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August 2002 – April 2007

Advice needed

I need advice on the title of an article. Currently the article is called "Invader Zim" (it's a TV programme). The official title is "Invader ZIM". Would using the fully capitalised official name in the title be appropriate for Misplaced Pages? ●BillPP 02:54, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes of course, you wouldn't spell Manu Ginóbili as Manu Ginobili because ´ doesn't appear in English, you do it because you spell things like names in the matter in which they are spelt.•R_C2006•¢ʘñ†®¡ß§ 21:00, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

You might, however, consider bringing this up on the talk page of the article in question first, making sure to reference the fact that 'ZIM' is capitalised like that. Wider discussion is needed on the talk page. — neuro 11:01, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

To Be or Not to Be

Hi all. The example link on the project page to To Be or Not to Be leads to a disambiguation page. I would imagine it's supposed to point to one of the two films and not the soliloquy (which uses lowercase per the MoS). I'm not sure which film it is intended to link to though. I have a bias towards the Mel Brooks version which I've always thought was much funnier. Cheers! —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 14:22, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't really understand, what is the problem? Are you wanting to move the disambig to "To Be or Not to Be (disambiguation)" and have the main article as one of the links within that disambig? — neuro 11:02, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Prepositions five letters or longer within film titles

The convention in its current version provides that articles, prepositions, and conjunctions within the title of “books, films, and other works” are not capitalized. However, the current version of Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (films) says that articles, prepositions, and conjunctions are not capitalized if they are “shorter than five letters”. This is an apparent inconsistency because long prepositions and conjunctions like ‘through’ and ‘before’ would be capitalized under one convention but not the other. --Mathew5000 21:15, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Moreover, the word ‘to’ when used as part of the infinitive of a verb is not a preposition. It also is neither an article nor a conjunction. It is simply a grammatical particle. For correctness, the convention should specify that ‘to’ when used as part of an infinitive should not be capitalized (unless it begins the title). Otherwise the examples “To Be or Not to Be” and “Failure to Launch” are inconsistent with the rule as stated. --Mathew5000 21:26, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Longer prepositions such as "without", "through", and "before" are generally agreed to be capitalized by most parties, AFAIK. Whether or not that was ever stated on this page, I don't know, but clearly the WP:NCF articulated it. Perhaps this should be adopted here (if it wasn't deleted by mistake). Actually, I'm just going to be bold and see what happens... Girolamo Savonarola 20:29, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm confused as to what "generally agreed ... by most parties" is meant to imply in the previous comment. My copy of The Chicago Manual of Style (14th ed.) notes in 7.127 (pp.282–283):

Articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, for, nor), and prepositions, regardless of length, are lowercased unless they are the first or last word of the title or subtitle.

(the bold is mine). My copy of MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (3rd ed.) notes in 2.5.1 (p.50):

Therefore, capitalize nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and subordinating conjunctions (although, if, because), but not articles (a, an, the), prepositions (e.g., in, to, of, between) ...

notice that one of their examples is a seven-letter preposition. Which style guides recommend lowercase only for short prepositions? Alan smithee (talk) 22:49, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Until just now, ours did... -GTBacchus 01:00, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Single article

I believe the Associated Press style is to always capitalize a single article when printed in title case when no other articles or prepositions are present, for example:

• Ride A Cable Car Today (correct)
• Ride a Cable Car Today (incorrect)

I notice that the convention gives the example of "A New Kind of Science", which would be compliant with AP style, as I believe the "capitalize single articles" rule only applies to articles, and would not apply to "of," of course.  :)

I ask because I moved Why I Am Not a Christian to Why I Am Not A Christian earlier, a move which was shortly thereafter reverted, citing WP:NAME, although WP:CAPS seems not to address single articles one way or the other.   justen   00:47, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

When you say ‘single article’ do you mean ‘single-letter article’? In any event, Why I Am Not a Christian is correct capitalization for Misplaced Pages. It is stated explicitly in WP:CAPS that an article shorter than five letters is not capitalized (unless it is the first word in the title). That is standard for both English and American usage. --Mathew5000 06:28, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Is there any precedent, policy, or guideline related to subpages?

Is there any precedent, policy, or guideline related to subpages here or on meta? Thanks. --Emesee 03:19, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

WP:SP is not on meta, but it does have some links to related meta articles at the bottom. — neuro 11:08, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Magazine/newspaper/journal article titles

Am I correct that titles of newspaper, magazine, and journal articles should be capitalized as an ordinary sentence, and not considered a "work" in the current guideline:

"In general, each word in titles of books, films, and other works take an initial capital...."

If so, is mentioning that somewhere on this page appropriate, perhaps at the end of the paragraph quoted above? If there is no consensus opinion, maybe it could say that at the end of the paragraph. Or is this the wrong page to advise on capitalization of article tites?

-Agyle 21:46, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Contractions

Do contractions of conjunctions still count as conjunctions or should they be treated as proper nouns? For example, the "n" in Bone Thugs-n-Harmony is a contraction for either "in" or "and". I think it should be uncapitalised, but maybe others think otherwise? Spellcast (talk) 20:50, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Dynasties

Among the articles about a specific dynasty more have a name with "Dynasty" using a capital "D" (Ahom Dynasty, Arghun Dynasty, Arsacid Dynasty, Artaxiad Dynasty, Askiya Dynasty, ...) than use a lower-case "d" (Afsharid dynasty, Aftasid dynasty, Antipatrid dynasty, Ardennes-Verdun dynasty, Argead dynasty, ...).

Is there a justification for this widespread use of capitalized "Dynasty", such as "Ahom Dynasty" being considered a proper name? Which should have the preference:

1. Rename "Ahom Dynasty" etcetera to "Ahom dynasty" etc.
2. Rename "Afsharid dynasty" etcetera to "Afsharid Dynasty" etc.
3. Leave it to the discretion of the article creators, just as for American vs. British spelling.

70.137.187.239 (talk) 06:16, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Why capitalize first word only for titles of articles?

Can someone explain to me the rationale behind the convention of capitalizing only the first letter of articles?

If it is true that "adherence to conventions widely used in the genre are critically important to credibility" Misplaced Pages should not be using a convention that is used nowhere else. I don't know about anyone else, but every time I see an article title that follows this quirky convention I think that some semi-literate computer nerd named the article. (-;

Thanks in advance from a WP newbie!

Webbbbbbber (talk) 23:41, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

It seems to be a hold-over from the early days of Misplaced Pages:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(technical_restrictions)#Lower_case_first_letter

Some article titles are not displayed correctly because of limitations in the original MediaWiki software, e.g. the first character is forced to be upper case.

I don't know why the limitations of the original software continue to restrict the naming of Misplaced Pages articles today. It seems that an article name at Wiktionary starts with a lower case letter unless the name is a proper noun. I don't know how or why the two wiki systems differ. -Ac44ck (talk) 08:20, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

See the mainspace article Capitalization#Headings_and_publication_titles, particularly the discussion of "sentence case", and the advantages described for it. Jheald (talk) 19:24, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Relevant discussion initiated between me and Jheald over here. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 19:37, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

You can use {{lowercase}}. — neuro 11:04, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Page names that only differ by capitalization

It seems like a bad idea to me that page names may differ only by the tweaking of a single character.

These are confusingly similar:

• Blackberry and BlackBerry

also

• Santa Lucia and Santa Lucía

Unless one is reading with extraordinary care, it can be easy to overlook the differences in the examples above.

Terseness takes precedence over readability when conservation of disk space is a higher priority than readability. It doesn't appear to me that terseness generally takes precedence over readability in Misplaced Pages. Making page titles easy to confuse by virtue of being terse seems inconsistent with the verbosity elsewhere.

These seem like better titles to me:

• Blackberry (disambiguation)
• Blackberry (fruit)
• BlackBerry (mobile device)
• Santa Lucia (disambiguation)
• Santa Lucia (song)
• Santa Lucia (places)

-Ac44ck (talk) 07:39, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Most articles with multiple capitalisations leading to different articles have a hatnote to either a disambiguation, or the other article. — neuro 11:06, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Request for comment

Should all conjunctions and prepositions in the title of a published work be lowercased, regardless of their length? – Cyrus XIII 00:33, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Length of what? Length of the title or length of the conjunction? Can you give examples of situations where this issue would or would not arise based on length? -Ac44ck (talk) 02:58, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Good point, it would be the length of the conjunction (I have adjusted the initial RfC description to address that ambiguity). To provide further context:

When dealing with titles of published works (i.e. books, films, music albums, etc.) Misplaced Pages editors currently appear to favor uppercasing conjunctions of five letters and longer (like "over" and "through"). Subsequently, such a five-letter-clause of sorts was added to this guideline as well as the style guide of several WikiProjects (i.e. Albums and Films). An editor recently challenged the rule here and on aforementioned other guides and since an omission of it, while subtle, would affect quite a lot of articles, I considered broad input to be appropriate.

Personally, I would favor to keep the clause, as it provides a more consistent typeface and is also not unheard of in professional style guides. Capitalizing such conjunctions as a principle has little bearing on matters of verifiability and neutrality and as such, this is, to me, a case where our rules should remain descriptive of what appears to be the most common approach among Misplaced Pages editors, rather than being top-down prescriptive. – Cyrus XIII 09:05, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't prepositions be addressed as well? I was taught to capitalize the first and last words of the title. All other words are capitalized except for "a", "an", "the", and conjunctions and prepositions of four letters or fewer. I'll see if I can turn up a source.

Examples

• The Bridge on the River Kwai
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (although "At" is a short preposition, it is the first word in the subtitle)
• A River Runs Through It ("Through" is a preposition greater than four letters)

Jim Dunning | talk 00:08, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree, this also concerns prepositions. And the example you list correspond with the way I've been formatting titles as well. – Cyrus XIII 09:56, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what is meant by a "(more) consistent typeface" — could you please elaborate, Cyrus XIII? While I agree that these capitalization issues will likely not have much bearing on matters of verifiability and neutrality, etc., why should the rules be descriptive? You present the case that determining capitalization based on length is "not unheard of in professional style guides" (and cite a book called The Copyeditor's Handbook) — how is the support of one (in my opinion) lesser-known book of any significance compared to the support of giants such as The Chicago Manual of Style or The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers? As noted above ...

My copy of The Chicago Manual of Style (14th ed.) notes in 7.127 (pp.282–283):

Articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, for, nor), and prepositions, regardless of length, are lowercased unless they are the first or last word of the title or subtitle.

(the bold is mine). My copy of MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (3rd ed.) notes in 2.5.1 (p.50):

Therefore, capitalize nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and subordinating conjunctions (although, if, because), but not articles (a, an, the), prepositions (e.g., in, to, of, between) ...

notice that one of their examples is a seven-letter preposition. Alan smithee (talk) 04:03, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

"More consistent" in the sense that the obvious distinction between (grammatically) important and less important words is complemented by one that basically goes like "long words get capitalized, short words don't". Such an amendment is obviously based on aesthetics, but the same may be said about the notion of rendering titles differently than regular prose in the first place. And there are obviously style guides and high-profile publications that opt for that approach (the New York Times for example, as a quick search of the word "through" in the nytimes.com archive shows).

Regarding descriptivism vs. prescriptivism: Our policies and guidelines are shaped by community consensus - their purpose is merely to describe what happens down in the trenches and a (prescriptive) top-to-bottom approach is only necessary when the few basic principles of Misplaced Pages are concerned, as these, naturally, have to remain non-negotiable. (Note that I'm more or less quoting an older talk page comment made by another, more experienced editor here. The related discussion turned out rather interesting, look it up when you have the time.) Hence I believe that what happened in the trenches in this particular case is that Misplaced Pages editors, by and large, found the approach to capitalize long prepositions and conjunctions more appealing and subsequently, it was added to this and various other pages of our own Manual of Style. We always have and certainly will be looking at the style guides you quoted, for inspiration, but if the Misplaced Pages community deems an approach that differs from these manuals appropriate for its own work, then this is how it goes down. – Cyrus XIII 12:26, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I still don't see the "long words get capitalized, short words don't" approach as "more consistent" in any sense, though I certainly concur that at least one (seemingly minor) style guide and one of the world's most respected newspapers may use that approach (for prepositions). Of course, Misplaced Pages is not a newspaper.

For what it's worth, I'm surprised Occam's razor hasn't been mentioned — adding the length criterion seems like unnecessary complication.

It seems, however, that your primary point is that what is "right" in some abstract (perhaps even philosophical) sense is not what is relevant, but what is relevant is what the Misplaced Pages community as a whole wants. (If I'm mistaken, and that's not essentially your primary point, please correct me.) I'm still pretty new to Misplaced Pages, so clearing this up is very helpful — thank you.

Now how do we know what the Misplaced Pages community as a whole wants?

The only discussion that I've seen beyond the two of us is Ac44ck's short clarification, Jim Dunning's short comment, and a limited discussion under Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(capitalization)#Prepositions_five_letters_or_longer_within_film_titles — these few Wikipedians presumably make up only a small fraction of the Misplaced Pages community. Alan smithee (talk) 03:18, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

What is the next step, now that RFC bot has removed the RFC? Alan smithee (talk) 18:25, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

First word nominal prefixes

Question: what is the appropriate capitalization if the first word of the article title is a nominal prefix that is ususally not capitalised?

For example, without capitals: de Casteljau's algorithm, de Broglie hypothesis, de Gaulle family, de Havilland Albatross

With capitals: Von Neumann entropy, Van der Waals force, De Boor's algorithm, De Rham cohomology, Von Mises–Fisher distribution

My view would be that since the first word of an article title is like the first word of a sentence, which is capitalised, so capitalization of the prefix is correct. Sesshomaru (talk · contribs) on the other hand thinks lower case (which may be how such things are sometimes indexed at the back of books?)

Either way, definitive guidance would be appreciated; and perhaps should be added to the guidelines? Jheald (talk) 19:51, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Uh, my name is User:Sesshomaru. The lord part is just an addition in my signature. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 19:53, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay. Jheald (talk) 19:56, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

See also: articles starting with De, articles starting with Von. Jheald (talk) 11:45, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

+ some discussion at Talk:de Havilland. Jheald (talk) 11:56, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Any thoughts from anybody? Jheald (talk) 10:25, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Capitalization of contractions of long conjunctions/prepositions?

I know that prepositions and conjunctions under five letters aren't capitalized in works like books or movies. However, would contractions of these long words not be capitalized? For example, should No Life 'Til Leather be changed to No Life 'til Leather? (until is the preposition in this case, and now it's shortened to 'til which is shorter than five letters) Another example is a song on Lou Gramm's album Ready or Not, a song called "Arrow Thru Your Heart". Since the preposition "through" is now shortened to the four-letter "thru", should it be spelled "Arrow thru Your Heart"? Thanks for your input. Xnux the Echidna 02:16, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Capitalization of unusual prepositions

See here for relevant discussion; the issue being brought up is whether or not to make it a guideline to capitalize unusual prepositions including "like", "than", "upon", etc. Under the current consensus that prepositions under five letters shouldn't be capitalized, these unusual prepositions would not be capitalized (so we would have to rename many articles, such as "Smells like Teen Spirit", "Just like Heaven", Better than Ezra, and a whole lot of Once upon a Time articles). Here is a somewhat comprehensive list of four-letter-or-smaller prepositions (taken from here):

Here are a lot of words that can be used as prepositions:

The main argument against not capitalizing some of these prepositions is that the media (and often the artists themselves) almost always capitalizes them (see the external sources and/or cover art for Bridge over Troubled Water, "She's out of My Life", "More than a Feeling", "Sweet Child o' Mine", and Long Road out of Eden). The argument against this particular point is that the media's capitalization rules are inconsistent (for example, the media rarely capitalizes "into" or "with", but almost always capitalizes "like" or "than") and Misplaced Pages capitalization rules should be more consistent.

Another point is that many of these prepositions are frequently used as subordinating conjunctions (such as "like" or "than"), which shouldn't be capitalized according to WP:CAPS. Under those rules, "like" would be capitalized in "Drop It Like It's Hot" but not in "Smells like Teen Spirit", which would undoubtedly create many disputes in the future because these parts of speech look so similar. What should would do regarding this? (keep in mind The Chicago Manual of Style says never to capitalize the word "as" when used as either a preposition or conjunction due to common practice).

Whatever is decided, I think that in addition to adding a section to WP:CAPS about this, we should create a page of words that shouldn't be capitalized (noting that there are exceptions). -Xnux the Echidna 15:00, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Template titles

I understand the following to apply to articles, but does it also apply to templates?

"For page titles, always use lowercase after the first word, and do not capitalize second and subsequent words, unless: the title is a proper noun."

Most template titles I have seen on Misplaced Pages appear to follow this convention, but a few do not. Should we aggressively move the templates with names that violate the convention to names that comply? --Teratornis (talk) 23:47, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I would support this as a useful guideline. I don't like the word "aggressive" just a careful moving of templates where it can be done easily. Rich Farmbrough, 23:07 20 August 2008 (GMT).

"Art Nouveau" dispute

"Art Nouveau is how the name of a certain art movement is usually written in English" – says who? Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 11th ed. does not even provide the capitalized variant as an option (same goes for "art moderne", "art deco", "expressionism", etc.) Neither do the Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary (a strong indication that the Oxford English Dictionary will follow suit; I can't seem to locate my OED CD-ROM right this moment) , Dictionary.com, American Heritage Dictionary, Online Etymology Dictionary, WordNet, etc. A lot of individuals capitalize this (e.g. at eBay auctions, etc.), but that's not relevant; a lot of people write "fresh Orange's $1 a pound", too. Some works specifically about art do like to capitalize it, but even skimming them you can see that they like to capitalize everything about art that they feel they can get away with capitalizing; it isn't standard English usage. I believe this example should be removed from this passage, as misleading, and a different one found, since the statement that it is "usually" capitalized in English is patently false. — SMcCandlish ‹(-¿-)› 15:41, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Subtitles

I knew prepositions and articles should be capitalized if they come after:

• -
• :
• . and ...
• "" and «»

Is this correct? And what about the words after a "(" (for example "Break on Through (To the other side)" or "Break on Through (to the other side)") and after a ")" (I don't know an example, I can invent, "(Bla bla) On My Face" or "(Bla bla) on My Face"). --Superchilum 08:58, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure if it is correct in your context, but general English usage would say that the next word should not need to be capitalised (think about having a sentence, half way through the sentence parentheses come in, and then after them the sentence finishes). As for after quotations, I would say that this does indeed generally apply to Misplaced Pages, but not in a lot of other situations. As for the colon, ellipsis and hyphen, I can only say that I would have thought that you shouldn't in general capitalise after those if they are within a sentence. As for capitalisation where parentheses are coming at the end of the title, I would have imagined normal song capitalisation rules would apply (ie. don't capitalise words that are prepositions or articles, iirc). Please do correct me if I am wrong, I am pretty sure this is right, but not completely. — neuro 10:19, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Capitalising "that"

Help! I was hoping someone could suggest whether the word "that" in the short story title "The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World (short story)" should be upper or lower case. I can't work out the grammatical sense in which the word is being used and whether it falls into one of the categories for which lower case is appropriate. Thanks. GDallimore (Talk) 13:02, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

How does it appear on the cover and/or frontispiece of the book as such? That, I'd think, would be the final arbiter of this; as for grammatical sense I think - ? - it's a "relative conjunction" or something like that; and should be uncapitalized just like "of" and "the"....unless the publication itself capitalizes all or any of those....Skookum1 (talk) 17:30, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Where is this rule to follow the capitalisation of the work itself? I can't find it in policy or guidelines. To answer the question, I believe in this case, that is a pronoun, and should be capitalised. I'm not aware of any cases when that would not be capitalised. --Rogerb67 (talk) 22:36, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Articles about letters

A, B, C, etc. Should the article name be capitalized (A, B, C) or not (a, b, c)? ... discospinster _talk 21:57, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

My thinking would be capitalized. Not really seeing any reason why they'd be in lowercase. GlassCobra 22:08, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Case sensitivity and searching

Is this section now obsolete? I've just entered "Oborniki county" and pressed Go, and got straight to Oborniki County without any redirect (which doesn't happen according to the guideline). The software has probably been improved since this was written.--Kotniski (talk) 11:30, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Oops, sorry, didn't read it carefully enough. But how about List of national parks of Poland, then, which I've just got to by entering all lower case. I'm taking this section out (it doesn't have much to do with naming conventions anyway) until someone can convince me that it makes any sense. --Kotniski (talk) 12:11, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

All right, I've rewritten the section according to what appears to be the current status quo. Please correct me if anything's still wrong.--Kotniski (talk) 12:31, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

PC LOAD LETTER

What should be the title of the article currently at PC Load Letter? EAE (Holla!) 20:40, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Improper capitalization of common nouns

I've noticed that some people insist on this, such as putting the article on U.S. national monuments at National Monument (United States), as if it were the proper name of a single thing like the National Mall. I move it to the correct lowercase title at national monument (United States), but it gets moved back. Although it should be obvious as a basic rule of English, can we get an explicit statement here that capitalization of common nouns is incorrect, so that it (and articles like it) will stay where they belong?  –radiojon (talk) 20:26, 12 May 2009 (UTC)