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

Sun Apr 27 02:55:40 UTC 2003

Tannin wrote:
>V-1 Flying Bomb: This is a *kind* of aircraft, 
>but it is capitalised Labrador Retriever: This is a 
>*kind* of dog, but it is capitalised Splendid Fairy-
>wren: This is a specific *kind* of fairy-wren, which 
>is why it too is capitalised. (A non-specific kind is 
>written as plain"fairy-wren".)
>....

I've already explained why dog breeds can reasonably be considered to be 
proper nouns -- they are a specific product of selected breeding with 
pure-bred dogs having complete family histories. Aircraft are also specific 
products with specific histories. But the real reason why we capitalize dog 
breeds and aircraft is because they are almost always capitalized in nearly 
every context (specialist or otherwise). 

Your hierarchy distinction does intrigue me but it has also been demonstrated 
that the common names of species are usually written in the lowercase outside 
of specialist publications (most notably in encyclopedias, dictionaries and 
textbooks): 

Thus my ecology textbook writes "bald eagle" not "Bald Eagle,"  a 
generally-focused field guide on Yosemite of mine writes "peregine falcon" 
not "Peregine Falcon", Princeton University's Word Net writes "chinook 
salmon" not "Chinook Salmon", The Columbia Encyclopedia writes "yellow 
jacket" not "Yellow Jacket", Encyclopædia Britannica writes "sabre-toothed 
cat" not "Sabre-toothed Cat", Webster's Dictionary writes "mountian lion" not 
"Mountain Lion" and my intro-series biology textbook writes "sea otter" not 
"Sea Otter" etc, etc.... 

Given this, I'm part of the camp (that includes well-respected manual of 
styles) that says we should use down style for the common names of species.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)     