--- Oliver Pereira <omp199(a)ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
If the majority of experts on fauna call an animal
the "Aardvark", and the
majority of non-experts call it the "aardvark", then
the majority of our
potential *readership* call it the "aardvark". So
that's what our usual
naming convention says that *we* should call it,
too. We shouldn't make
special cases just for one particular group of
people without a better
reason than just because that's how they do it
themselves.
Oliver
If the majority of non-experts call MS-DOS "DOS",
should we? "DOS" means *any* disc operating system,
even certain versions of Linux. And same with IM.
In this case, we're lucky. Capitalisation conveys no
information whatsoever, so it really doesn't matter.
We just need to be consistant. In my opinion, we
should be scientific and capitalise when we are
talking about a specific species (like Bald Eagle),
but not when talking about general, non-scientific
general things (like eagle).
--LittleDan
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