I had an interesting conversation today with a publisher and an academic on the issue of capitalisation. They made the following observations:

1. Capitalisation rules seem to differ between American English and British English (or rather American English and all forms of english other than AE). Whereas the former seems nowadays to be following a 'minimal use of caps' policy, non-AE english uses caps far more often.

2. This issue has caused considerable problems with American students who come to Europe for summer courses. Europeans see the non-use of caps as 'semi-literate' and regularly dock students marks for it. Americans see non AE use of caps as 'ludicrous' and over the top. (I know from personal experience that the few caps english of AE users has caused bitter anger in my university, where lecturers 'hit the roof' at AE users' insistence of lower-casing names of organisations, electoral processes, governmental offices, etc.)

3. Within many academic areas, a major battle has been waged on this issue. To the resentment of non-AE users, AE capitalisation rules increasingly tend to be followed. The reason is purely economic. Publishers see the US as their biggest market, and so publish books in AE or in non-AE but following some of the characteristics of AE in areas like capitalisation. (This has infuriated many non AE-using authors. Last week, one British English author threatened to sue her publisher for 'rewriting' her textbook in AE when it was aimed at a UK market. She accused them of 'dumbing down english to suit Americans'. Some authors, according to the publisher I was talking to, have insisted in their contracts that their books /not/ be rewritten in AE, even when an edition is launched in the US. (American authors may well equally have insisted that their books not be turned into non-AE. As the publisher I was speaking to is British she has no knowledge of such contracts if they exist in the US).

If this is the case (and both the publisher and academic said so, while both expressing their dislike of AE capitalisation trends and what the latter called the 'wholescale manging of non-AE to suit publishers' profits by trampling over the language use of everyone who isn't American') that does explain the rows over capitalisation on wiki, and how it is AE users like Ec, Mav and Zoe who are so 'anti' capitalisation while it is users of other forms of english other than AE (Tannin, myself, etc) who want it. For if Mav, Ec etc were taught one set of rules on capitalisation usage, we were taught a different one and are infuriated by what, going by what we were taught, seems to be wiki's insistence on wrong use of capitals and non-use of capitals where they should be used.

In the circumstances, we should apply to the same policy as we apply in general to American english versus British english, ie, respect difference and allow users to set the policy in an individual article, based on /their/ usage of capitals in /their/ version of english. As most of the capitals issue involves AE users changing capitalisation applied by non AE users like Tannin in articles the non AE users have written (like on birds), it suggests that that process should stop and the rules on capitalisation should be amended accordingly. The issue is already causing enough rows outside wiki, with the increasing application of AE rules by publishing houses and style books causing major anger (the publisher said one author called it 'American linguistic imperialism', with AE rules being applied even though they conflict with all the grammar books used outside the US.) The best solution is not to enforce AE capitalisation rules but simply to recognise that different english users worldwide use different rules on this issue and to leave it to users, depending on their linguistic culture, to decide on capitalisation just as they decide on spelling in American English, British English or the various subsets of the latter (Hiberno English, Australian English, etc.)

JT

_________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus