Note: Further discussion on some of these issues may be found at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (fauna).
The capital H and the hyphen are surely wrong. -- Zoe
I agree: "hopping" is an adjective, so "hopping-mouse" is like "green-frog". The stress is wrong and it's not good English. (Cf. "hunting leopard" or "flying fox"). Jacquerie27
The capital H is certainly right. The hyphen, however, seems to be a matter that varies between one expert and another. I am largely following two standard works:
Menkhorst is an eminent scholar in the field, more recent, and uses "Spinifex Hopping Mouse" . On the other hand, Strahan is a major work, not just a field guide (over 700 pp in hardback and over $100 a copy) and a yet more eminent scholar: now retired, he was, amongst other thgings, director of Taronga Park Zoo (the main one for Sydney), Research Fellow at the Australian Museum, curator of the Australiam Museum photographic wildlife library, and so on. Mammals of Australia an official publication of the museum.
Although I started doing these without the hyphen, after a while it occured to me that the hyphen helps set these aside from other mice, which is surely appropriate, as they are very different little creatures. Alas, there are none within a couple of hundred miles of here.
Both, of course, use the capital "H". Tannin
Oh, for the love of Mike, give me a chance to set out the bloody evidence before you go on a revert war. Tannin 08:16 Apr 26, 2003 (UTC)
I've spent two solid days researching and writing those pages. Sometimes this place really pisses me off. Tannin
Nonsense, Mav. From Wikipedia:Naming conventions
The name is almost always capitalised, because it is a species name. Refer to any field guide or reference work for exampes. Ask the people who actually do the work in the species accounts. How many species write-ups have you done this month? Tannin
Britannica neither uses the capital nor the hyphen. And this is the standard we have set for all animal names throughout Wikipedia. -- Zoe
A while back I had this same discussion elswhere and grabbed the first half-dozen references I had handy on the shelf:
Every single one of these uses capitalisation for the common names of species. Tannin
The first page of searching that I did with google had both upper case, lower case, hyphen and no hyphen. -- Zoe
Tell you what, I have maybe 30 or 40 books on birds and mammals (plus the odd thing on flora and fish) here. What say we count them up and go with the majority? Tannin
So why is it that the people who actually do the work on the species accounts - people like me and Jimfbleak and KingTurtle - almost unamimously agree that we should use the correct capitalisation?
The only reason it gets discussed over and over and over again is because a small number of people here, who as a rule are not significant contributors to the species accounts in any case, want to do it the wrong way. If we just relaxed and did it right in the first place, then the subject would disappear without trace. Tannin
Ther are certain people who feel like, because the write the articles originally, they have proprietorship over them. Nobody owns an article. -- Zoe
Common noun (Gram.), the name of any one of a class of objects, as distinguished from a proper noun (the name of a particular person or thing).
Proper noun (Gram.), a name belonging to an individual, by which it is distinguished from others of the same class; -- opposed to common noun; as, John, Boston, America. n : a noun that denotes a particular thing; usually capitalized
Got it? Specialized publications almost always overcapitalize terms that are used by the specialists that read them. This does not mean that that capitalization is correct (in fact most of the time it is not ; I capitalize Transit Village while at work but I know that the correct capitalization is transit village). -- mav
Read the list of authorities above. Are you saying that they are wrong and you are right? Well, no need to answer that - you are saying that. Fair dinkum, I've had a gutfull of this silliness. I'm not talking about "owning articles", and it's unfair of anyone to suggest that I am.
I am talking about being sick and bloody tired of this constant intereference via unhelpful edits. I welcome useful edits that add to the entries I am working on. It is this business of zooming into a page that one has not worked on, has no intention of working on, and quite possibly has no expertise in, and buggering up somone who is doing something useful. And note well: I am far from being the only one. Nearly all the regular contributors to articles in this area feel the same way. Tannin
Personally, I'm not all that fussed about the titles, Jacquerie, though (of course) I'd prefer to see them done correctly. In the body text, however, yes, it can look a bit off sometimes, but there is an important reason why it's done: that's because it is often the only way to avoid ambiguity. For example, consider the following:
Sentence #1 means that we have 3 rats in the area (which might be any of several dozen species) and that they are brown in colour.
Sentence #2 means something quite different. It says that we have 3 rats of the species Rattus norvegicus in the area. It doesn't say what colour they are. That's why common names are always capitalised: otherwise you just don't know what the writer is actually trying to tell you.
Lest anyone think that this an isolated example, let's do some more:
From the Audobon Society: There are rules governing the capitalization and hyphenation of birds' names..... It might be helpful to go over a few of the general rules of written bird names. When writing your own name you always capitalize your first and last names, e.g., Sam Spade or Lucy Brown. When writing the English name of a bird species, you should always capitalize its first and last names, e.g., Scarlet Tanager or Winter Wren. This avoids confusion with other modifiers in the sentence. For example, "the secretive, tiny, Black Rail..." If you are referring to unspecified birds use lower case letters, e.g., "those herons over there," or "that sparrow on the ground." If a species has a three-word unhyphenated name, all three words are capitalized. For example, "the graceful American White Pelican..." Many birds have compound or hyphenated "first" or "middle" names. Only the first letter of the compound name is capitalized: Red-throated Loon, or Long-billed Curlew. However, if a bird has a compound "last" name, then both parts of the compound name are capitalized: Eastern Screech-Owl or American Golden-Plover. Tannin
You have made a good case for capitalisation, Tannin, and I, at any rate, can see the point. I didn't have an opinion before reading this page but I can now see that species names are proper names, not English phrases and therefore should be capitalised throughout. I would suggest that the next thing to do is to add a section on species names to the Wikipedia naming conventions and make it clear that they should be capitalised. You have my support for that. -- Derek Ross
Okay, I've read my way through the conversation "from the coalface" and "this". I'm afraid that I still agree with Tannin as I think that the definitions which you give for common noun and proper noun are flawed. Ford Mustang is a proper noun which refers to a class of objects, for instance. That's why the dog breeds and the aircraft are capitalised and why the species should be too although only when they are being used in a technical sense. For instance I should write "He uses a hoover to clean carpets." when I mean a generic vacuum cleaner but "He uses a Hoover to clean carpets." when I mean one of Hoover's vacuum cleaners.
I like your compromise solution though. It's similar in function to the suggestion that I made on the Village Pump last week for estate car/station wagon. Some users pointed out problems with it but one made a good suggestion (#SYNONYM) which would allow what you suggested without affecting ordinary redirects. I think that that would be a good way forward.
In any case whatever the solution, content should rule over style. Many users may well be unhappy about poor style but even more will be unhappy about poor content. -- Derek Ross
The image currently shown on this page does not depict Notomys alexis. In fact it's not a Notomys at all, but looks like a bandicoot of some sort. I'm not terribly familiar with image licensing, or I'd try to replace it, but hopefully someone more familiar with licensing and policies can take appropriate action. 121.44.201.69 ( talk) 17:50, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
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Note: Further discussion on some of these issues may be found at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (fauna).
The capital H and the hyphen are surely wrong. -- Zoe
I agree: "hopping" is an adjective, so "hopping-mouse" is like "green-frog". The stress is wrong and it's not good English. (Cf. "hunting leopard" or "flying fox"). Jacquerie27
The capital H is certainly right. The hyphen, however, seems to be a matter that varies between one expert and another. I am largely following two standard works:
Menkhorst is an eminent scholar in the field, more recent, and uses "Spinifex Hopping Mouse" . On the other hand, Strahan is a major work, not just a field guide (over 700 pp in hardback and over $100 a copy) and a yet more eminent scholar: now retired, he was, amongst other thgings, director of Taronga Park Zoo (the main one for Sydney), Research Fellow at the Australian Museum, curator of the Australiam Museum photographic wildlife library, and so on. Mammals of Australia an official publication of the museum.
Although I started doing these without the hyphen, after a while it occured to me that the hyphen helps set these aside from other mice, which is surely appropriate, as they are very different little creatures. Alas, there are none within a couple of hundred miles of here.
Both, of course, use the capital "H". Tannin
Oh, for the love of Mike, give me a chance to set out the bloody evidence before you go on a revert war. Tannin 08:16 Apr 26, 2003 (UTC)
I've spent two solid days researching and writing those pages. Sometimes this place really pisses me off. Tannin
Nonsense, Mav. From Wikipedia:Naming conventions
The name is almost always capitalised, because it is a species name. Refer to any field guide or reference work for exampes. Ask the people who actually do the work in the species accounts. How many species write-ups have you done this month? Tannin
Britannica neither uses the capital nor the hyphen. And this is the standard we have set for all animal names throughout Wikipedia. -- Zoe
A while back I had this same discussion elswhere and grabbed the first half-dozen references I had handy on the shelf:
Every single one of these uses capitalisation for the common names of species. Tannin
The first page of searching that I did with google had both upper case, lower case, hyphen and no hyphen. -- Zoe
Tell you what, I have maybe 30 or 40 books on birds and mammals (plus the odd thing on flora and fish) here. What say we count them up and go with the majority? Tannin
So why is it that the people who actually do the work on the species accounts - people like me and Jimfbleak and KingTurtle - almost unamimously agree that we should use the correct capitalisation?
The only reason it gets discussed over and over and over again is because a small number of people here, who as a rule are not significant contributors to the species accounts in any case, want to do it the wrong way. If we just relaxed and did it right in the first place, then the subject would disappear without trace. Tannin
Ther are certain people who feel like, because the write the articles originally, they have proprietorship over them. Nobody owns an article. -- Zoe
Common noun (Gram.), the name of any one of a class of objects, as distinguished from a proper noun (the name of a particular person or thing).
Proper noun (Gram.), a name belonging to an individual, by which it is distinguished from others of the same class; -- opposed to common noun; as, John, Boston, America. n : a noun that denotes a particular thing; usually capitalized
Got it? Specialized publications almost always overcapitalize terms that are used by the specialists that read them. This does not mean that that capitalization is correct (in fact most of the time it is not ; I capitalize Transit Village while at work but I know that the correct capitalization is transit village). -- mav
Read the list of authorities above. Are you saying that they are wrong and you are right? Well, no need to answer that - you are saying that. Fair dinkum, I've had a gutfull of this silliness. I'm not talking about "owning articles", and it's unfair of anyone to suggest that I am.
I am talking about being sick and bloody tired of this constant intereference via unhelpful edits. I welcome useful edits that add to the entries I am working on. It is this business of zooming into a page that one has not worked on, has no intention of working on, and quite possibly has no expertise in, and buggering up somone who is doing something useful. And note well: I am far from being the only one. Nearly all the regular contributors to articles in this area feel the same way. Tannin
Personally, I'm not all that fussed about the titles, Jacquerie, though (of course) I'd prefer to see them done correctly. In the body text, however, yes, it can look a bit off sometimes, but there is an important reason why it's done: that's because it is often the only way to avoid ambiguity. For example, consider the following:
Sentence #1 means that we have 3 rats in the area (which might be any of several dozen species) and that they are brown in colour.
Sentence #2 means something quite different. It says that we have 3 rats of the species Rattus norvegicus in the area. It doesn't say what colour they are. That's why common names are always capitalised: otherwise you just don't know what the writer is actually trying to tell you.
Lest anyone think that this an isolated example, let's do some more:
From the Audobon Society: There are rules governing the capitalization and hyphenation of birds' names..... It might be helpful to go over a few of the general rules of written bird names. When writing your own name you always capitalize your first and last names, e.g., Sam Spade or Lucy Brown. When writing the English name of a bird species, you should always capitalize its first and last names, e.g., Scarlet Tanager or Winter Wren. This avoids confusion with other modifiers in the sentence. For example, "the secretive, tiny, Black Rail..." If you are referring to unspecified birds use lower case letters, e.g., "those herons over there," or "that sparrow on the ground." If a species has a three-word unhyphenated name, all three words are capitalized. For example, "the graceful American White Pelican..." Many birds have compound or hyphenated "first" or "middle" names. Only the first letter of the compound name is capitalized: Red-throated Loon, or Long-billed Curlew. However, if a bird has a compound "last" name, then both parts of the compound name are capitalized: Eastern Screech-Owl or American Golden-Plover. Tannin
You have made a good case for capitalisation, Tannin, and I, at any rate, can see the point. I didn't have an opinion before reading this page but I can now see that species names are proper names, not English phrases and therefore should be capitalised throughout. I would suggest that the next thing to do is to add a section on species names to the Wikipedia naming conventions and make it clear that they should be capitalised. You have my support for that. -- Derek Ross
Okay, I've read my way through the conversation "from the coalface" and "this". I'm afraid that I still agree with Tannin as I think that the definitions which you give for common noun and proper noun are flawed. Ford Mustang is a proper noun which refers to a class of objects, for instance. That's why the dog breeds and the aircraft are capitalised and why the species should be too although only when they are being used in a technical sense. For instance I should write "He uses a hoover to clean carpets." when I mean a generic vacuum cleaner but "He uses a Hoover to clean carpets." when I mean one of Hoover's vacuum cleaners.
I like your compromise solution though. It's similar in function to the suggestion that I made on the Village Pump last week for estate car/station wagon. Some users pointed out problems with it but one made a good suggestion (#SYNONYM) which would allow what you suggested without affecting ordinary redirects. I think that that would be a good way forward.
In any case whatever the solution, content should rule over style. Many users may well be unhappy about poor style but even more will be unhappy about poor content. -- Derek Ross
The image currently shown on this page does not depict Notomys alexis. In fact it's not a Notomys at all, but looks like a bandicoot of some sort. I'm not terribly familiar with image licensing, or I'd try to replace it, but hopefully someone more familiar with licensing and policies can take appropriate action. 121.44.201.69 ( talk) 17:50, 17 November 2010 (UTC)