRS guideline, or any other guideline related to sourcing, this policy has priority."). Therefore the place to start and end such circular arguments is at the article titles policy page, not here. On the AT policy page there is a section called "Deciding on an article title" which suggests some principles to help decide on an appropriate name, common name is important but it is not the criteria. -- PBS (talk) 08:21, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
The title is not the same as the style. We can agree on a title, thats what WP:AT is for. The styling of said title is down to the MOS. --Rob Sinden (talk) 08:59, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
Maybe WP:AT should have a warning like WP:V: "In the case of inconsistency between this policy [AT] and the WP:MOS guideline, or any other guideline related to styling, this policy has priority." --Enric Naval (talk) 09:28, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
Absolutely not. They don't contradict each other. WP:AT is about the title, not the style. We seek consistency in style, and in capitalisation, as WP:NCCAPS attests. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:34, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
In Star Trek Into Darkness they contradicted each other, and it caused a lot of wasted editor time. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:52, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
No, they still don't contradict each other. There is a question as to whether "Into Darkness" is a subtitle or not, and that is one of the reasons the MOS would not apply. That, and a bunch of fanboys with no respect for Wikipedia policies and guidelines steam-rollered the change through. We should not be trying to change the guideline to accommodate a single article. --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:10, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
The pejorative term "a bunch of fanboys" does not advance the discussion. Plenty of the people in the ST[Ii]D imbroglio were arguing from perspectives of common usage or (what they saw as) common sense, not any kind of Star Trek (or xkcd) fanhood.
Dismissing arguments as coming from fanboys just invites equally destructive dismissals from the other side. (That is, I can easily imagine, but do not look forward to, hearing someone lamenting a "bunch of grammar Nazis with no respect for common sense stonewalling against any change", or something.) —Steve Summit (talk) 15:18, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
Ha, yeah, my comments do seem a little harsh. And I'm sure I have been called such things as you suggest ;) --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:24, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
If as you say they do not contradict each other then what is the harm of adding the warning? -- PBS (talk) 13:12, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
It will cause more arguments than it solves. At the moment, it is clear. We choose a title for an article, then follow the guidelines for formatting that title based on WP:AT. When the editor is directed to WP:NCCAPS or MOS:CT for the formatting, they follow those guidelines. If we add the wording as you propose, and another editor disagrees with the format chosen by the first editor, the editor correctly following the MoS will be undermined, as the second editor will say "none of this matters - WP:COMMONNAME takes precedent", yet, WP:AT has already directed the first editor to the MoS for styling advice. A great big circular mess. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:27, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
If reliable sources consistently use a certain style, then the style is already decided by policy AT. MOS is used when sources don't have any consistent style. If else, this should be made clearer in the policy and in the guidelines (which can complement policy, but can't contradict it). --Enric Naval (talk) 14:26, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
No, we don't source formatting, we use the MoS for this, and as far as I'm aware, there is no provision at WP:AT that covers this. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:35, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
The debacle of Star Trek Into Darkness shows that we follow style in sources over internal rules of style. MOS editors can't make their own local consensus to override the community. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:42, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
Making capitalization dependent on common use would be disastrous in at least two ways. First, it may be hard to determine common use. A regular search engine can distinguish between "jail" and "gaol", not between "NATO" and "Nato". This would lead to arguments. Secondly, commoner use, when discernible, can be perverse by the standards of non-promotional, literate English. Consider Japan, where a substantial minority of companies, bands, etc like to give themselves roman names even in the context of Japanese text. There's a Japanese belief that the choice between upper- and lowercase is somehow inherent to the name itself, and thus that (for example) "Ellegarden" is a "misspelling" of "ELLEGARDEN". Any search is likely to show that the fully capitalized form is commoner (because after all it is "correct" and the sensibly capitalized variant is "wrong"). The most avid of their anglophone fans agree. Japanese people are welcome to their (to me) slightly odd notions about case -- which actually is easily understood; after all, it's patterned on the current distinction between hiragana and katakana -- but I don't think such notions, or fandom, need affect an English-language encyclopedia. Moreover, if you accept commoner forms (however bizarre or daft) because they're commoner, I imagine there'll be calls for adoption of the "correct" capitalization, and certain companies (Sanyo was one) like to capitalize, I suppose in order to sear THEIR NAMES into the brains of potential customers. -- Hoary (talk) 09:31, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
Exactly. See also MOS:TM: "Follow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules, even if the trademark owner considers nonstandard formatting "official"". --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:36, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

@ErikHaugen. What is the point about discussing whether "COMMONNAME should take precedence" on this talk page? That is a discussion that should take place on the talk page of WP:AT policy. which has sections on both Common name and Article title format the discussion if need should be on the talk page of Wikipedia:Article titles. The MOS is more directed at the situation of capital in names of items other than the subject of the article. For example we have an article on the State Opening of Parliament. In that there is a sentence in that article that starts "The Queen arrives at the Palace of Westminster in a horse-drawn coach.." This guideline covers the capitalisation of "queen" in that sentence along with "Palace of Westminster". The section WP:CT it is guidance for the use within articles, not about article titles which is covered by the article titles policy. The policy may include a see also line referring to WP:CT for further guidance, but if it does, and that guidance is found to contradict policy, then the guidance should be ignored (see WP:PG). Therefore the proposed amendment "WP:COMMONNAME takes precedence" is not relevant for this guideline. Although perhaps to make it clear the relationship between the AT policy and its naming conventions and other guidelines a similar sentence to that in WP:V should be added to the policy page, but this is not the place to discuss such an addition to WP:AT. -- PBS (talk) 13:12, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

There isn't really anything to discuss, as they do not contradict each other, rather they complement each other. No addition necessary to either page. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:17, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
"What is the point"—because it's about language that should appear on this page. Don't be surprised if people start discussing what should be on a particular guideline at that guideline's discussion page. "The section WP:CT it is guidance for the use within articles, not about article titles which is covered by the article titles policy."—But both should use the same capitalization (modulo the first letter/etc), so what is the point of making this distinction? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:08, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Difference between a name and its presentation

I have started a new sub-section because I think we need to discuss separately the issues of definition behind the statement that common-name policy should take precedence over manual-of-style considerations. Normally a unique entity has one name, e.g. "John Kennedy". It may have additional names, e.g. "Jack Kennedy". However, different forms are generally only regarded as different names if they are written and spoken differently. "John Kennedy (written) and "John Kennedy" (spoken) are not regarded as two different names. Conversely John Kennedy, John Kennedy, and john kennedy are all the same name. Generally, the name is regarded as being the same name whether it is written in bold or italic type, coloured black or green, written with every second letter capitalized, spoken with a rising intonation (in English), spoken loudly or softly, etc. What conventions are followed in this respect depends on the environment: in a text message it may be permissible to lowercase proper names; for published works such issues are clarified in the the publisher's manual of style. So, as a rule of thumb, I would suggest that "common name "should only be used to refer to a name that can be written or spoken and that characteristics that are peculiar to either written or spoken forms should be ignored. In my opinion, stating that common-name considerations take precedence over MoS considerations is thus based on a linguistic misconception. Whether the presentation of a name (case, font, colour, etc.) punctuation, and so on should follow sources is a separate issue (which in my opinion usually belongs in WP:MOS). --Boson (talk) 17:06, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Although I don't think this is stated very clearly, I think I'm in general agreement. The established CT guidelines are exceptionally clear, concise, and easy to follow. Although I do understand how a trademarked phrase could be a possible exception, the trademark that pertains to a movie title has to do with licensing and how the name is used on products: "The company licensed Star Trek Into Darkness™ toys" could be argued for, I suppose, except that as a licensed trademark used on a product, the phrase would come with other specs such as fonts—but we don't use a different font to refer to a trademarked phrase. "COMMONNAME" doesn't privilege trademark anyway, since a trademarked name would be an "official" name. When it's a movie or some other kind of composition title (even if the movie is part of a merchandising franchise), I don't see any reason at all to exclude it from CT guidelines, nor to change those excellent guidelines. Some style points are subject to debate, and carry semantic value. This is not one of them. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:40, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
See also MOS:TM. --Rob Sinden (talk) 10:44, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
I think I agree, but I don't see any way to reconcile the decision at Talk:Star Trek Into Darkness with MOS:CT. (Unless "Into" is considered a compound preposition; "Star Trek In to Darkness" would be correct per MOS:CT. Powers T 14:40, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
It is easy to reconcile. See the hatnote at the top: For the style guideline on capitalization in article titles, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization). This guideline has little to do with article titles, it is to do with the formatting of words and phrases within articles where the word or phrase is not the article title. For iterations of the article title within that article then usually (but not always) the capitalisation will follow the article title under the MOS lead "Style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole". -- PBS (talk) 15:03, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
WP:NCCAPS points back here though: "In general, each word in English titles of books, films, and other works takes an initial capital, except for articles ("a", "an", "the"), the word "to" as part of an infinitive, prepositions and coordinating conjunctions shorter than five letters (e.g., "on", "from", "and", "with"), unless they begin or end a title or subtitle. Examples: A New Kind of Science, Ghost in the Shell, To Be or Not to Be, The World We Live In. For details, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters)#Composition titles." --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:16, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
I thought you agreed with my comment above "@ErikHaugen. .... 13:12, 1 February 2013 (UTC)". -- PBS (talk) 19:09, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
As I stated, the two are complementary, WP:AT for the title, WP:NCCAPS (and by extension MOS:CT) for the styling. --Rob Sinden (talk) 19:41, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
I think it's best not to try and reconcile that one. I fought a long hard battle in favour of applying MOS:CT on that one and lost. Let's treat it as unique. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:27, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
I hate to ask and open old wounds, Rob, but could you summarize the prevailing argument for capitalizing into? That talk page is chaos. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:07, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Largely the arguments in favour of capitalising were due to the ambiguity of the title's structure and whether "into" came after an implied colon, and thus the beginning of a subtitle. Also, that it appears to be the "official" styling. We were holding off on a no consensus to capitalise for a while, before a webcomic brought attention to the discussion and brought with it a barrage of new input. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:13, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
@Cynwolfe it is quite simple really, WP:AT is a policy based on few simple considerations of which usage in reliable sources is given the most weight, with caveats for certain problems that reliable sources throw up (eg two different things can not have the same article title, reliable sources don't all agree all the time) -- so further guidance is needed, etc). In contrast the MOS is a guideline based on a set of rules agreed among people who contribute to the MOS guidelines. Usually the two approaches end up with the same guidance, but occasionally there is disharmony. When that happens interested editors weigh up the the choices and decide which is most appropriate. Usually most editors most of the time will base their decisions on what is used in reliable sources (principle of least astonishment -- "it may be wrong but everyone is doing it") but some editors, either because they have a particular belief that there is only one correct "name", or because they think that the MOS rules should be followed no matter what (and probably half a dozen other reasons), will choose not to follow what is used in most reliable sources. In this specific case the consensus was to capitalise "Into2 with most saying their choice was based on common usage (in reliable sources). -- PBS (talk) 19:09, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
We don't source styling, we use the MOS for that. --Rob Sinden (talk) 19:39, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
That is not a universally held editorial opinion for article titles, which are covered by the WP:AT policy. That policy places the MOS styling as once of several factors that should be considered and weighted when deciding upon an article title. In the body of an article, the MOS often gives guidance that says follow the usage in reliable sources. For example in the style of date to use in articles about early modern history. -- PBS (talk) 14:15, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

van Dyke or Van Dyke?

Lets say the persons name is Tom van Dyke (with the "v" lower case). An editor has stated that when we use just last name in the article, the "v" must be capitalized. ("In 1982 Van Dyke bought a car.", rather than "In 1982 van Dyke bought a car." - is that correct? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 23:31, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I believe it is. Rather like capitalizing "A" or "The" when they start a book title, but not in the middle. If you don't capitalize, it looks kinda like "1982 van Dyke" is the guy's name. — kwami (talk) 00:30, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Contradiction and divergence at MOS:MUSIC

It seems at some point there has been local consensus at MOS:MUSIC#Capitalization to deviate from the MoS given at MOS:CT regarding composition titles that include parentheses. To my mind, we should not have this contradiction of these two closely connected (identical?) guidelines, as any reasons for divergence there would most likely also have cause for change on a wider scale. I tried to amend the guideline to be in line with this one, but this has been reverted. Previous discussions are at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters/Archive 8#Apparent conflict of guidelines and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Music#Capitalization, but think this should be discussed here, as any change there should be implemented here also, and vice versa. Any thoughts? --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:52, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

My preference is (basically) that the guideline here be changed to match the one at MOS:MUSIC rather than vice versa, but I agree that the conflict should be resolved. That's why I created the thread at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters/Archive 8#Apparent conflict of guidelines, though it didn't result in any actionable agreement. To avoid unnecessary repetition, I'd recommend that editors read that thread to see what arguments have already been advanced on both sides. Deor (talk) 16:02, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
It would be nice to see some evidence of what other style guides recommend. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:21, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
It seems to be too minor a point to be treated in most of them—at least I can't find anything relevant in the Chicago Manual or Words into Type or the MLA Handbook. Deor (talk) 00:25, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
I think it is important we find some kind of outside source to guide us on this. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:13, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

It seems to me that I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (in Perfect Harmony) and Pretty Fly (for a White Guy) are unassailable: what possible reason could there be to capitalize the prepositions? So yes, this MOS should be amended to match MOS:MUSIC.

(Don't Fear) The Reaper seems wrong no matter how we do it. However, the capitalized 'The' is probably more easily defended. BTW, we say to capitalize the last word of a title. But there's no reason to capitalize the last word of a prefixed parenthetical. For example:

(I'm a) Stand by My Woman Man.

This would be handled properly by the proposal in the archives (capitalize the parenthetical part as if the parentheses did not exist).

There are some potential complications. With Laura (What's He Got That I Ain't Got), the parenthetical is not a continuation of the main title, so even if it began with an article or preposition, that would need to be capitalized. Unless there's supposed to be a comma there? I don't have a better example offhand, but I'm sure there are cases where simply removing the parentheses wouldn't work, and common sense would need to be used.

Okay: Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker) is in the info box Tear the Roof off the Sucker (Give Up the Funk). Obviously, treating that as a single line w/o parentheses wouldn't work. Similar titles, though nothing that would make a difference, are 1, 2, 3, 4 (Sumpin' New) • Cleaning This Gun (Come On In Boy) • Best I Ever Had (Grey Sky Morning) • Country Grammar (Hot Shit).

Here's one where it does make a difference: Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American). It seems to me that the capital 'The' is correct, because there is no longer title *Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue the Angry American.

So I think we'd need to say: (1) if the parenthetical indicates the full title, or a longer title, of the song, then capitalize it as if the parentheses did not exist. However, if the parenthetical is an alternative title to the song, then capitalize it as if it stood alone. — kwami (talk) 00:04, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

That's basically Aervanath's suggestion under "Proposal" in the archived thread, and I would support (with maybe a bit of rewording) that solution both here and in MOS:MUSIC. Deor (talk) 00:45, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
Could you propose the wording adjust my wording below? This is probably something we can take care of fairly easily. — kwami (talk) 01:18, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
Hey, here's an excellent example: (Get A) Grip (On Yourself) → (Get a) Grip (on Yourself).
Another: I Remember Elvis Presley (The King Is Dead) and Pops, We Love You (A Tribute to Father). — kwami (talk) 00:49, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black): Cf. My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue).
I think I've taken care of all the singles from the 70s. There's not actually all that many, maybe a couple hundred altogether. — kwami (talk) 01:16, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Okay, then what capitalization should be used for It Takes a Little Rain (To Make Love Grow), the article that started this? To me, making "To" uncapitalized looks wrong. And can we please reach a consensus instead of going WP:WABBITSEASON — "it should be this way, no this way, no this way, no this way"? I see loads of discussion, but nothing that's even on the same planet as consensus. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 01:25, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
"It Takes a Little Rain (to Make Love Grow)", because the long title is "It Takes a Little Rain to Make Love Grow". You wouldn't capitalize the "to" there, and the song doesn't have an alternative title "To Make Love Grow". If you think that looks wrong, then you object to the entire point of the MOS:MUSIC version, and consensus is already against you there (at least at MOS:MUSIC). — kwami (talk) 01:29, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
MOS:MUSIC is against me, but MOS:CAPS isn't, then. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 01:46, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
And, per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, MOS:CT is the overriding guideline here. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:40, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Kwami, you've muddied the waters there a bit with including a load of examples where any change in the guideline would not make a difference. Rather than confuse the issue, how about we stick to examples that are relevant to this discussion. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:40, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I just did a Bing search for "It Takes a Little Rain (to Make Love Grow)" and out of the first sixty results (after that the results started to be about something other than the song), seventeen had "To" with 'T' capitalized and zero had it uncapitalized. (The rest were other variations not being considered here, such as all lower case, all upper case, or the article "a" capitalized.) It appears from this initial sample that organizations and people who post song titles on the Internet may not agree with the proposal below. I suspect that some of us who think "It Takes a Little Rain (to Make Love Grow)" looks wrong and "It Takes a Little Rain (To Make Love Grow)" looks right think so because we have an impression of seeing like occurrences the latter way for all our reading lives (in my case five decades). Some of the discussion has been about providing a logical rationale for "It Takes a Little Rain (to Make Love Grow)", but English is fraught with exceptions to logical rules, and I think the proposal goes against common practice from my experience. Someone could take the time to expand on my five-minute statistical study until they came up with a statistically sound result, but I would be surprised if it reached a different conclusion. I am assuming that because there is no authoritative guidance for this situation, we would want to be consistent with empirical practice. --hulmem (talk) 03:38, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Bing/Google searches on this are not useful, for several reasons, the most important and obvious of which is because they report results from people who don't know how to write and don't care. Millions upon millions of them. It's patently corrupt data. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 19:41, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Also, it's a shame some of the commenters here have gone full blast moving WP song articles to "fix" this problem prior to a clear consensus. Until and unless a consensus is reached it might make more sense to just leave WP song articles having this issue as they are. --hulmem (talk) 03:38, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

This needs to stop immediately. It's a blatant WP:FAITACCOMPLI action, a form of WP:GAMING the system, and per previous WP:ARBCOM rulings, it can result in blocks for disruption. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 19:41, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
There is consensus, which has been enshrined at MOS:MUSIC. Of course, we can always change the consensus, but claiming the consensus doesn't exist because you haven't signed on to it is not a legitimate argument.
If we look to common practice, we'll find that many many sources capitalize every single word in a title. We could do that too, but it would require some discussion. — kwami (talk) 04:38, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
The "consensus", is just WP:LOCALCONSENSUS at MOS:MUSIC. Whilst I think we all agree the two should be in line, we can't impose the local consensus there at the "parent" MoS here without further discussion. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:13, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
I have reverted the clearly controversial and quite frankly WP:POINTY moves by kwami until we have reached a resolution. Not cool, man. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:34, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
You apparently don't know the meaning of POINT. There have been a series of move requests which have gone this way, and it follows the MOS, so the moves were entirely appropriate. It's your reverts that I would call pointy. — kwami (talk) 11:34, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
As you are well aware, there are two conflicting MOS that can equally be applied to these titles. To unhesitantly move these articles whilst you were fully aware there was a discussion going on trying to resolve this issue could be considered pointy. --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:38, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
I'm not sure why you included "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" amongst these moves either, "A" comes after punctuation whichever way you look at it. --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:01, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
That doesn't mean it would be capitalized. You capitalize the beginning of a sentence, not after punctuation. — kwami (talk) 11:34, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
Which highlights a problem with your proposal below, as there would be an element of interpretation as to whether "the parenthetical indicates the long form of the title" or not. --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:58, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Personally, I think the case could be made to capitalise the parenthetical parts of "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (in Perfect Harmony)" and "Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)". The brackets are there for a reason, as if to say that there are two distinct phrases (or part phrases). If you say them out loud, try saying them with a pause. I think capitalisation could make sense and are not "unassailable" as an editor above claims. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:19, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps another thing to consider would be whether the part in brackets could be read as a standalone title. "To Make Love Grow" could be. Or we should treat the same way we treat subtitles in films, books, etc. Just putting it out there ;) --Rob Sinden (talk) 10:58, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Note: In an effort to get more participation here, I've left a (neutral) note on the talk pages of all editors who participated in last year's discussion of this topic, alerting them to the presence of this thread. If I've missed anyone, let me know and I'll correct the oversight. Deor (talk) 17:44, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Suggested guideline

For titles with parenthetical phrases, capitalize the main part as you would if it stood alone (e.g. "(Don't Fear) The Reaper"). Similarly, if the parenthetical is an alternative title or a sub-title, capitalize it as if it stood alone (e.g. I Remember Elvis Presley (The King Is Dead)). However, if the parenthetical indicates the long form of the title, capitalize it as you would the long title without the parentheses (e.g. "(Get a) Grip (on Yourself)"). — kwami (talk) 01:29, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose for now, until we have further evidence showing how other established style guidelines handle this and further discussion. However, I would support over-ruling the WP:LOCALCONSENSUS at MOS:MUSIC to bring that guideline back in line with this, the parent guideline, until we have discussed fully. In fact, there should be no separate guideline at MOS:MUSIC to avoid future divergence, instead, editors should be directed to MOS:CT for guidance. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:13, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
That would be quite disruptive, and presupposes that the discussion would decide against it. — kwami (talk) 11:50, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
Not at all. I think we're all in agreement that the two should be aligned. And it is what is decided here, and not the WP:LOCALCONSENSUS that takes precedent. We need to avoid the situation from happening again. It's the two conflicting guidelines that causes the disruption. --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:55, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
Okay, per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, I've removed the separate guideline at MOS:MUSIC to avoid future divergence, instead directing editors here to MOS:CT for guidance. Whatever we decide here will apply to any composition titles with parentheses, not just songs. And I'm not pre-supposing anything. We cannot have conflicting guidelines. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:27, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
I think that was a bad idea, Robsinden; I'm not going to revert you, but if your change leads to requested moves for song articles, I certainly will. We're discussing the status of the recommendations at both MOS:MUSIC and MOS:CAPS here, and edits to either guideline page that privilege one of the conflicting formulations should not be made until a consensus is reached here. Deor (talk) 15:33, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
I think the bad idea was the divergence of the two guidelines in the first place, and this needed to be addressed. Any WP:RMs can be opposed pending outcome of this discussion. Kwami pointily moved and requested moves against this MoS to the local MoS while in full knowledge and participation of this discussion. This is far more disruptive, and illustrates the necessity to bring the two into line asap. As far as priveliging one or other of the guidelines, per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, MOS:CT will always have priority. Whatever we decide here is the guideline, not what is locally decided at MOS:MUSIC. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:43, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
The divergence may not actually be a problem. It may be that song titles have unique properties that make the MOS:MUSIC solution more appropriate than it is for other types of works. Powers T 00:29, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Support, with perhaps a few changes for clarity. My proposed rewording:

If a title contains parenthetical material, capitalize the part outside the parentheses as if it were a complete title—e.g., "(Don't Fear) The Reaper". The words within the parentheses should be

  • capitalized as if they were a separate title if they function as an alternative title or subtitle—e.g., "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)", "Pops, We Love You (A Tribute to Father)"
  • capitalized as if the parentheses did not exist if they function as a syntactic extension of the title—e.g. "(You're the) Devil in Disguise", "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (in Perfect Harmony)", "(Get a) Grip (on Yourself)"
There will always be particular instances in which the function of the parenthetical matter is ambiguous or open to debate, but I don't think that should prevent us from arriving at an acceptable guideline here. In MOS matters, there are always edge cases that need to be discussed individually. (And I'd really like to see someone justify "(You're The) Devil in Disguise", which is what the MOS:CAPS guideline recommends as currently worded.) Deor (talk) 15:33, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
What do you reckon to Kwami's take on "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" and how would that fit in with your rewording? Personally, I see it as a subtitle / alternate title, but Kwami obviously doesn't. How would we handle other titles that could be construed as either a continuation or a subtitle? Do we have any examples of off-Wiki style guides adopting this policy? --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:43, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
(Sorry for all the questions, I'm not trying to be awkward, just trying to pre-empt situations in order to avoid arguments later on). --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:06, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

That's one of the edge cases that could go either way. After looking at the lyrics (I'm not familiar with the song), I'm inclined to say that the "A" should be lowercase, since a repeated refrain in the song is "Gimme, gimme, gimme, a man after midnight"; but I could be convinced otherwise. As I've said above, I don't think there are any "examples of off-Wiki style guides" adopting either policy. It's just not something that comes up that often in normal prose, though I'm sure that publishers of other encyclopedic works have their own in-house methods of ensuring consistency. Since you seem to be an advocate of the status quo at MOS:CAPS, why not take up my challenge and explain why "(You're The) Devil in Disguise" is a desirable styling of the title? Deor (talk) 16:10, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
I think just because there is a continuation in the lyrics is not reason enough to assume that "they constitute a syntactic extension of the title". There is punctuation there, and either part can be read as a phrase in itself. And as yet I'm not an advocate of either solution yet. Certainly in cases such as "(Theme from) XXX", I think I advocate the lowercase option, and I'm pretty much on side with "(You're the) Devil in Disguise" following the lowercase option too, but I'm not convinced when it comes to some of the examples given above, such as "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (in Perfect Harmony)" and "Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)", as there is an element of subtitle in the phrasing of these. I'm worried that we might be missing a point and risk becoming unencyclopedic if we start opening up the guidelines and titles to interpretation, and think we really need to make this watertight if we can. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:22, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
How about we don't capitalise if it can only be construed as a continuation? - i.e. "You're the" or "Theme from" don't make sense by themselves, but "A Man After Midnight" does. This would also keep "It Takes a Little Rain (To Make Love Grow)" capitalised. We do have the additional problem with the poetic nature of song titles and the interpretation thereof. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:32, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
How would we possibly determine "only"? What you're actually advocating is that we should capitalize all phrases, which would require the reader to understand what a grammatical phrase is before they can capitalize anything. This has no support from published style guidelines. — kwami (talk) 01:56, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
As far as I can make out, the other suggestion doesn't seem to have a basis in published style guidelines either, and also doesn't seem to reflect practice. I'd love to see some examples of style guidelines for this situation, but they don't seem to be easy to find. I suggest we don't move forward until we can find a style guideline to follow. --Rob Sinden (talk) 10:28, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Support: MOS:MUSIC needs to say nothing on this at all if it can't stop conflicting with the more general guideline at MOS:CAPS. There's nothing wrong with topical guidelines coming up with details that aren't covered by the general one, but when the general one specifically addresses the exact same case, the topical one is just a LOCALCONSENSUS and a blatant WP:POVFORK (in WP policy circles, that also constitutes WP:PARENT). I would suggest that what the guidelines should agree upon should really be discussed at WT:MOS proper, with a WP:RFC tag, for a broader consensus. Discussions at WT:MOSCAPS itself tend toward forming LOCALCONSENSUS nonsense against MOS. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 19:37, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
To be clear, do you support the new proposal, or the proposal that we remove specific information from MOS:MUSIC and defer to MOS:CT? --Rob Sinden (talk) 19:53, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment. Would those editors who think it is clever to move articles while this discussion is ongoing please desist? Requested Moves are pointy. FWIW, my preferred solution is that all article titles should be in lowercase capitals and the tech guys should ensure that no variation is possible. Not only would it save WP from lots of unnecessary "discussions" but also save a few good editors, too. Thanks. --Richhoncho (talk) 19:48, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Agreed. Have you considered closing the debates as a non-involved party? I reverted the pointy moves. What do you mean by lowercase capitals though? --Rob Sinden (talk) 19:53, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Response to Rob Sinden. Lowercase capitals - when all words are in capitals, but the first letter of each word is in a bigger capital. Did I use the wrong term? One typeface, no italics, all bold, no variation possible. No longer a need to move any article because of incorrect capitalization in the name space. (You have to see the new articles with a surname in lowercase {John brown) because WP rules are sometimes too complex. Deletion of millions of unnecessary redirects (john brown, again). Oh, well, I can dream, but I am happy to support the outcome here - whatever it is. Cheers. --Richhoncho (talk) 20:24, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
That's usually called "caps & small caps", but I can't see that it wouldn't have the same problems as our current caps & lowercase. You want THE LORD OF THE RINGS?
Response to Deor. My main point is that editors wouldn't have a choice. This means no more discussion like this one and a standardized WP. Yes, it is a good idea because every article title is then in the same format. This is not to say it's got a snowball in hell's chance of being adopted, because, some of us (and I don't discount myself), love the debate too much. Besides how often does capitalization have to be discussed before we all realise it's not what WP is about! Cheers. --Richhoncho (talk) 20:55, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Alternative suggestion to avoid further interpretation (building on Deor's - my additions in bold):

If a title contains parenthetical material, capitalize the part outside the parentheses as if it were a complete title—e.g., "(Don't Fear) The Reaper". The words within the parentheses should be

  • capitalized as if they were a separate title if they can be read as a standalone phrase or if they function as a separate alternative title or subtitle—e.g., "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)", "Pops, We Love You (A Tribute to Father)", "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man after Midnight)"
  • capitalized as if the parentheses did not exist if the text enclosed in the parentheses can only function as a syntactic extension of the title—e.g. "(You're the) Devil in Disguise", "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (in Perfect Harmony)", "(Get a) Grip (on Yourself)", "(Theme from) The Monkees"
This addresses some of my concerns. --Rob Sinden (talk) 19:53, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Too complicated in practice, zero support from published style guidelines. — kwami (talk) 02:02, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
Can you provide examples of published style guidelines? I was having no luck finding anything. This would be really useful to determine how to proceed. --Rob Sinden (talk) 08:58, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
I'm not having a lot of luck either. I think my basic objection is that we shouldn't capitalize things as titles if they don't stand alone as titles. — kwami (talk) 00:38, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Support. Rob's alternative suggestion is also acceptable. Powers T 00:29, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
  • weak support. To make the guidance clearer, add Pretty Fly (for a White Guy) as an example. --Enric Naval (talk) 13:49, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
  • comment I was proposing the basic idea. I think Deor's examples are better. However, I'm doubtful about Deor's phrase "syntactic extension". Subtitles are very often syntactic extensions. We shouldn't have to delve into philosophy to figure out whether to capitalize a title. Long/short form is an easy concept to grasp, and is usually pretty clear. The objection seems to be motivated by Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!, but I'm not sure it's a good idea to shape the guidelines around one problematic case. Better IMO to craft a guideline that we think will work in general, and then discuss the few problematic cases individually. — kwami (talk) 02:02, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
No, this is just one obvious example. There were others that seemed inappropriate. "Fool (If You Think It's Over)" and "You Never Miss a Real Good Thing (Till He Says Goodbye)" are others that my wording would apply to, where the bracketed portion could be read either as a running phrase or a phrase in its own right. But still, would be nice to see how outside style guidelines handle these. --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:39, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Support, I dig the examples proposed here and consider this a good choice of style. It's always a good idea to be consistent, not only to avoid unnecessary edit-warring over which version is preferred, but also for (long-time-)readers this is actually useful. After a while of reading, they will also recognise this pattern we use in the titles and will have it easier to find the right article title. And which style we use in the end is basically a matter of taste. We could do it just like this if we actually wanted to, except that it'd look rather unprofessional to certain people ;-) --The Evil IP address (talk) 23:19, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Support, though I'm wary of the last sentence on extended titles. I support it, but think that in practice it might be hard to grasp for an editor who lacks outside experience as a copyeditor or style aficionado.

Unicode vs unicode, proper noun vs. common adjective.

So I've come across a difference of opinion with another editor, and I'd like to get a more informed opinion on this one. We agree that it is properly capitalized as a noun, eg. "This script is in Unicode", but not as an adjective, eg. "this Unicode/unicode script". What do you guys think? Is there a difference between the standard itself as a proper noun, and usage as a common adjective? VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 19:58, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

On closer inspection, my perception is not internally consistent. Please disregard. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 02:47, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
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