On 05/09/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On 9/5/07, Peter Ansell
<ansell.peter(a)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