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Where did the sentence case rule come from?
This is starting to get messy and people are beginning to bristle, so I'm calling time out. Indications from the conversation are twofold: firstly, that documenting the reasons behind the existing rule can only be a good thing. The new Misplaced Pages talk:Titling in sentence case would be a good place do to that until some adjunct of the MOS for historical documentation can either be found or created. Secondly, there's clearly no consensus for what would be a radical change to existing practice.As a side note, Xkcdreader is contradicting herself by stating thatNo proposal was made, when this section begins with
TITLES that represent names should be...which is a proposal. There's no reason why she can't propose that as an RfC (regardless of any likely outcome), but for her to continue pushing for it here while claiming only to be having "a discussion" is verging on the disingenuous. In summary, time to split this up into better-defined discussions. — Hex (❝?!❞) 14:37, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
For example: https://www.google.com/search?q=black+bear+animal and http://www.editage.co.kr/resources/pdf/case.pdf
Misplaced Pages is the only site I can find that does not capitalize bear in Black bear. The MOS rules are arbitrary and poorly formed. Instead of giving up and walking away, we should be working on widespread reform to be more consistent with the rest of the English speaking world.
TITLES that represent names should be written with every word capitalized per standard English "Title Case"
Why does wikipedia come up with its own convention to use sentence case, where title case is more appropriate? Common English animal names should be capitalized. I am starting to get the impression that the MOS was written by a small faction of people and enforced around wikipedia without gaining site wide consensus. The bird people seem to be one of the few that fought back. Xkcdreader (talk) 09:00, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- "Bear" is not a proper noun, so should not be capitalised. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:05, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- From the Chicago Manual of Style: "Chicago recommends capitalizing only proper nouns and adjectives, as in the following examples, which conform to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. Dutchman's-breeches, mayapple, jack-in-the-pulpit, rhesus monkey, Rocky Mountain sheep, Cooper's hawk." --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:13, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- That is for SENTENCES not titles. You are misapplying the rule. Xkcdreader (talk) 09:17, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- No I'm not - we use sentence case for article titles. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:22, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- American black bear is the TITLE of an article. It should be written in TITLE CASE not SENTENCE CASE. Letter_case#Headings_and_publication_titles Xkcdreader (talk) 09:26, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- It's an article title, but it's not the title of a bear. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:30, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- American black bear is the TITLE of an article. It should be written in TITLE CASE not SENTENCE CASE. Letter_case#Headings_and_publication_titles Xkcdreader (talk) 09:26, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Per WP:AT: "Use lower case, except for proper names". --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:25, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Can you please stop citing the rules you wrote? I can see the way you currently do things, and it doesn't make it right. Xkcdreader (talk) 09:26, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- I didn't write them. They've been here a long time. Please stop trying to force your view on Misplaced Pages. Just because you don't like the way things are done, does not make them wrong. Please stop trying to disrupt Misplaced Pages like this. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:27, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Oxford Manual of Style" (2002) suggests capitalizing "the first word and all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs, but generally not articles, conjunctions and short prepositions." I am not trying to disrupt wikipedia, you constantly having a rebuttal to everything I say is equally, if not more, disruptive. Xkcdreader (talk) 09:29, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- I didn't write them. They've been here a long time. Please stop trying to force your view on Misplaced Pages. Just because you don't like the way things are done, does not make them wrong. Please stop trying to disrupt Misplaced Pages like this. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:27, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Can you please stop citing the rules you wrote? I can see the way you currently do things, and it doesn't make it right. Xkcdreader (talk) 09:26, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- No I'm not - we use sentence case for article titles. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:22, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- That is for SENTENCES not titles. You are misapplying the rule. Xkcdreader (talk) 09:17, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
I'll concede being wrong on this one. Back to proper nouns, let's move along. I still think if the title itself is a singular noun, using sentence case makes no sense. Newspapers and Science journals use sentence case because their titles are USUALLY sentence fragments. "American black bear" is a noun phrase not a sentence fragment, and sentence case doesn't make all that much sense. All you have done is appealed to tradition, which is not HELPFUL. I wouldn't have such a problem with you if you gave reasons WHY rules existed, instead of just throwing a list of rules and walking away. If you want to reduce future problems, maybe try justifying why the rules the way they are when people question them. Xkcdreader (talk) 09:31, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
Under further investigation, the Chicago Manual of Style that keeps being cited suggests TITLE CASE for article titles, as does the The Associated Press Stylebook. Unless someone can explain why we are using sentence case for noun phrases, I think it should be changed REGUARDLESS of how long it has been that way. Appeal to tradition http://grammar.about.com/od/grammarfaq/f/capitalstitle.htm Xkcdreader (talk) 09:45, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- So now you think that our use of sentence case for article titles, as well as our whole MoS is wrong? I'm not sure why you continue to contribute seeing as you disagree with nearly all the guidelines. Most editors, whilst they may question them, do seem to manage to come round to the reasoning behind the guidelines after a while, without trying to change them to fit their view. The article you link to shows that there are different methods. We use sentence case. Deal with it. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:52, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Maybe I would come around quicker if you could explain why rules are the way they are instead of just regurgitating them. Oxford, Chicago, MLA, and AP Stylebook all advocate TITLE CASE. Have you seen The Time Machine? The Eloy still hide underground when they hear sirens, even though they don't know what the sound means? You have yet to explain why you use sentence case for titles that are nouns. If you don't feel like explaining why, maybe sit back and let someone more helpful respond to me. You are really good at restating rules when I ask for justification of the rules. Xkcdreader (talk) 09:45, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Re-read your opening entry to this section. Do you think or research before you write? You just assert that you are right and Misplaced Pages is wrong at every turn, and assume that the guidelines are poorly though out. Of course you're going to put peoples backs up. Maybe the answers you are looking for could be found in the archives. --Rob Sinden (talk) 10:07, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Did you read the title of this section before you posted in it? I'll take it you can't explain why wikipedia uses sentence case for noun titles? And can you just back off and let someone else talk? I've had this problem with you since I met you. You don't need to be the first to respond to everything I say. Can we stick to the topic instead of talking about each other? Why not just let someone else talk to me if it is so frustrating for you? If you're not going to be helpful and link to an answer, why bother? Nothing you said in the last response was constructive. Xkcdreader (talk) 10:14, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Yes - maybe I do react too quickly to your incendiary posts. It's hard not to bite when someone posts "The MOS rules are arbitrary and poorly formed" --Rob Sinden (talk) 10:21, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Did you read the title of this section before you posted in it? I'll take it you can't explain why wikipedia uses sentence case for noun titles? And can you just back off and let someone else talk? I've had this problem with you since I met you. You don't need to be the first to respond to everything I say. Can we stick to the topic instead of talking about each other? Why not just let someone else talk to me if it is so frustrating for you? If you're not going to be helpful and link to an answer, why bother? Nothing you said in the last response was constructive. Xkcdreader (talk) 10:14, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Re-read your opening entry to this section. Do you think or research before you write? You just assert that you are right and Misplaced Pages is wrong at every turn, and assume that the guidelines are poorly though out. Of course you're going to put peoples backs up. Maybe the answers you are looking for could be found in the archives. --Rob Sinden (talk) 10:07, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Maybe I would come around quicker if you could explain why rules are the way they are instead of just regurgitating them. Oxford, Chicago, MLA, and AP Stylebook all advocate TITLE CASE. Have you seen The Time Machine? The Eloy still hide underground when they hear sirens, even though they don't know what the sound means? You have yet to explain why you use sentence case for titles that are nouns. If you don't feel like explaining why, maybe sit back and let someone more helpful respond to me. You are really good at restating rules when I ask for justification of the rules. Xkcdreader (talk) 09:45, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
I recommend that this whole section be moved to Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style, particularly if it is to continue. Preferably without the personal attacks. —Frungi (talk) 11:35, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- It actually relates to WP:TITLEFORMAT, not the MOS, despite X's use of MOS. --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:48, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Hey i did something right, sort of. Xkcdreader (talk)
Some written publications display their articles' titles in title case. Others use sentence case. Both are valid house styles.
The English Misplaced Pages's decision to use sentence case was made long before I'd heard of the project (and I haven't investigated the reasoning behind it), but I do know that sentence case conveys which words/phrases are intrinsically capitalized (a semantic distinction absent from title case). —David Levy 12:18, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- I believe it's always been done this way, and probably been tradition so long, no one has thought to question it. You are right it is a "valid" choice. Sentence case is used by newspapers and science journals because their titles act as sentence fragments. "American black bear cured of aids like disease" or "Baseball player hit in head with ball, likely admitted to heaven and baseball hall of fame." It doesn't make nearly as much sense to use sentence case for a title that is a simple noun phrase like "American Black Bear." Like I said above, Oxford, Chicago, MLA, and AP Stylebook all advocate TITLE CASE for this scenario. You tend to see Sentence Case in places like The Economist and Nature. My suspicion is that Misplaced Pages erroneously emulated newspapers without analyzing the nuances and distinctions between news (sentence like) and encyclopedia titles. Xkcdreader (talk) 12:35, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Bear in mind that this is an encyclopedia, and as such the article titles are supposed to be descriptive of the subject, and not attention-grabbing headline type titles. In that respect it makes more sense to use sentence case. --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:41, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Incidentally, the Encyclopædia Britannica doesn't even use the initial capital for "black bear". --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:10, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
We have been using Sentence Case since at least 2006 (which was when I first started to edit). So any discussion that explained why we chose to do so (and chose not to use Title Case) would have taken place before that date. Had I been around when the discussion took place, I would have suggested using Title Case for noun titles ("Black Bear", "Rocky Mountains", "Boston Massacre", etc.), and Sentence Case for descriptive titles ("History of slavery", "Development of the urinary and reproductive organs", etc.}
It is important to remember that our "rules" are made by consensus, and that consensus can change over time... a decision made six years ago can be revisited now, to see if the Misplaced Pages community still agrees with it. And if the community no longer agrees with it... we can and should change the "rules".
That said, I have no idea whether the consensus on Sentence Case vs. Title Case has changed or not (I would suggest starting a discussion at WP:Village pump to find out). However... if consensus has changed, it will require a LOT of work to implement . Thousands of articles will have to be retitled. It may not be worth the effort. Blueboar (talk) 12:54, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- It looks as if we have almost the exact same views here as well. Noun titles and Descriptive titles should be treated as two different discussions. It may not seem to be worth the effort, but there also seems to be a huge effort coming from the MOS to retitle a large portion of WP already. If the effort is going to be put in to rename all these pages, the discussion of the rules should be reopened, before we commit to the wrong rabbit hole. If it really is 7 years old, I consider that even more reason to talk about the rule. As I read more about this issue, I see it has already gone to arbitration once. The MOS/uniformity push is causing problems. A lot of problems. Xkcdreader (talk) 13:06, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- And where, exactly, are these guidelines causing "a lot of problems", and where is the "huge effort" to retitle per MOS? A link to the arbitration could be useful if you can provide. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:12, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Also, we should be internally consistent. We shouldn't be using title case for some articles (unless of course it is a "title"), and sentence case for others. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:26, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Says you, and some other people. If the bird community uses one convention, and the bear community uses a different convention that is an issue you have to deal with individually. You can't make a blanket rule and push it on all of them. That isn't how consensus works. Your preference for universal uniformity does not outweigh their preference for standardized convention within their field. Xkcdreader (talk) 13:32, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- I think you've got that a little backward. There is consensus for uniformity throughout Misplaced Pages, and this uniformity should be paramount. However, the "bird community" have got away with it by shouting loudly. Personally I can see no reason not to bring the bird naming convention back into line with the rest of Misplaced Pages as it's pure WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, but all the attempts have failed, and most of us have given up! --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:39, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Because credibility is a primary objective in the creation of any reference work, and because Misplaced Pages strives to become a leading (if not the leading) reference work in its genre, formality and an adherence to conventions widely used in the genre are critically important to credibility. Xkcdreader (talk) 13:45, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Yeah - the genre in question is reference work. Not birds. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:47, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- The majority of reference works about birds capitalize their names. Xkcdreader (talk) 13:48, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Misplaced Pages is an general encyclopedia, not a reference book about birds. Lets not make this about birds. It's a sensitive and contentious issue and will just muddy the issue. However, I believe you misinterpreted the guideline you quoted - we should stick to conventions widely used in reference work, i.e. other encyclopedia. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:51, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- If other sources make an exception for birds ... that would be a "convention widely used in reference work ie other encyclopedias." (and can you cut it out with the me forcing my views on others rhetoric. Ive kept this to the talk page, and have not made a SINGLE edit to any of the articles themselves. Im trying to have a discussion not an edit war.) Xkcdreader (talk) 13:59, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- The point here is that it is widely accepted that we should be internally consistent. The bird thing is an anomaly, and we shouldn't be using it as an example. (And what edit war? I don't see one...) --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:05, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- I am going to assume youre not being purposely obtuse. I asked you to cut out the "disruptive/forcing my views" rhetoric. If that were the case I would be editing policy itself and not talking about it on talk pages. I'm NOT causing an edit war, which was my point. Xkcdreader (talk) 14:09, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- You do have a habit of calling the guidelines "wrong" just because you don't like them. That isn't constructive, and it makes it look like you are being disruptive by rubbing everyone up the wrong way. The guidelines aren't wrong, just different to what you would like to see. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:19, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- I am going to assume youre not being purposely obtuse. I asked you to cut out the "disruptive/forcing my views" rhetoric. If that were the case I would be editing policy itself and not talking about it on talk pages. I'm NOT causing an edit war, which was my point. Xkcdreader (talk) 14:09, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- The point here is that it is widely accepted that we should be internally consistent. The bird thing is an anomaly, and we shouldn't be using it as an example. (And what edit war? I don't see one...) --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:05, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- If other sources make an exception for birds ... that would be a "convention widely used in reference work ie other encyclopedias." (and can you cut it out with the me forcing my views on others rhetoric. Ive kept this to the talk page, and have not made a SINGLE edit to any of the articles themselves. Im trying to have a discussion not an edit war.) Xkcdreader (talk) 13:59, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Misplaced Pages is an general encyclopedia, not a reference book about birds. Lets not make this about birds. It's a sensitive and contentious issue and will just muddy the issue. However, I believe you misinterpreted the guideline you quoted - we should stick to conventions widely used in reference work, i.e. other encyclopedia. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:51, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- The majority of reference works about birds capitalize their names. Xkcdreader (talk) 13:48, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Yeah - the genre in question is reference work. Not birds. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:47, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Because credibility is a primary objective in the creation of any reference work, and because Misplaced Pages strives to become a leading (if not the leading) reference work in its genre, formality and an adherence to conventions widely used in the genre are critically important to credibility. Xkcdreader (talk) 13:45, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- I think you've got that a little backward. There is consensus for uniformity throughout Misplaced Pages, and this uniformity should be paramount. However, the "bird community" have got away with it by shouting loudly. Personally I can see no reason not to bring the bird naming convention back into line with the rest of Misplaced Pages as it's pure WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, but all the attempts have failed, and most of us have given up! --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:39, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Says you, and some other people. If the bird community uses one convention, and the bear community uses a different convention that is an issue you have to deal with individually. You can't make a blanket rule and push it on all of them. That isn't how consensus works. Your preference for universal uniformity does not outweigh their preference for standardized convention within their field. Xkcdreader (talk) 13:32, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Also, we should be internally consistent. We shouldn't be using title case for some articles (unless of course it is a "title"), and sentence case for others. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:26, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- What "problem" is caused by our use of sentence case for article titles and section headings? What benefit(s) would a switch to title case (or a partial switch, which would make our conventions more complicated and more likely to be misunderstood) provide?
- I noted an advantage of sentence case above. Another is that capitalization (or the absence thereof) sometimes serves as disambiguation (e.g. Red meat and Red Meat). Presumably, we'd need to identify these cases, determine whether a primary topic exists, append parenthetical qualifiers to one/both/all titles, and update the affected internal links (with no control over the external links suddenly leading to the wrong articles). For what benefit(s)? —David Levy 13:23, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- The problem is over-enforcement of the MOS not necessarily the guidelines themselves. The overly complicated guidelines are causing enforcement to turn into insane debates. http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Article_titles_and_capitalisation The idea of consensus is being ignored in favor of blanket enforcement of uniformity. That is a problem. My goal here is to make the rules simpler and make conclusions easier to reach without consulting 40 documents to see which way it should be capitalized. From my point of view the MOS needs to be weakened, so places like Birds can use their own agreed upon convention, and proper nouns reflect their (standardized) English orthography. A couple simple rule changes drastically reduce the debate over which title is correct. Maybe it should be "black bear" and "red meat" (Rob briefly mentioned Britannica before deleting his comment.) Xkcdreader (talk) 13:30, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Sorry, yeah, I moved it, as I thought it more appropriate elsewhere, but to repeat it, the Encyclopædia Britannica doesn't even use the initial capital for "black bear". --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:43, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- They don't use sentence case either. Is the only reason for sentence case the technical restriction? if so, that is sort of embarrassing. Xkcdreader (talk) 13:47, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Sorry, yeah, I moved it, as I thought it more appropriate elsewhere, but to repeat it, the Encyclopædia Britannica doesn't even use the initial capital for "black bear". --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:43, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- The problem is over-enforcement of the MOS not necessarily the guidelines themselves. The overly complicated guidelines are causing enforcement to turn into insane debates. http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Article_titles_and_capitalisation The idea of consensus is being ignored in favor of blanket enforcement of uniformity. That is a problem. My goal here is to make the rules simpler and make conclusions easier to reach without consulting 40 documents to see which way it should be capitalized. From my point of view the MOS needs to be weakened, so places like Birds can use their own agreed upon convention, and proper nouns reflect their (standardized) English orthography. A couple simple rule changes drastically reduce the debate over which title is correct. Maybe it should be "black bear" and "red meat" (Rob briefly mentioned Britannica before deleting his comment.) Xkcdreader (talk) 13:30, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- And where, exactly, are these guidelines causing "a lot of problems", and where is the "huge effort" to retitle per MOS? A link to the arbitration could be useful if you can provide. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:12, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- I've always assumed that preferring sentence case for titles, which is slightly unusual, was an arbitrary choice. I don't see a problem with that, not seeing a down side to it. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:25, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Sentence case in titles is far superior to title case because it retains the important signalling function of upper-case letters in normal usage. It was only because of the limitations of typewriters during the pre-computer 20th century that capping initials became the standard way of highlighting titles (you could use caps or underline—that's all). Computers have brought a wealth of highlighting devices; This Makes The Mania For Capping Even The Littlest Words In Headlines By The New York Times Et Al. Very Puzzling. WP's decision to use normal case was an early and excellent decision. It makes our titles easier to read, avoids the ugly, obstructive alphabet soup effect, and above all enables functional caps to mean something in titles. Tony (talk) 13:47, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- This section has gotten so long already that points are already being ignored and repeated. You are ignoring the difference between "Title Case for noun titles ("Black Bear", "Rocky Mountains", "Boston Massacre", etc.), and Sentence Case for descriptive titles ("History of slavery", "Development of the urinary and reproductive organs", etc.}" We have already discussed this, and it seems everyone agrees that Sentence case should be used for sentence fragments. Xkcdreader (talk) 13:51, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Which would lead to internal inconsistency and should be avoided. As David points out above "a partial switch would make our conventions more complicated and more likely to be misunderstood". --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:52, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- What's wrong with internal inconsistency? Blueboar (talk) 14:23, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- It's unprofessional and causes confusion. You need to be consistent so that both editors and readers who are familiar with the conventions know best how to find / create articles. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:28, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- This claim is bollocks imho. 1) redirects exist 2) nobody is actually having trouble finding articles. Besides if we change the convention so noun phrases are all caps or no caps, editors should become familiar with the convention change. No problems are caused. It isnt unprofessional nor does it cause confusion. Nobody outside of MOS enforcers are confused by capital bird articles. Xkcdreader (talk) 14:31, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Please stop this assumption that I am some kind of "MOS enforcer". Yes, I might be a stickler for the rules some times, and I don't believe in changing guidelines without a compelling argument and good reason to do so. The guidelines we have in this matter are, to my mind sufficient, and we shouldn't be changing them on a whim, just because an editor doesn't like them. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". You seem to be saying that we should either use no caps or all caps (title case) for "noun phrases". If you're advocating either, why not throw your hat in the ring with sentence case too? What is so wrong with the sentence case that we are currently using? As we have demonstrated, it is widely in use elsewhere. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:42, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- I think you are an enforcer because you refuse to let exceptions to guidelines occur. "As we have demonstrated, it is widely in use elsewhere." Except you have not demonstrated it is used WIDELY elsewhere, you came up with a couple examples of Black bear. The vast majority of sources are black bear followed by Black Bear. http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=black+bear%2CBlack+bear%2CBlack+Bear&year_start=1740&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share= Xkcdreader (talk) 14:51, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- So, just to be clear, it's not good etiquette to call people names, or to call good guidelines "wrong". And I am happy to allow exceptions if there is overwhelming support and good reason to do so. Doesn't mean I won't argue against them if I disagree. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:00, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- I think you are an enforcer because you refuse to let exceptions to guidelines occur. "As we have demonstrated, it is widely in use elsewhere." Except you have not demonstrated it is used WIDELY elsewhere, you came up with a couple examples of Black bear. The vast majority of sources are black bear followed by Black Bear. http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=black+bear%2CBlack+bear%2CBlack+Bear&year_start=1740&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share= Xkcdreader (talk) 14:51, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- I noted some problems that would be caused. You replied without addressing them.
- The bird issue is a red herring (my apologies for tossing a fish into the mix). It isn't confined to article titles or directly impacted by the style convention under discussion. The styling "American Goldfinch" appears throughout the article's prose because the capitalization of "Goldfinch" has been deemed an intrinsic element of the bird's name (a distinction that sentence case preserves, as noted above). Whether that practice is justified or not, our use of sentence case doesn't affect it. Only the convention that you advocate would result in capitalization changes within titles (and resultant inconsistency with the articles' prose). —David Levy 14:53, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Please stop this assumption that I am some kind of "MOS enforcer". Yes, I might be a stickler for the rules some times, and I don't believe in changing guidelines without a compelling argument and good reason to do so. The guidelines we have in this matter are, to my mind sufficient, and we shouldn't be changing them on a whim, just because an editor doesn't like them. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". You seem to be saying that we should either use no caps or all caps (title case) for "noun phrases". If you're advocating either, why not throw your hat in the ring with sentence case too? What is so wrong with the sentence case that we are currently using? As we have demonstrated, it is widely in use elsewhere. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:42, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- This claim is bollocks imho. 1) redirects exist 2) nobody is actually having trouble finding articles. Besides if we change the convention so noun phrases are all caps or no caps, editors should become familiar with the convention change. No problems are caused. It isnt unprofessional nor does it cause confusion. Nobody outside of MOS enforcers are confused by capital bird articles. Xkcdreader (talk) 14:31, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- It's unprofessional and causes confusion. You need to be consistent so that both editors and readers who are familiar with the conventions know best how to find / create articles. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:28, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- What's wrong with internal inconsistency? Blueboar (talk) 14:23, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Which would lead to internal inconsistency and should be avoided. As David points out above "a partial switch would make our conventions more complicated and more likely to be misunderstood". --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:52, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- This section has gotten so long already that points are already being ignored and repeated. You are ignoring the difference between "Title Case for noun titles ("Black Bear", "Rocky Mountains", "Boston Massacre", etc.), and Sentence Case for descriptive titles ("History of slavery", "Development of the urinary and reproductive organs", etc.}" We have already discussed this, and it seems everyone agrees that Sentence case should be used for sentence fragments. Xkcdreader (talk) 13:51, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Sentence case in titles is far superior to title case because it retains the important signalling function of upper-case letters in normal usage. It was only because of the limitations of typewriters during the pre-computer 20th century that capping initials became the standard way of highlighting titles (you could use caps or underline—that's all). Computers have brought a wealth of highlighting devices; This Makes The Mania For Capping Even The Littlest Words In Headlines By The New York Times Et Al. Very Puzzling. WP's decision to use normal case was an early and excellent decision. It makes our titles easier to read, avoids the ugly, obstructive alphabet soup effect, and above all enables functional caps to mean something in titles. Tony (talk) 13:47, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
FYI... Just so we can have accurate background information, I am trying to track down the original discussions that resulted in our "rule" to use Sentence Case (assuming it wasn't an arbitrary decision) I have not yet found them with a quick look through the archives at MOS (it is possible that the discussions were held somewhere else)... so I have asked for help (at the VPP) to locate them. I will let you know if I find them. Blueboar (talk) 14:06, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Blueboar, since it will make no difference, I don't know why you're bothering to track it down. I find it extraordinary that you're asking "what's wrong with internal inconsistency" on a website that takes itself seriously. Tony (talk) 14:36, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Blueboar and I are making the point that reflecting REALITY should be given precedence over INTERNAL consistency. We should reflect real world usage and standardization. That is what it means to be a credible encyclopedia. Xkcdreader (talk) 14:54, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Whether we should use the styling "black bear" or "Black Bear" has absolutely no bearing (no pun intended) on the convention under discussion. If we decide on "Black Bear", that's what will appear in our articles' titles and prose. Sentence case doesn't remove intrinsic capitalization. —David Levy 15:00, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Why does the title have to match the prose? Do you really think people would be confused if the title was "Black Bear" and the article referred to it as a "black bear." There is no reason the style of a title must match the usage in the article itself. I would also be fine discussing lowercasing non proper nouns. red meat, black bear. Then there should be exceptions in commonname for things like Birds where a standards organization has come up with a widely agreed upon naming convention. If you didn't notice, the point of this sections was exploratory, I asked WHY the rule was the way it was. Everyone enforcing the rule couldn't explain why it existed in its current form. That is not good. That's how Eloi die. Xkcdreader (talk) 15:32, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- A simple "can anyone point me to the discussion where it was decided we use sentence case" would have been exploratory. Instead, in your very first entry, you claimed that "the MOS rules are arbitrary and poorly formed", that "title case is more appropriate" and that "the MOS was written by a small faction of people and enforced around wikipedia without gaining site wide consensus" without backing it up. That's not exploratory, as it seeks to court controversy. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:44, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Then why not ignore it and not feed the controversy? And if you read the links below, the decision was fairly arbitrary and mostly made for reasons that are completely irrelevant now. In that sense I was right. Xkcdreader (talk) 15:47, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- The end does not justify the means. Winding other editors up and openly criticising guidelines without doing your homework on the off-chance you might be right isn't the way to behave. Besides, I don't have time to go through all the previous conversations to see why we do it, nor do I really care. It works as it is, it's not a style guideline we invented, and there's no compelling reason to change. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:50, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Look, if you think I'm causing controversy, don't feed it. If you don't have time then I'm confused as to why you are participating in the conversation in the first place. The question was why, not please argue with xkcdreader. I contend it was a style guideline that was invented here. From my reading of the material, it is largely a side effect of technical aspects, which IMHO is a silly reason to stick by it. PLEASE point me to the external style guidelines that advocate Sentence case for non proper noun titles. Newspapers and Journals use it for descriptive titles. There isn't exactly precedent for the way it is used here. It's fine if you don't want to change it. Xkcdreader (talk) 16:41, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- The end does not justify the means. Winding other editors up and openly criticising guidelines without doing your homework on the off-chance you might be right isn't the way to behave. Besides, I don't have time to go through all the previous conversations to see why we do it, nor do I really care. It works as it is, it's not a style guideline we invented, and there's no compelling reason to change. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:50, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Then why not ignore it and not feed the controversy? And if you read the links below, the decision was fairly arbitrary and mostly made for reasons that are completely irrelevant now. In that sense I was right. Xkcdreader (talk) 15:47, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
Why does the title have to match the prose?
- My point is that our use of sentence case for our article titles and section headings doesn't remove uppercase styling appearing in prose (so if we decide to include it in the names of birds, bears, plants or patio furniture, this policy won't interfere). You're conflating two largely unrelated issues.
There is no reason the style of a title must match the usage in the article itself.
- It isn't something that must occur, but benefits have been cited. I await your assessment thereof, as well as the problems that your proposed changes would cause. I also await an explanation of the benefit(s) that would arise (apart from consistency with your personal preference).
If you didn't notice, the point of this sections was exploratory, I asked WHY the rule was the way it was. Everyone enforcing the rule couldn't explain why it existed in its current form.
- We've cited advantages. You've ignored them. —David Levy 15:55, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- And what was the advantage of Sentence case over lower case for non proper noun titles? Xkcdreader (talk) 16:35, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- I was referring to sentence case's advantages over title case.
- As you noted, a technical restriction currently prevents us from beginning an article's title with a lowercase letter. I don't know what changing this would entail (and what problems it might cause), but I believe that it's theoretically possible (given the practices of some other wikis, such as Wiktionary). Whether this would constitute an improvement (let alone one justifying the effort) is debatable. —David Levy 16:57, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- And what was the advantage of Sentence case over lower case for non proper noun titles? Xkcdreader (talk) 16:35, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Just thought I’d chime in…
“If you didn't notice, the point of this sections was exploratory”
—not judging by your opening post. Your point seemed not to be “this is odd, why do we do it this way?”, but “this is undeniably WRONG and we need to change it!” accompanied by rhetorical questions. If you start off (and then continue) a discussion with entirely the wrong tone, you’re gonna get people confused and not responding the way you’d expected. —Frungi (talk) 17:31, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- A simple "can anyone point me to the discussion where it was decided we use sentence case" would have been exploratory. Instead, in your very first entry, you claimed that "the MOS rules are arbitrary and poorly formed", that "title case is more appropriate" and that "the MOS was written by a small faction of people and enforced around wikipedia without gaining site wide consensus" without backing it up. That's not exploratory, as it seeks to court controversy. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:44, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Why does the title have to match the prose? Do you really think people would be confused if the title was "Black Bear" and the article referred to it as a "black bear." There is no reason the style of a title must match the usage in the article itself. I would also be fine discussing lowercasing non proper nouns. red meat, black bear. Then there should be exceptions in commonname for things like Birds where a standards organization has come up with a widely agreed upon naming convention. If you didn't notice, the point of this sections was exploratory, I asked WHY the rule was the way it was. Everyone enforcing the rule couldn't explain why it existed in its current form. That is not good. That's how Eloi die. Xkcdreader (talk) 15:32, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Whether we should use the styling "black bear" or "Black Bear" has absolutely no bearing (no pun intended) on the convention under discussion. If we decide on "Black Bear", that's what will appear in our articles' titles and prose. Sentence case doesn't remove intrinsic capitalization. —David Levy 15:00, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Blueboar and I are making the point that reflecting REALITY should be given precedence over INTERNAL consistency. We should reflect real world usage and standardization. That is what it means to be a credible encyclopedia. Xkcdreader (talk) 14:54, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
Sentence case came about after we stopped using CamelCase (see Misplaced Pages:CamelCase and Misplaced Pages) in 2001. Start with Misplaced Pages:Article titles (6 November 2001) and Misplaced Pages:Canonicalization (5 October 2001). — Hex (❝?!❞) 14:59, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Interesting... thanks Hex. That explains a lot.
- It seems that the choice was originally between using CamelCase ("BlackBear" or "HistoryOfSlavery") and Sentence case ("Black bear" and "History of slavery"). I actually agree with our decision when faced with that choice ("Sentence case" is much better than "CamelCase"). The next question is whether we ever discussed the pros and cons between "Sentence case" and "Title Case"? Blueboar (talk) 17:30, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Also, it appears that case itself did not matter. "For instance: naming conventions, naming Conventions, Naming conventions, Naming Conventions ...will all link to the same page (which will be titled titled "Naming Conventions"). One could link to http.../naming_conventions or http.../naming_Conventions, etc." Xkcdreader (talk) 17:36, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- That only works if there are redirects in place. Otherwise case does matter in the links. older ≠ wiser 17:54, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Hence the use of past tense. =P He was quoting the “March 28, 2001 update” in this archived discussion. Apparently, the old software treated wikilinks as case-insensitive. —Frungi (talk) 18:24, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- That's nothing. You should have seen the problems we had before redirects were invented. — Hex (❝?!❞) 20:41, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- To cut to the point... We originally went with Sentence case due to limitations of the software that existed back in 2001... these limitations in the software limited our options when it came to titles. However, at least some of those original software related reasons why we went with Sentence case formatted titles no longer apply. For example, we now have piped links, which allow us to use different capitalization between the Title of an article and how it appears when linked in article text (and we can link without the need for a redirect)... something we could not do back in 2001. Changes in the software mean that, now, in 2013, we have more options as to how we are able to format our titles (options that we did not have when we created the sentence case "rule"). And given that we now have more options, perhaps it is time to revisit the "rule" and see whether it still has consensus or whether we should modify it. Blueboar (talk) 18:50, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- As this is a fundamental change, this would need participation on a Wiki-wide scale. I can see no compelling reason to make this change, and I doubt it would garner consensus, but of course, if anyone is willing to make a proposal with a compelling case for the change please ensure that it is made in the correct forum, so that it reaches the widest possible number of interested editors. --Rob Sinden (talk) 19:27, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Of course. No one has suggested making such a significant change without good discussion and wide consensus. Indeed, I am not even sure how I would vote if this came up in an RFC... I just wanted to make sure that we all understood the context of why we made the "Sentence case rule" in the first place, and at least consider the idea that this context might no longer be relevant, and the "rule" outdated. Blueboar (talk) 19:45, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- As this is a fundamental change, this would need participation on a Wiki-wide scale. I can see no compelling reason to make this change, and I doubt it would garner consensus, but of course, if anyone is willing to make a proposal with a compelling case for the change please ensure that it is made in the correct forum, so that it reaches the widest possible number of interested editors. --Rob Sinden (talk) 19:27, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Hence the use of past tense. =P He was quoting the “March 28, 2001 update” in this archived discussion. Apparently, the old software treated wikilinks as case-insensitive. —Frungi (talk) 18:24, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- That only works if there are redirects in place. Otherwise case does matter in the links. older ≠ wiser 17:54, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Also, it appears that case itself did not matter. "For instance: naming conventions, naming Conventions, Naming conventions, Naming Conventions ...will all link to the same page (which will be titled titled "Naming Conventions"). One could link to http.../naming_conventions or http.../naming_Conventions, etc." Xkcdreader (talk) 17:36, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Misplaced Pages still treats lowercase first letters (in links) as upper case right? Theoretically, would there be any consequence, besides loss of labor, to adding "lowercase title" to pages with non proper noun titles, such as "red meat" and "black bear"? Xkcdreader (talk) 00:46, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- The history of sentence case for Misplaced Pages titles is interesting to several of us and well worth documenting in an essay. As for changing this styling, I think it would create great confusion and trouble where there is virtually none. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:20, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
Move to close
I would move to close the foregoing discussion. All the arguments seem to have been raised, and I detect absolutely no consensus to change the status quo. Our sentence case appears to be a firmly embedded and supported house style. The counter-argumentation also seems to place a huge reliance on the exception/exemption claimed by the birds community for the vanity capitalisation of their subjects (although we know the point is moot because their arguments rely on them claiming specific names are proper nouns). Be reminded that although local consensus is essential in our participation model – and is all that is usually necessary – it can never supplant or trump general consensus. Anyone who disagrees that we should retain sentence case for our articles is free, subject to accepting that consensus doesn't change every month, to launch an RfC to try overturning the rule. I guess it's fair enough to revisit this after six years. IMHO, such an attempt likely to go down in flames bearing in mind the discussion we've had up to this point, but if it will prove the lone dissenting voice is actually Tonto ;-), then perhaps it's a price worth paying. -- Ohconfucius 02:01, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- The capitalization of the common names of species really has nothing to do with whether different case rules should be used for different kinds of title, which is what Xkcdreader seems to prefer. If the common name of a species forms an article title, then if it is fully capitalized in the text, it is in the title; if it is not fully capitalized in the text, then sentence case is used in the title. I'm sad to see the "birds issue" dragged up yet again. For the record only, Ohconfucius' account of the issue above is one-sided and the use of pejorative terms such as "vanity" wholly inappropriate. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:16, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- As you might recall, you and I have different views regading the capitalization of common names of species (and bird species in particular). I'm pleased to see that we're in agreement that the issue is irrelevant to the above discussion and needn't be dredged up here and now. —David Levy 13:33, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- The capitalization of the common names of species really has nothing to do with whether different case rules should be used for different kinds of title, which is what Xkcdreader seems to prefer. If the common name of a species forms an article title, then if it is fully capitalized in the text, it is in the title; if it is not fully capitalized in the text, then sentence case is used in the title. I'm sad to see the "birds issue" dragged up yet again. For the record only, Ohconfucius' account of the issue above is one-sided and the use of pejorative terms such as "vanity" wholly inappropriate. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:16, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- No proposal was made. If you don't want to see the discussion about where the rules came from and why they exist in there current form, don't look here. There is no reason to close this, talking about the rules isn't hurting anyone. As far as sentence case itself, it goes against nearly every style manual, unless in reference to descriptive titles. Xkcdreader (talk) 03:19, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- Can't you read???? The sub-section title says Move to close, and the opening sentence says "I would move to close the foregoing discussion". You're the only person pursuing this, AFAICT. So please put up or shut up. If you want to know the reason why, you should yourself be bothered to comb through the archives for the original rationale, or it will surely come out in the RfC discussion. -- Ohconfucius 03:24, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- It's fairly evident you have not read the above section. Xkcdreader (talk) 03:33, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- Can't you read???? The sub-section title says Move to close, and the opening sentence says "I would move to close the foregoing discussion". You're the only person pursuing this, AFAICT. So please put up or shut up. If you want to know the reason why, you should yourself be bothered to comb through the archives for the original rationale, or it will surely come out in the RfC discussion. -- Ohconfucius 03:24, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- Support closure. This is not a productive discussion. Tony (talk) 05:00, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- Support the retention of sentence case for titles, and support documentation of the history at Misplaced Pages:Titling in sentence case and ongoing discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:Titling in sentence case. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:40, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- ongoing discussion of the history, I mean. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:34, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- Support closure as no proposal to change has been made, and the discussion does not add anything. Would suggest we suspend any ongoing discussion as suggested by Smokey Joe until such time as someone can make a compelling case for change. If we do revisit it, I don't think Misplaced Pages talk:Titling in sentence case is the correct place for the discussion, as it would constitute a fundamental change. --Rob Sinden (talk) 08:06, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- Comment Why close down a discussion? If you don't want to take part, just don't. A proposal to change such a fundamental policy would be a very different matter, but none was made. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:16, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- There is nothing to "close". This is a talk page discussion, not some sort of formal RfC. Unlike a formal RfC, discussion threads are not "closed". They simply die off of their own accord when no one has anything further to say on the topic... at which point they quietly slip into the archives as we move on to discuss other things. Blueboar (talk) 13:01, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- I think the concern was that the discussion was seen as disruptive, and that we should "close" the discussion unless a more formal proposal was considered. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:09, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- Disruptive? In what way? What exactly was this discussion disrupting? ... hell, the only thing I find even remotely "disruptive" here is the attempt to shut down (ie "close") the discussion while people still have something to say. Blueboar (talk) 13:28, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- I agree that the discussion isn't disruptive. It has the potential to become disruptive, but only if we allow it to spiral into another fruitless "bird" debate (which would be unfortunate, as that issue really has nothing to do with this policy or Xkcdreader's criticism thereof). —David Levy 13:40, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
Objection to "closing" the above discussion
If anything in the last few days has been disruptive, it is the attempt to "shut down" the above discussion. I want to register my strong objection. I have asked for ANI to look into this. Blueboar (talk) 15:28, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- Re Hex's side note in his "closure" comments above ("As a side note, Xkcdreader is contradicting herself by stating that No proposal was made, when this section begins with 'TITLES that represent names should be'... which is a proposal.")... I disagree. Xkcdreader's comment was not a proposal... it was a statement of her opinion (and we are all entitled to have opinions, and to state them.) Blueboar (talk) 15:39, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- To my mind it was purposefully incendiary and was unconstructive, and therefore disruptive. Let's move on and if necessary we can open a constructive debate. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:45, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- I am amazed at how two people can participate in the same discussion and come away with such completely different attitudes about it. I certainly did not find anyone's comments to be "purposefully incendiary and unconstructive". Did people disagree? sure... but we were all being civil and respectful about it. So what did you find incendiary and unconstructive about the discussion? Blueboar (talk) 17:49, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- I believe there were several accusations and assumptions of bad faith traded between Rob and Xkcdreader, and some comments that were just shy of personal attacks, especially early in that discussion. That may be what was perceived as disruptive, as well as opening the discussion by declaring unequivocally that we’re doing it wrong. —Frungi (talk) 21:51, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- I am amazed at how two people can participate in the same discussion and come away with such completely different attitudes about it. I certainly did not find anyone's comments to be "purposefully incendiary and unconstructive". Did people disagree? sure... but we were all being civil and respectful about it. So what did you find incendiary and unconstructive about the discussion? Blueboar (talk) 17:49, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- To my mind it was purposefully incendiary and was unconstructive, and therefore disruptive. Let's move on and if necessary we can open a constructive debate. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:45, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- I would like to say that I may be abrasive at times, my levity may not convey well through text, and I sometimes get distracted by tangents, but what I find most infuriating is the group of people that decide what others are allowed to talk about on talk pages. The same thing happened on the page im not suppose to talk about. I was having a conversation with people, and others who DIDNTLIKE the conversation, come in and close it. If Blueboar, Hex, Frungi, and I want to have a conversation, and you don't like the conversation, no one is forcing you to join it and voice your opposition. That IS disruptive. The brick wall that refuses to work with anyone they disagree with is the problem here. I'm willing to be proven wrong, meet people half way, change my mind, and come to new conclusions. Im not willing to stop challenging traditions just because "that's the way we do it." If we are not allowed to even question dogma, there is a major problem. And the idea that the MOS has sitewide consensus is laughable or some more PC word I cant think of. The MOS is the center of MULTIPLE major contentious issues. If anything the MOS is a localconsensus. Consensus is suppose people who are willing to work together. If youre not willing to work WITH people to come to an agreeable accord, you are removing yourself from the consensus process. Xkcdreader (talk)
- I didn't detect your levity. Maybe you should put on a funny font? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:41, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
While Xkcdreader did start off the discussion on the wrong foot, it was ultimately about determining the origin of the naming convention, and it was quite informative in that respect. It may or may not be leading up to a proposal, but this discussion was hardly “disruptive”; it was educational. If there is a more appropriate place for a discussion about the history of Misplaced Pages practices, I vote that it publicly be moved rather than simply shut down. —Frungi (talk) 16:02, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
Register?
- Note WP:MOS has a register here: Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Register. Should we have something like that for the WP:AT page? --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:33, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
- That seems a very good idea. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:49, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
- Not sure there is a need for it... Doesn't the search archives function do the same thing? Blueboar (talk) 14:57, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
- Yes, if anyone can be bothered to search them! With a register, you can link specific decisions per section to the related discussion in the archive. Just thought it might be a useful additional tool if anyone could be bothered... --15:02, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
- Not sure there is a need for it... Doesn't the search archives function do the same thing? Blueboar (talk) 14:57, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
- That seems a very good idea. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:49, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
New question relating to Title Case
The above discussion got me wondering... how many new articles start off using Title Case and have to be retitled to conform to Sentence case? Any way to find out? Blueboar (talk) 16:30, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- On second thought... this is probably better asked at WT:RM... they are more likely to know the answer than anyone here. Blueboar (talk) 17:58, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- In my experience, articles written by inexperienced editors and with a promotional tone (even if they are suitable, encyclopedic subjects) tend to use title case fairly often. It's not hard to move them, though, and the only time RM would hear about it is if someone needed an admin to move a page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:53, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
Titles of articles about suicide victims
When there is a suicide about a previously unnotable person that becomes notable because of the death, should the title of the article be the name of the person, or "Suicide of ..."? Discussion here: Misplaced Pages:VPP#Notability_of_deaths_and_dead_people_who_become_notable_after_death. --B2C 21:33, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
- And a related multi-move proposal: Talk:Suicide_of_Kelly_Yeomans#Requested_move. --B2C 22:48, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
- This isn't really WP:AT issue. Both of the choices (Kelly Yeomans and Suicide of Kelly Yomans) are acceptable options under WP:AT... one is a "Proper Name" title, while the other is a "Descriptive title". This Policy does not favor one or the other. Which to use is a WP:Notability question, factoring in various notability guidelines like WP:ONEEVENT and WP:Notability (people). Personally, I resolve the debate by merging all of the articles in question into a single Suicides cause by bullying article, but that's just me. Blueboar (talk) 00:48, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
- It seems to me that per WP:BLP1E that the article should be titled "Suicide of ...".
- BLP1E says, "We should generally avoid having an article on a person when each of three conditions is met: If reliable sources cover the person only in the context of a single event; If that person otherwise remains, and is likely to remain, a low-profile individual; and it is not the case that the event is significant and the individual's role within it is substantial and well-documented."
- Since you asked about a non-notable person's suicide, I think that all three conditions are met unless it is an exceptionally high-profile suicide (which seems unlikely if the person isn't notable, but not impossible). AgnosticAphid talk 01:35, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
- I share your concerns about these suicides that are likely to be nothing more than a media storm and then nothing (perhaps in a few years, we'll start merging them into lists), but it would be very helpful if people would comment
There seems to be an awful lot of forum shopping going on. I've lost track of how many places this has been raised and canvassed now. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 22:00, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
RFC-birth date format conformity when used to disambiguate
I have closed my own discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (people)#RFC-birth date format conformity when used to disambiguate. Please feel free to take any action necessary to modify the closure of my own discussion to make it appear more Kosher.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 21:59, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
Re: WP:TITLEFORMAT... clarifying the first point
OK... I thought this would not be controversial... Obviously my assumption was wrong. (since I was reverted).
The first point of WP:TITLEFORMAT currently reads:
- Use lowercase, except for proper names
- The initial letter of a title is almost always capitalized; subsequent words in a title are not, unless they are part of a proper name, and so would be capitalized in running text; when this is done, the title is simple to link to in other articles: Northwestern University offers more graduate work than a typical liberal arts college. For initial lowercase letters, as in eBay, see the technical restrictions page. For more guidance, see Naming conventions (capitalization).
I find this jumbled and quite confusing... leaving the reader unclear as to the general rule for when one should or should not use various "cases" (ie capitalizations). Would it not be much clearer if we broke the point into two parts...
- For descriptive titles, use Sentence case
- Descriptive titles are almost always put in sentence case; The initial letter of the first word is capitalized; subsequent words are not capitalized (unless they are a proper name). Examples: Opposition to slavery, History of role-playing video games, (but List of counties in West Virginia)
- For titles that are proper names, use Title Case
- Proper names are almost always put in Title Case; the initial letter of all parts of the name are capitalized. Examples: Barak Obama, National Football League. (Occasional exceptions to this can occur when WP:COMMONNAME indicates that a non-standard capitalization should be used. Examples: CaliCam, ActRaiser. Note: there are technical restrictions that apply in situations where WP:COMMONNAME indicates a lower case first letter should be used (Example: k.d. lang, eBay)) )
For more guidance on capitalization in titles, see Naming conventions (capitalization).
As I see it, my clarification does not change the "rules" in any way... it just does a better job of explaining them. Blueboar (talk) 01:18, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
- Your explanation is confusing/misleading, as it conveys that we use a different style for titles that are proper names. That simply isn't true. We're still using sentence case, in which intrinsic capitalization is retained.
- Many titles consist partially of proper names. In the title List of cities in Germany by population, "Germany" is capitalized because it's a proper name. Likewise, Universal Studios is a proper name, so it gets capitalized too. In the latter example, we aren't switching to title case. In both instances, we're simply applying normal grammatical rules to our use of sentence case.
- Whether a proper name appears as part of the title or composes it in its entirety, it's treated exactly the same way. There's absolutely no reason to single out titles that happen to consist solely of proper names, thereby highlighting a nonexistent distinction. —David Levy 02:08, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
- The way the existing wording reads, I understand it to be telling me that the title is supposed to be Universal studios... which I think we both would agree is NOT the intent. Blueboar (talk) 02:22, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
- "...unless they are part of a proper name, and so would be capitalized in running text" —David Levy 02:32, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
- I understand what you are saying. I have been editing WP for years and do know what the existing text is supposed to mean... But that meaning really isn't clear to the average editor. That's what I am trying to clear up.
- Also, I have given several examples of proper names that don't follow Sentence case (in that they have odd, unique capitalization within the words). So, I still think we need to separate descriptive titles from proper name titles in some way, because COMMONNAME can result in weird "non-standard" capitalization. I am more than willing to consider alternatives. Blueboar (talk) 02:42, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
I understand what you are saying. I have been editing WP for years and do know what the existing text is supposed to mean... But that meaning really isn't clear to the average editor.
- On what do you base this conclusion? I've been here about as long as you have, and I don't recall ever encountering the type of confusion that you describe.
- What's unclear about "unless they are part of a proper name"? How, in your view, is the current wording "telling that the title is supposed to be Universal studios"?
- Why do you regard titles consisting solely of proper names as distinct cases that must be described separately? Wouldn't the same hypothetical editor believe that the title List of cities in germany by population should be used? What material distinction exists?
Also, I have given several examples of proper names that don't follow Sentence case (in that they have odd, unique capitalization within the words).
- The exceptions are addressed. They appear in article titles that are proper nouns (such as iPod) and those that are descriptive (such as List of iPod models). Again, there simply isn't a material distinction. —David Levy 03:07, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
- Let me ask you this... is there anything incorrect with the first paragraph (the one on descriptive titles)... if so, that narrows down the issue. Blueboar (talk) 02:45, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
- It's inaccurate to draw a distinction between "descriptive titles" and "titles that are proper names". We apply the same rules to both. "Universal Studios" is capitalized for exactly the same reason as "Germany" in the title List of cities in Germany by population, and it has absolutely nothing to do with title case. —David Levy 03:07, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
- I agree that Blueboar's change is not actually helpful, although it was intended to be. The problem is that "Title Case" is just as likely to be misunderstood by those who might find the current wording confusing, and we'll end up with too many capital letters, e.g. "Seven Of Nine" rather than "Seven of Nine" (especially by Those Editors Who Read The Wall Street Journal). On the other hand, "Use lowercase, except for proper names" does seem to prioritize the "lowercase" element too much. What I would like to say is "Use sentence case" and then explain that this means that titles should be styled precisely as they will be if they occur at the start of a sentence in the text of the article. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:28, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
Blueboar also made this uncommented change against consensus, so I undid it. Dicklyon (talk) 03:18, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
- I didn't find it confusing. It may not be blindingly obvious, but it is hard to misread. I support clarification, but think it should be completely moved to Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (capitalization). The overlaps and duplications I think are more confusing through obscuring where the rules/explanations are found. The specific thing that I think is most unclear is the boundary between a descriptive name and a proper name. With use, descriptive names become proper, and some cases are ambiguous. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:49, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
- For example, at Talk:Vidal Blanc, we see a bunch of grapes are looking like their apparently proper names (the original authors thought so?) actually contain a descriptor. This sort of thing, whether the Vidal is blanc or the Vidal Blanc is white, deserves space in a guideline, not in policy. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:10, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
- "Vidal blanc" is even more complex, because of the language issue. If it's a proper noun phrase and in French, then the lower-case "b" appears to be normal French styling (but then the title should in in italics, in my view, to show that it is not in English). If it's a proper noun phrase and is considered to have been assimilated into English, then upper-case "B" would be correct. If it's a descriptive noun phrase, then why is it not in English, i.e. "White Vidal"? Peter coxhead (talk) 14:14, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
It would be accurate to replace the 'use lowercase' line with this:
Always use sentence case, which means lowercase for everything except proper names
WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:20, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- And the first word. —Frungi (talk) 04:26, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- I would avoid "proper name"; it will just create arguments over what is or is not a proper name (as we've seen elsewhere). Just say, as I suggested above, "use sentence case" and then explain that this means that titles should be styled precisely as they will be if they occur at the start of a sentence in the text of the article. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:58, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- Hiding the difficult points is a poor way to guide. There is a link. Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Proper names. That guideline should not point back here for guidance on proper names, instead that guideline should accurately paraphrase this policy. Is there a reason that MOS page is separate to Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (capitalization) --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:09, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- I wasn't suggesting "hiding" anything. What is or is not a "proper name" is a difficult and contentious issue in English. There are significant disagreements in the linguistic community. Once you move outside the categories of geographical names, personal names, etc., specific decisions have to be made (e.g. should the names of breeds of animals be capitalized?). All that matters for titles is that Misplaced Pages uses sentence case. Guidance on what is capitalized in text and titles belongs under the relevant topic (acronyms, programming languages, scientific names of organisms, names of planets, common names of organisms, names of cultivated plants, names of breeds, etc.). Peter coxhead (talk) 07:35, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- I've been reading Proper noun. Interesting. Why are we using "name" when we don't distinguish from "noun"? The MOS is comparatively amateur in grounding. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:23, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- Per proper noun: "only single-word proper names are proper nouns: "Peter" and "Africa" are both proper names and proper nouns; but "Peter the Great" and "South Africa", while they are proper names, are not proper nouns." --Rob Sinden (talk) 10:48, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- "South Africa" isn't a proper noun?? Blueboar (talk) 13:45, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- Apparently not, according to our own article on the subject. Personally, I always assumed the two to be synonymous, but maybe this isn't the case. Going to do a bit of digging... --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:51, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- "South Africa" isn't a proper noun?? Blueboar (talk) 13:45, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- Per proper noun: "only single-word proper names are proper nouns: "Peter" and "Africa" are both proper names and proper nouns; but "Peter the Great" and "South Africa", while they are proper names, are not proper nouns." --Rob Sinden (talk) 10:48, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- I've been reading Proper noun. Interesting. Why are we using "name" when we don't distinguish from "noun"? The MOS is comparatively amateur in grounding. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:23, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- I wasn't suggesting "hiding" anything. What is or is not a "proper name" is a difficult and contentious issue in English. There are significant disagreements in the linguistic community. Once you move outside the categories of geographical names, personal names, etc., specific decisions have to be made (e.g. should the names of breeds of animals be capitalized?). All that matters for titles is that Misplaced Pages uses sentence case. Guidance on what is capitalized in text and titles belongs under the relevant topic (acronyms, programming languages, scientific names of organisms, names of planets, common names of organisms, names of cultivated plants, names of breeds, etc.). Peter coxhead (talk) 07:35, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- Hiding the difficult points is a poor way to guide. There is a link. Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Proper names. That guideline should not point back here for guidance on proper names, instead that guideline should accurately paraphrase this policy. Is there a reason that MOS page is separate to Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (capitalization) --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:09, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- I would avoid "proper name"; it will just create arguments over what is or is not a proper name (as we've seen elsewhere). Just say, as I suggested above, "use sentence case" and then explain that this means that titles should be styled precisely as they will be if they occur at the start of a sentence in the text of the article. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:58, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- A noun is a category of word. "Africa" is a noun; "south" and "southern" are adjectives; so "South Africa" and "southern Africa" are noun phrases. In many circumstances such differentiation is unimportant, and non-linguists sometimes use "proper noun" loosely to mean a (proper) name, including noun phrases with a proper noun as their head (e.g. "South Africa") and names with a common noun as their head (e.g. "United States of America"); cf.:
- A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (Quirk et al.; Section 5.60):
- "We may therefore draw a distinction between a PROPER NOUN, which is a single word and a NAME, which may or may not consist of more than one word."
- The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Huddleston and Pullum; pp. 516–517):
- "The central cases of proper names are expressions which have been conventionally adopted as the name of a particular entity or entities. Proper nouns by contrast, are word-level units belonging to the category noun. Clinton and Zealand are proper nouns, but New Zealand is not. We distinguish between strong proper names like Kim or New York, where there is no determiner, and weak proper names like the Thames or the Bronx, where definiteness is redundantly marked by the define article the."
- The Oxford English Grammar (Greenbaum; Section 4.4):
- "Names may consist of a combination of a proper noun with other words (adjectives, common nouns, prepositional phrases), and it is usual for the initial letters of each open-class word in the name to be written in capitals . . ."--Boson (talk) 16:12, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- A noun is a category of word. "Africa" is a noun; "south" and "southern" are adjectives; so "South Africa" and "southern Africa" are noun phrases. In many circumstances such differentiation is unimportant, and non-linguists sometimes use "proper noun" loosely to mean a (proper) name, including noun phrases with a proper noun as their head (e.g. "South Africa") and names with a common noun as their head (e.g. "United States of America"); cf.:
I ask people to note carefully that proper names are "conventionally" adopted as the names of entity/ies, and that it is "usual" for the initial letters of nouns, adjectives and other open-class words (not e.g. prepositions) in proper names to be capitalized. There have been too many dogmatic statements from both supporters and opponents of capitalising particular categories. Some linguists do not consider "weak proper names" to be proper nouns or noun phrases, because they do not obey the syntax rules they use to define them (e.g. not requiring a determiner when morphologically singular). That's one reason why it's important to distinguish between the semantic category "name" and the syntactic category "noun (phrase)". Peter coxhead (talk) 17:32, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- This is getting us a bit off track, but now I'm even more confused... why would "United States of America" be a proper noun but not "South Africa"? (aren't "United" and "South" both adjectives, modifying the nouns "States of America" and "Africa" respectively?) Blueboar (talk) 17:15, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- "United States of America" is not a noun, since a noun is a word. "United States of America" is a noun phrase (a sequence of words) containing one adjective/participle ("united"), one common noun in the plural ("states"), and one prepositional phrase consisting of a preposition ("of") and a proper noun ("America").--Boson (talk) 18:14, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- This is getting us a bit off track, but now I'm even more confused... why would "United States of America" be a proper noun but not "South Africa"? (aren't "United" and "South" both adjectives, modifying the nouns "States of America" and "Africa" respectively?) Blueboar (talk) 17:15, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
Can we at lest clarify the example
I think we need to clarify the explanation of why we format the title in Sentence case... it currently reads:
- When this is done, the title is simple to link to in other articles: Northwestern University offers more graduate work than a typical liberal arts college.
Now, you and I (experienced editors) know that this is accurate... but to a new user there appears to be a contradiction ... we just said that the first letter should almost always be capitalized... fine, but in the example we include a link that does not capitalize the first letter (liberal arts college). Now, we experienced editors understand the difference between a link and a title... and that links actually ignore capitalization ... but new users will not understand this. They may read this example and get confused... They will wonder whether Liberal arts college is supposed to be formatted with a lower case initial letter "l" (as done in the link) or an upper case "L". Any suggestions on how to clarify this? Blueboar (talk) 13:37, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- It's the first letter of the word that begins the sentence that is capitalized. SlimVirgin 17:31, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- "liberal arts college" in the above example does not begin a sentence, yet the article title capitalizes the first letter. Why is this? —Frungi (talk) 18:15, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- Because we use "sentence case" for titles and headings, in other words we treat a heading or title like a sentence as regards capitalization. --Boson (talk) 18:24, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- If an article's title begins with a letter, it's always uppercase on a technical level (and all but a few exceptions are displayed accordingly). How could said capitalization possibly depend on whether a particular link to the article begins a sentence? —David Levy 18:30, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- Getting back to the original point, surely this isn't the reason why we now use sentence case for titles? It may be why sentence case was originally used, but the software was then much less flexible. We use sentence case now simply because this is the style chosen for the English Misplaced Pages. There's now no functional reason. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:00, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- I don’t think Blueboar’s concern has been addressed. The page says to capitalize the first letter of article names, and then doesn’t. How should this be clarified? —Frungi (talk) 19:02, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
- I’ve just tried to do so. I don’t think I’ve altered any meaning except for the added clarification. —Frungi (talk) 19:10, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
Legislative acts
Among the options for titles of legal acts, statutory enactments, are the citation form or the normal English form. For example recently a number of acts have been moved from their normal English form to a citation form. See, e.g., Consumer Protection Act of 1986 and Wildlife Protection Act of 1972. The slightly telegraphic, "Consumer Protection Act, 1986" (also "Consumer Protection Act (1986)") was substituted for the normal English form which is "Consumer Protection Act of 1986". In general Misplaced Pages does not use abbreviated forms, for example for journal titles. In the age of texting there is a tendency to shorten and abbreviate. We should resist those temptations, and use normal English, per WP:MOS, and a natural title (naturalness) per this policy, and not a legalese form. --Bejnar (talk) 20:40, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- Hi there! I'm part of a project of people working on writing articles on notable pieces of U.S. legislation. We've been debating article titles for a while. The problem with the United States Congress is that it tends to reuse bill names from Congress to Congress, if the bill didn't pass the first time. It also automatically reuses numbers, starting back at #1 every new Congress. I'm on the side of people that, regarding United States legislation, articles should be titled "Short Title (HR/S#;XXXth Congress)" This provides the most robust title - the official short title (which people might use to search, and which Congress reuses from one year to the next), the bill number, and the Congress (which tells you the time period). You can see our debate about it here: Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject United States Federal Government Legislative Data. "CISPA" and the "Marketplace Fairness Act" are both cases of legislation with titles that are being reused in the 113th Congress after failing in the 112th. Do you have any comments on this? Thanks. HistoricMN44 (talk) 21:20, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
- However, in India the Bill names or numbers are not reused (except if such Bill was withdrawn and later re-introduced, which separate Bill number). The reliable sources in India mostly uses a "citation form" rather than "normal English form" to refer to such legislative titles. Generally Acts are not written in the fashion "xxx Act of 19xx" in legal books or elsewhere. Though the "normal English form" may be used while reading out the name of the Act, such titles in the written form is generally uncommon. Other countries like South Africa, England, New Zealand (Commonwealth Countries) follows the pattern "XXX Act 19XX" or more correctly "XXX Act, 19XX". Further, I think using of the year after the title helps in distinguishing from other Acts of similar title (or Amendment Acts). Amartyabag 03:19, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
- For example, Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Bill, 2012 which was passed in the Indian Parliament recently, have been referred by most RS in the format "xxx Act, 20xx" and not "xxx Act of 20xx". NDTV Bar and Bench, PIB, Times of India, Firstpost, The Hindu, Indian Express, Outlook. Bejnar is kindly requested to put forward evidence, if the usage of "xxx Act of 19xx" is a common form in RS in India. Amartyabag 03:35, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
- In the U.S., bills may have a popular name given within the text of the bill, typically in the first section. See discussion in the "Long title, short title, colloquial names, acronyms" section of Template talk:Infobox U.S. legislation. This counsels strongly against changing "Happiness Protection Act of 2013" to "Happiness Protection Act, 2013" or the like, I think. Does there need to be a standard title format for articles about legislation, given varying naming practices in parliaments around the world? Certainly you want one for each country. Maybe consistent standards for the world are possible, but that is a big task! JimHarperDC (talk) 04:55, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
- While there is no ambiguity related to the proposition that the most popular name, per WP:COMMONNAME should be used as title, whether it is an official Short title, an official acronym or an unofficial acronym (though acronym are discouraged and are to be used in rare cases). The test would be the most popular usage of title in English language WP:RS, which I guess need to be done on a case to case basis. Framing an universal policy might be difficult, though we may have country specific policies. Amartyabag 05:18, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
- In the U.S., bills may have a popular name given within the text of the bill, typically in the first section. See discussion in the "Long title, short title, colloquial names, acronyms" section of Template talk:Infobox U.S. legislation. This counsels strongly against changing "Happiness Protection Act of 2013" to "Happiness Protection Act, 2013" or the like, I think. Does there need to be a standard title format for articles about legislation, given varying naming practices in parliaments around the world? Certainly you want one for each country. Maybe consistent standards for the world are possible, but that is a big task! JimHarperDC (talk) 04:55, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
- For example, Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Bill, 2012 which was passed in the Indian Parliament recently, have been referred by most RS in the format "xxx Act, 20xx" and not "xxx Act of 20xx". NDTV Bar and Bench, PIB, Times of India, Firstpost, The Hindu, Indian Express, Outlook. Bejnar is kindly requested to put forward evidence, if the usage of "xxx Act of 19xx" is a common form in RS in India. Amartyabag 03:35, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
- However, in India the Bill names or numbers are not reused (except if such Bill was withdrawn and later re-introduced, which separate Bill number). The reliable sources in India mostly uses a "citation form" rather than "normal English form" to refer to such legislative titles. Generally Acts are not written in the fashion "xxx Act of 19xx" in legal books or elsewhere. Though the "normal English form" may be used while reading out the name of the Act, such titles in the written form is generally uncommon. Other countries like South Africa, England, New Zealand (Commonwealth Countries) follows the pattern "XXX Act 19XX" or more correctly "XXX Act, 19XX". Further, I think using of the year after the title helps in distinguishing from other Acts of similar title (or Amendment Acts). Amartyabag 03:19, 24 April 2013 (UTC)