[WikiEN-l] A plea for sanity in capitalisation from the coalface

Sat Apr 26 12:40:22 UTC 2003

Or, we can take a look at how the recognised authorities do thgings.
Here is what the Audobon Society has to say:

There are rules governing the capitalization and hyphenation of birds'
names..... It might be helpful to go over a few of the general rules of
written bird names. When writing your own name you always capitalize
your first and last names, e.g., Sam Spade or Lucy Brown. When writing
the English name of a bird species, you should always capitalize its
first and last names, e.g., Scarlet Tanager or Winter Wren. This avoids
confusion with other modifiers in the sentence. For example, "the
secretive, tiny, Black Rail..." If you are referring to unspecified
birds use lower case letters, e.g., "those herons over there," or "that
sparrow on the ground." If a species has a three-word unhyphenated
name, all three words are capitalized. For example, "the graceful
American White Pelican..." Many birds have compound or hyphenated
"first" or "middle" names. Only the first letter of the compound name
is capitalized: Red-throated Loon, or Long-billed Curlew. However, if a
bird has a compound "last" name, then both parts of the compound name
are capitalized: Eastern Screech-Owl or American Golden-Plover.

Can't get much clearer than that. 

If we are to fly in the face of recognised convention in the case of
bird and mammal names, why is the so-called "rule" so
self-contradictory? 

Why are we (according to the name-change people) supposed to use
different rules for dogs, and aircraft on the one hand, and birds and
mammals on the other?

Tony Wilson
(Tannin)