In a message dated 04/06/03 11:48:07 GMT Daylight Time, fredbaud@ctelco.net writes:
The only problem I can see with this policy (which is that in titles the proper name in English of a species is capitalized) is that links from text, to link directly, would have to also be capitalized in that text. This is contrary to the usual usage, as species names are not proper nouns and ought not to be capitalized in text.
Fred
If you look at the majority of the fauna articles, the text links are there, or potentially there if a link has not been made. Try [[hummingbird]] or [[whale]] for example. One practical problem with reverting from the current policy is that literally thousands of text changes would have to be made (with the additional problem that some would still be partially capitalised, eg Wilson's Phalarope, because of the proper name.
hope this helps
Jim (jimfbleak)
Well, I looked at [[Red-winged Blackbird]]. It follows the usual convention, capitalization in title but not in text, until you "tidied it up" and changed the instances in the text to capitalized. The problem is that red-winged blackbird is not a proper noun. Not sure how many of these you did and it does seem unfair to ask you go back and try to find all of these that you changed, but the "fait accompli" seems to be of your own making.
Fred
From: JFrost8401@aol.com Reply-To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 07:06:04 EDT To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] naming convention for birds and others
In a message dated 04/06/03 11:48:07 GMT Daylight Time, fredbaud@ctelco.net writes:
The only problem I can see with this policy (which is that in titles the proper name in English of a species is capitalized) is that links from text, to link directly, would have to also be capitalized in that text. This is contrary to the usual usage, as species names are not proper nouns and ought not to be capitalized in text.
Fred
If you look at the majority of the fauna articles, the text links are there, or potentially there if a link has not been made. Try [[hummingbird]] or [[whale]] for example. One practical problem with reverting from the current policy is that literally thousands of text changes would have to be made (with the additional problem that some would still be partially capitalised, eg Wilson's Phalarope, because of the proper name.
hope this helps
Jim (jimfbleak)
At 06:02 AM 6/4/03 -0600, Fred Bauder wrote:
Well, I looked at [[Red-winged Blackbird]]. It follows the usual convention, capitalization in title but not in text, until you "tidied it up" and changed the instances in the text to capitalized. The problem is that red-winged blackbird is not a proper noun. Not sure how many of these you did and it does seem unfair to ask you go back and try to find all of these that you changed, but the "fait accompli" seems to be of your own making.
It may be relevant that I, rather than Jim, wrote that article. I have no strong opinion on the capitalization issue, but my impulse, based on how the rest of English works, is toward lower-case. That is, if I don't stop and think either way, I'll write "I saw a red-winged blackbird", no caps.
It's not a proper noun, but it is a species name.
And can everyone *PLEASE* turn the HTML off. I don't care if you want to read your email in black-on-yellow, but send it in plain text and let me make my own choices.
One of the counter-intuitive things a new Wikipedian has to adjust to is the convention on capitalization of titles: Only the first word is capitalized unless it is a proper noun. This is not natural as all words in a title are conventionally capitalized. We do that so that links from within text do not need to be capitalized.
In the case of species names we are now making an exception, creating another counter-intuitive requirement: in text all words in the name of a species must be capitalized. Again in contradiction to expected usage. Having adopted the convention that in titles all words in a species name are capitalized we are now forced to have them capitalized in text in order that links work.
So we have three choices: put the titles of species in the usual first word only capitalized format; capitalize all words of a species name in text; or made a redirect for each species to the all caps format.
This is not a major issue with me. I guess I only want to see a definite convention established.
Fred
Fred Bauder wrote:
One of the counter-intuitive things a new Wikipedian has to adjust to is the convention on capitalization of titles: Only the first word is capitalized unless it is a proper noun. This is not natural as all words in a title are conventionally capitalized. We do that so that links from within text do not need to be capitalized.
In the case of species names we are now making an exception, creating another counter-intuitive requirement: in text all words in the name of a species must be capitalized. Again in contradiction to expected usage. Having adopted the convention that in titles all words in a species name are capitalized we are now forced to have them capitalized in text in order that links work.
Actually, the position of Tannin et al is that it always was supposed to be capitalised in running text. To capitalise the article title is merely a deduction from this; the controversy is ultimately about what should appear in text. But this question gains additional importance because of the effects that it'll have on article titles.
-- Toby