[WikiEN-l] Capitalised section headings

[Ray Saintonge]

Zoney wrote:
> On 05/09/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> On 9/5/07, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter at gmail.com> wrote:
>>     
>>> Does the Manual Of Style need updating to reflect current practice?
>>> Wikipedia generally puts out the idea that it is not static.
>>>       
>> Uh, I think we're a long way short of consensus that we want to
>> capitalise section headings. The Manual of Style is by definition
>> prescriptive. Making big changes to it should be a last resort
>> approached with caution.
>>
>> Steve
>>     
> When was there consensus to ensure every article uses the non-capitalised
> section headings style?
>
> Certainly I seem to remember both being allowed - the theory being to stick
> with whatever style the article was begun with - like the US English vs.
> English approach.
This was pretty well established as far back as 2002, at least as far as 
article titles are concerned.  A Manual of Style is often a matter of 
choosing conventions from equally valid alternatives.  To the extent 
that linkages will consider capitalised and non-capitalised as distinct 
it is important to choose a workable convention.  By and large I think 
there are fewer ambiguities with a sentence style heading.  A headline 
style can still have ambiguities in how we treat longer supportive words 
in a title.  The other point is that according to the "Chicago Manual of 
Style" headline style headings are unique to English and Latin.  Other 
languages all use sentence style, and we have many editors for whom 
English is not a native language. 

No-one should be criticised or punished for using the wrong heading 
style.  Editors should just quietly change these headings without fuss 
when they are encountered.  Some will try to change things back, but 
there's no need to use that as a basis for confrontation.  Let them when 
they insist.  In all likelihood if a large number of editors support the 
sentence style it will prevail anyways.

Ec