[WikiEN-l] capitalisation

[james duffy]

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

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