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Upstate New York article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
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Is 'Upstate' capitalized? The article seems to say so, and I can think of comparisons that would support both sides, such as 'mainland China' or 'Upper Egypt', so I assume it comes down to source coverage and consensus, right? Remsense 留 19:22, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia.This is essentially a statistical question to be determined by objectively polling usage in a large number of sources (a representative sample). Ngrams satisfies this. Generally, the alternative is a source war and who can produce the most sources to support their preferred capitalisation. The ngram evidence is quit conclusive with about 5:1 for lowercase (without considering titles of works, business names and like that would increase the proportion capitalised). Given the overwhelming ngram evidence, I cannot see any reasonable case being made for capitalisation. Cinderella157 ( talk) 04:05, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
Regions like Southern California, Western Massachusetts, and Central Florida are consistently capitalized in Wikipedia. Should Upstate New York be different? AJD ( talk) 21:23, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
It can vary for other reasons in unusual cases. E.g., "northern New Mexico" as simply a loosely defined geographical area is not a proper name, just a descriptor. But Northern New Mexico is often treated as a capitalized proper name of another sort, culturally/anthropologically/sociologically: a discrete Hispanic cultural zone with a unique history due to long-term isolation between the Spanish Conquest and the coming of the railroads, which has produced distinct religious traditions, cuisine, Spanish-language dialect, etc. But that Northern New Mexico is not a place you can drive through or build a house in; it's a traditional and later analytical social construct. I'm extremely skeptical anything like that applies to upstate New York, west Texas, central Florida, etc. Why "Northern California" and "Southern California" get capitalized in this manner is a good question. The longer there's a continguous "Western culture" history of a place, the more likely regional terms are to be treated as proper names, even if they do not conform to political boundaries. E.g. various regions of England and Scotland. If you tried to down-case the
Scottish Highlands or the
West Country (or its containing
South West [of] England, you'd be shouted out of the room. Cf. also the
Camargue and
French Riviera,
Italian Riviera, etc., which do not correspond to civil divisions (or to historical kingdoms/duchies, etc.). Ultimately, this stuff seems pretty arbitrary, and we have little to go on but whether something is overwhelmingly capitalized in independent English-language sources. For every argument that can be advanced that something "is" a proper name for [insert reason here], someone else has an [insert other reason here] to argue against it, because all these "is of identity or predication" arguments about the term proper name are making
Proper name (philosophy) claims which have not only been argued about inconclusively for centuries, they have no connection to capitalization in the first place (e.g. under most philosophy definitions, every named disease, species, doctrine, method, theory, etc., etc., is a proper name unless the name is purely descriptive). What determines
Proper name (linguistics) treatment as something to capitalize is primarily just convention (and even when something is clearly a proper name under every definition, it is not necessarily capitalized anyway, e.g.
k.d. lang and, increasingly lowercased,
the internet). We spend too much time arguing about such matters with OR and POV, instead of just following
MOS:CAPS: Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
20:36, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Upstate New York article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1, 2 |
![]() | This article was nominated for deletion on 6 June 2010 (UTC). The result of the discussion was keep. |
![]() | This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | This article has been
mentioned by a media organization:
|
Is 'Upstate' capitalized? The article seems to say so, and I can think of comparisons that would support both sides, such as 'mainland China' or 'Upper Egypt', so I assume it comes down to source coverage and consensus, right? Remsense 留 19:22, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia.This is essentially a statistical question to be determined by objectively polling usage in a large number of sources (a representative sample). Ngrams satisfies this. Generally, the alternative is a source war and who can produce the most sources to support their preferred capitalisation. The ngram evidence is quit conclusive with about 5:1 for lowercase (without considering titles of works, business names and like that would increase the proportion capitalised). Given the overwhelming ngram evidence, I cannot see any reasonable case being made for capitalisation. Cinderella157 ( talk) 04:05, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
Regions like Southern California, Western Massachusetts, and Central Florida are consistently capitalized in Wikipedia. Should Upstate New York be different? AJD ( talk) 21:23, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
It can vary for other reasons in unusual cases. E.g., "northern New Mexico" as simply a loosely defined geographical area is not a proper name, just a descriptor. But Northern New Mexico is often treated as a capitalized proper name of another sort, culturally/anthropologically/sociologically: a discrete Hispanic cultural zone with a unique history due to long-term isolation between the Spanish Conquest and the coming of the railroads, which has produced distinct religious traditions, cuisine, Spanish-language dialect, etc. But that Northern New Mexico is not a place you can drive through or build a house in; it's a traditional and later analytical social construct. I'm extremely skeptical anything like that applies to upstate New York, west Texas, central Florida, etc. Why "Northern California" and "Southern California" get capitalized in this manner is a good question. The longer there's a continguous "Western culture" history of a place, the more likely regional terms are to be treated as proper names, even if they do not conform to political boundaries. E.g. various regions of England and Scotland. If you tried to down-case the
Scottish Highlands or the
West Country (or its containing
South West [of] England, you'd be shouted out of the room. Cf. also the
Camargue and
French Riviera,
Italian Riviera, etc., which do not correspond to civil divisions (or to historical kingdoms/duchies, etc.). Ultimately, this stuff seems pretty arbitrary, and we have little to go on but whether something is overwhelmingly capitalized in independent English-language sources. For every argument that can be advanced that something "is" a proper name for [insert reason here], someone else has an [insert other reason here] to argue against it, because all these "is of identity or predication" arguments about the term proper name are making
Proper name (philosophy) claims which have not only been argued about inconclusively for centuries, they have no connection to capitalization in the first place (e.g. under most philosophy definitions, every named disease, species, doctrine, method, theory, etc., etc., is a proper name unless the name is purely descriptive). What determines
Proper name (linguistics) treatment as something to capitalize is primarily just convention (and even when something is clearly a proper name under every definition, it is not necessarily capitalized anyway, e.g.
k.d. lang and, increasingly lowercased,
the internet). We spend too much time arguing about such matters with OR and POV, instead of just following
MOS:CAPS: Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
20:36, 21 January 2024 (UTC)