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

Sat Apr 26 23:53:23 UTC 2003

The Cunctator wrote:
>Look at those straw men burn! "Clam Dip" is a 
>generic food; if it were a specific recipe, like "Martha 
>Stewart's Famous Clam Dip", then it would be capitalized. 
>"Global Warming" and "Ozone Depletion" are not specific
>scientific phenomena, nor would they be capitalized as 
>such by specialists in climatic and atmospheric science. 
>"Map Projection" also is a class, not a particular thing, as 
>is "Topographic Map". Etc.

I choose those examples for the exact reason that they have spurious 
capitalization - and I agree with you on why those terms should not be 
capitalized. Thanks for explaining the reasons. 

>The irony is that the one thing that could *almost* be 
>plausibly capitalized above (other than "John Doe"), is 
>lithium, which you didn't capitalize.

I should have capitalized that too because I was trying to show examples of 
incorrect capitalization. All element names are common, not proper nouns in 
the same way as "diamond" is a common noun. But the Hope Diamond is a 
specific rock of diamond and is therefore a proper noun. The word "diamond" 
is a "kind" while Hope Diamond is a very specific thing - there is only one.

>...
>On the other hand, for uncommon or somewhat ambiguous 
>species, it would be odd to write "Shy albatrosses greeted 
>Sir Putney Drake when he first set foot in Newfoundland." instead 
>of "Shy Albatrosses greeted Sir Putney Drake..."

In textbooks newly-introduced terms are either bolded or italicized /and/ at 
least the textbooks I've used almost always use the down style for common 
nouns (I have had a couple course texts which were not textbooks but highly 
specialized field guides employing up style though). So since the first use 
of the new terms stand out as a unit there is no ambiguity as to wether 
adjacent adjectives are part of the new term or just happen to be next to the 
term. In Wikipedia we link at least the first occurrence of a 
newly-introduced term - this has the same effect.

>Whatever the case, I don't think we'll be hurt either 
>way, and I don't think it's worth antagonizing useful 
>contributors by changing their work (and making no other 
>contributions) and then implying that they're elitist bastards 
>for complaining.

I have tried to make sure my tone is respectful in these matters - if I have 
given a negative impression then I apologize. My point is that in order for 
Wikipedia to be useful to the largest possible audience we should use general 
rules of grammar and not specialized ones (which are different from 
discipline to discipline and not predictable by non-specialists). 

And copyediting, formatting and moving articles per standard English grammar 
rules and Wikipedia conventions (which aim to make linking predictable and 
resulting sentences look natural) /are/ useful ways to contribute. Or have I 
been wasting my time for the last year and a half?

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)