Zoney wrote:
On 05/09/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/5/07, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@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