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

Sat Apr 26 20:33:01 UTC 2003

Tannin wrote:
>Or, we can take a look at how the recognised authorities 
>do thgings.
>....

Since we are a general reference and not a specialized publication then 
ordinary English grammar and how similar publications do things are our 
guides. And down style is the rule for this.  BTW my biology textbooks also 
use down style for species names. 

>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?

Because aircraft are proper nouns, dog breeds are very close to being proper 
nouns (as explained in my last email) while birds and mammals are common 
nouns.

Our audience is the general public. As such we need to use general rules of 
grammar and capitalization NOT specialized rules of grammar and 
capitalization used in specialized publications. That is why other 
encyclopedias use down style for almost all common nouns. But since we are a 
wiki and page titles are also the way we link to pages, we need to be extra 
careful not to overcapitalize. 

I understand that there is a strong tendency for specialists to capitalize 
their terms but Wikipedia is not a publication for specialists, it is a 
publication for all of the world. 

For example there are specialists for almost everything so the result would be 
that Almost Everything In Wikipedia Would Be Capitalized:

Anyone know where the Clam Dip is? 
Hip Hop is a form of Rap Music. 
Some say that Global Warming and Ozone Depletion will kill us all. 
What type of Map Projection is that Topographic Map in? 
The Crystal Structure of lithium is Cubic Face-Centered. 
John Doe is a Computer Science pioneer in Integrated Circuits.
At work I help to design Roundabout Intersections for Transit Villages.

In fact something close to this was the case when I started the project over a 
year ago. Over time these Incorrectly Capitalized Articles were moved to 
their proper down style names.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't have exceptions like dog breeds - that is why I 
added "almost always" to the convention. I'm willing to entertain the 
interesting proposition that theorems should also be counted as proper nouns. 
They are very specific things that have been formulated by very specific 
people (just like dog breeds). But species names are, by definition, common 
nouns. Here are the definitions again:

Common noun (Gram.), the name of any one of a class of
      objects, as distinguished from a proper noun (the name of
      a particular person or thing).
      n : a noun that denotes any or all members of a class 

 Proper noun (Gram.), a
      name belonging to an individual, by which it is
      distinguished from others of the same class; -- opposed to
      common noun; as, John, Boston, America.
     n : a noun that denotes a particular thing; usually capitalized

Cheers!

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)