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While there is agreement to use the definite article for The Gambia, there is no agreement on Wikipedia or in reliable sources whether it should be capitalized. A sample Ngrams comparison for "of the/The Gambia" similar ones for several other prepositions is inconclusive; I have not checked if external style guides discuss the capitalization of this country.
The most recent discussion on this topic is Talk:The_Gambia/Archive_2#Is_it_"The_Gambia"_or_"the_Gambia"_in_the_middle_of_a_sentence from 2017.
Unfortunately, the format of MOS:THECAPS makes it impossible to explain this concisely. Proposed addition to THECAPS:
Extended content
| ||||||
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References
References |
– LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄) 15:42, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
"only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia". It's not a choice between the usage of the government of the Gambia and the African Union; it's a question of whether it is
"consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources". Look at
"independent, reliable sources". Easy places to look are Google Books, Google Scholar and other search engines. See if it is
"consistently capitalized in a substantial majority"of those sources. Last time I looked it was not a majority, let alone a substantial majority. If there's an RfC, I'll look again, but I doubt it's changed. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 03:18, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
References
In this edit Vic Park ( talk · contribs) has capitalized "Equator" when referring to Earth's equator, mentioning Wiktionary in an edit summary. The editor contends it should be capitalized as a proper noun. I contend that since reliable sources such as the online dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster dictionary entries are not capitalized, and there is no mention of capitalizing even when referring to Earth, the word should not be capitalized. Another place, the Prime Meridian, or prime meridian, was also mentioned in edit summaries. The Wikipedia article name for the latter is "Prime meridian" and I believe the first letter is only capitalized because it is the first word of an article. Jc3s5h ( talk) 18:38, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
Per this ngram, equator is clearly in the lowercase per MOS:CAPS, unless someone can show that Earth's equator is not the major usage. We have this ngram which gives a similar result for prime meridian. The Tropic of Capricorn [1] and Tropic of Cancer [2] give the opposite result. Cinderella157 ( talk) 06:26, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
How should the names of such be capitalized (or not capitalized)? ¿V0!d? {Have a great day!} 00:33, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints#Requested move 18 December 2022 that may be of interest to members of the Manual of Style WikiProject. –– FormalDude (talk) 01:03, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
Is it correct to capitalize "act" and "scene" in descriptions of dramatic works. ≪"To be or not to be", Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1.≫ Or: "… the transition from Scene 1 to Scene 2 in Act 1 …". -- Michael Bednarek ( talk) 00:44, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
I've downcased many thousands of "Did not advance", "Did not start", "Did not finish", "Did not qualify", "Qualified", "Disqualified", etc. in tables of sports results (mostly in the last day or so, but also for many months or years), and had a couple of enquiries as to whether that's the right thing to be doing per the MOS, and a couple of reverts (e.g. [3], [4]; even "Did not Advance"). My interpretation is that caps are not necessary there, and that table entries (not headings) are not like list items (which can have line-leading caps, if consistent). Any opinions/guidance on this? Dicklyon ( talk) 09:28, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
A couple of reverts were for where "Did not advance to free skating" and such were used in tables on lines of their own, serving as headings. I agree and have just reverted back a bunch of those "headings", which are functionally distinct from "did not advance" as an entry in a cell or group of cells. Similary for "Did not bat:". I thanked the reverters. Dicklyon ( talk) 10:15, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
Relevant discussion starts on the topic can be found at these three user talk pages: User talk:Dicklyon#Case fixes and User talk:Oknazevad#Capitalizing first letter of fragments in table entries. and User talk:DragonFury#Why cap this table entry?. Dicklyon ( talk) 10:51, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
@ Pelmeen10, Why? I Ask, Oknazevad, Anbans 586, DragonFury, Harrias, and Bgsu98: – editors involved in discussions and/or reverts mentioned above. Dicklyon ( talk) 10:58, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
@ Sahaib: who thanked me for at least one of these edits. Dicklyon ( talk) 12:16, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
Turns out this is already in the MOS. WP:LISTCASE says use sentence case, even for a fragment. Which includes an initial capital. oknazevad ( talk) 12:39, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
For the last few years, those of us who edit the Indigenous articles, many of whom participate in the Indigenous Wikiproject have been standardizing the capitalization of "Indigenous", as this is the convention in the world at large at this time. Older print sources don't always do it, so there are sources that have both. But we are going with those preferred by the people being described. I've added the ones we have up now, such as those from the Associated Press, The Chicago Manual of Style, The Native American Journalists Association, and the APA Style. There are many more who just haven't published their style guides, but their use of this convention can be seen in reading sources that are considered reliable for Indigenous coverage. I have tweaked the sources a bit at the wikiproject page, and in the WP:TRIBE notes, and fixed a link. So, my proposal is to simply add the word "Indigenous" in this part, as it is a synonym for "Native American", with a footnote link to the fuller explanations at WP:TRIBE. Current text:
Ethno-racial "color labels" may be given capitalized (Black and White) or lower-case (black and white). The capitalized form will be more appropriate in the company of other upper-case terms of this sort (Asian–Pacific, Black, Hispanic, Native American, and White demographic categories).
Proposed:
Ethno-racial "color labels" may be given capitalized (Black and White) or lower-case (black and white). The capitalized form will be more appropriate in the company of other upper-case terms of this sort (Asian–Pacific, Black, Hispanic, Native American, Indigenous, [a] and White demographic categories).
- CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 21:01, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
this is the convention in the world at large at this time; however, this is not supported by ngram evidence here and here. The term is not inherently a proper noun. It may be appropriate to capitalise it in certain cases but not in all instances. I would also observe that WP:TRIBE has evolved to give advice that is at odds with MOS:CAPS. It would capitalise circumpolar in Circumpolar peoples which is contrary to the ngram evidence and tribe in Tribe of Naphtali which is contrary to the ngram evidence. Cinderella157 ( talk) 06:55, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
this is the convention in the world at large at this time, I am referring to the recent portion of the ngram evidence. Cinderella157 ( talk) 23:39, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
It may be appropriate to capitalise it in certain cases but not in all instances.Cinderella157 ( talk) 07:49, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
IMHO, our MOS doc is overly tricky regarding our guidelines for the expansion casing of acronyms & initialisms. There are more than a dozen scattered, brief, and muddy paragraphs of MOS guidelines on the topic and very few clear sample expansions showing our preferred casings. It would be helpful to consolidate the MOS acronym paragraphs into one guideline area and also to add more samples. I will expand on this thread with specifics. Right now the fragmentation, muddiness, and brevity of the paragraphs in our MOS cause unnecessary confusion & editing drama. Following our MOS needs to be simpler for mainstream & newbie editors who do not have their Ph.D. in our MOS nuances. Please post shortcuts to all the MOS caps guidance you are aware of regarding acronym & initialism expansion. Hint: the unchecked default on the wild Wiki is title casing, whereas my read is that sentence casing would more often satisfy our MOS. Thank you to all of you here that do the heavy lifting on the technical issues in the MOS department! I truly appreciate your hard work, dedication, and effort. You are all rock stars. Cheers! {{u|
WikiWikiWayne}} {
Talk}
18:56, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
And yet I thought I'd seen discussion in an MoS at some point. Seems relevant here. Doug Weller talk 08:58, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
MOS:RACECAPS is our current guidance on capitalizing ethno-racial color labels (e.g. Black/black, White/white), and it emphasizes the need for consistency within an article. How have editors interpreted this when it comes to direct quotations?
MOS:CONFORM says "Formatting and other purely typographical elements of quoted text should be adapted to English Wikipedia's conventions without comment"
and later describes such recommended changes as "alterations which make no difference when the text is read aloud"
. Does this apply to ethno-racial color labels? I'm not pushing for a change to this guideline, just wondering what common practice is.
Firefangledfeathers (
talk /
contribs)
02:56, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
Which is correct
or
or is it personal choice? Herostratus ( talk) 03:21, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
The page currently includes "... person/people of colo[u]r is not offensive, and not capitalized". I venture that instead the phrase should be with black/Black and white/White in that it can be "Person of Color" or "person of color", and the choice depends upon the same considerations. I propose to edit the article accordingly. — Quantling ( talk | contribs) 14:57, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
"Person of color" is overwhelmingly lowercase in sources. Dicklyon ( talk) 08:59, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
Should we update/hedge "is not offensive"? Our own article on the term observes that "Many critics of the term, both white and non-white, object to its lack of specificity and find the phrase racially offensive" and that "Political scientist Angelo Falcón argues that the use of broad terms like "person of color" is offensive", and there are more examples. EddieHugh ( talk) 18:26, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
Sometimes (often) we use title-case article titles for things that are listed in title case in heritage listings, e.g. Pyrmont and Glebe Railway Tunnels; other times we don't, e.g. Glebe and Wentworth Park railway viaducts. I've recently been riding the L1 light rail line and exploring both of these areas that are part of the same system finished back in 1922; got lots more photos to upload. But I couldn't help but notice the capitalization inconsistency. My impression is that people who make articles on things that wouldn't be notable except for the heritage listing like to copy the title case from the listing, as there are typically few or no other sources using the same name or description. But does that make it a proper name? Or just a title-cased description? I can't find many sources with names for the railway tunnels in Pyrmont or Glebe. The heritage site uses "Glebe railway tunnel" in text, and just descriptive terms on the other one, so I suppose I'll downcase it. Dicklyon ( talk) 08:49, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
Similarly, I downcased "building" in Railway Institute Building, and provide the missing article "the" where it seemed sensible. Dicklyon ( talk) 12:06, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
Any opinions on heritage-listed things more generally? For things like the Smith–Jones House and Farm, we routinely capitalize, even though the title is essentially descriptive, just because it got stuck on a hertitage list that way (though usually listed with a hyphen when a dash is appropriate). There are typically no sources using the name unless it has been made into a park or something, in which case it is more clearly a proper name. I'm not proposing to go and downcase all the houses, but wondering what others think about such things. Dicklyon ( talk) 09:22, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
I wish to repost a question which I originally posted on WT:Manual of Style/Organisms but which received no reply.
What's the standard for grape varieties such as
Pinot Noir,
Cabernet Sauvignon or
Sauvignon Blanc? For example, currently the article on
Pinot Noir apparently consistently does not capitalize ("pinot noir
").
Cabernet Sauvignon does capitalize the name of that variety, but otherwise the capitalization appears to be not very consistent: in the lead we have "the grape is ... the product of a chance crossing between Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon blanc ...
". Here, both words in "Cabernet Franc" are capitalized, but only the first word in "Sauvignon blanc". Why is that? What would be the official rules? -- 04:58, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
2001:16B8:A8:2900:B834:EF24:15B0:A140 (
talk)
04:58, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
"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."(emphasis in the original)
"consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources". Wine lovers may disagree, but we should follow Wikipedia's long established style. The other question is whether it's worth your time to make the changes and then probably argue about them. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 13:23, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Often publications have e.g., chapter name, section names, titles, in all capitals. It would be helpful to have explicit guidance on when, whether and how to change the case per WP:CONFORM when citing parts of such works.
If such case change is appropriate, is there a widget to automate case changes to parameters of citation templates? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul ( talk) 10:32, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
What are the rules regarding the capitalisation of words ancient and classical in language names? I see that the article Ancient Greek uses capitalised Ancient, but this MOS guideline provides examples such as ancient Latin, Gaulish, etc. as well as classical Latin, Greek. -- TadejM my talk 00:21, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for the clarification. The text contains "letterforms in classical Latin, Greek, and other unicase scripts". I don't think classical should be capitalised here as it also refers to Greek and is thus descriptive rather than part of a proper name.-- TadejM my talk 17:04, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
As many of you know, I have been somewhat focused on fixing over-capitalization recently, with about 30,000 edits so far in 2023, and about 200,000 edits in 2022. My typical MO, when I'm not otherwise too busy, is to click through "random articles" looking for obvious over-capping. When I see something, I fix it, like I did here a few minutes ago. Then I do a search on some of the things I fixed to see if they are patterns that repeat in other articles. In this case, I found only one more, and fixed it. But sometimes I find thousands more, so I work on those via JWB. In a few cases (see for example some sections above and some recent or open RM discussions), I get some pushback, so I stop and discuss. This is less than 1% of cases, I think, and has been almost all from sports enthusiasts wanting to cap things that are not so commonly capped in sources (not surprisingly, since most of the over-capitalization I found and worked on was in sports articles). Depending on how discussion goes, my attempts stop, or resume. These edits have fixed well over a million unnecessary capital letters, with very little controversy and pushback, and I think help make the encyclopedia better by having caps really mean something, in conformance with our Manual of Style and the usually strong consensus to follow what it says at MOS:CAPS. I'm not expecting any great kudos for this work, but I'm happy that I've gotten more thanks than complaints. Progress. It's hard to say how much more is to be done, but I find I have to click a lot of random articles before noticing any over-capping problems these days. I hope people will continue to scrutinize my edits, and speak up if I make mistakes, as I sometimes do. Dicklyon ( talk) 08:51, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
Sometimes progress on case fixing is hard due to the shear numbers of sports fans, rail fans, or whatever, that like to capitalize their stuff. For example, the RM just closed with no consensus because "While those in support had a stronger argument, the argument was not sufficiently strong to overcome the numerical opposition to this proposal" as the non-admin closer put it, even those many of the opposers just repeated things that were clearly false. Without more people taking style issues seriously, it will generally be difficult to make progress toward compliance with guidelines in areas that can be dominated by fans of over-capitalization of their special stuff. Oh, well, win some, lose some. Dicklyon ( talk) 11:02, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
I found another big area of over-capitalization: Stars, Actors, Writers, Producers, Directors, Hosts, Co-Hosts, Narrators, etc. of TV Film, TV Series, etc. I did about 10,000 edits on that in the last few days, fixing maybe 100,000 unneeded capital letters. A few mistakes were reverted (which I gave thanks for), but so far no pushback on this. Further checking is always welcome. Dicklyon ( talk) 06:24, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
I was over-optimistic on the sports progress, I think. I found and fixed a few thousand more football, and a thousand or so volleyball articles with widespread over-capitalization of staff and player positions and such. Looks like the same will apply to other sports. Dicklyon ( talk) 11:28, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
@ Jweiss11: Doing lots more sports case fixing, I ran into this one with a claim of proper name status: BCS National Championship Game. The "logo" and many sources don't consider "Game" to be part of the name, so I could see compromising on BCS National Championship game or just BCS National Championship. Then there are contexts such as "their first BCS National Championship", which should be "their first BCS national championship", right? Dicklyon ( talk) 23:59, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
The main problem is that sports editors don't seem to know about MOS:JOBTITLE. Every player position, every staff position, in every imaginable style or context, is title-cased. I've been fixing these for months; just did a few thousand more in football, from Tight Ends to Graduate Assistants. The over-capitalization of events that aren't capped in sources is small potatoes by comparison, but that's what they fight for. Dicklyon ( talk) 13:08, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
Do not apply initial capitals in a full term that is a common-noun phrase, just because capitals are used in its abbreviationOr course, WP is full of amateur writers (myself included)— Bagumba ( talk) 11:07, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
MOS:LCITEMS says Wikipedia articles may use lowercase variants of personal names if they have regular and established use in reliable third party sources, why is this not also true of uppercase variants? For example MF DOOM, who has specifically requested his name be stylized as such. 2601:603:207E:170:D0E4:8ED5:FBD:A9C5 ( talk) 19:36, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
There is a request for comment regarding whether MOS:SECTIONCAPS should advise capitalizing after a colon in a heading. Discuss it here. Wracking talk! 05:57, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
Have I missed any guidance about whether these can be mixed? I’ve seen occasions where one is upper case and another lower case? Doug Weller talk 08:31, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm starting a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#What next for The Gambia? about how to followup on the RfC which changed Wikipedia style to use a capital "T" for The Gambia mid-sentence and mid-article title. Please participate in the discussion there. Thank you, SchreiberBike | ⌨ 04:02, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Thoughts on this title. Cinderella157 ( talk) 08:20, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
Google books search has it all over the place, including all caps and first letter caps (and different combos in between). Cinderella157 ( talk) 08:28, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 30 | ← | Archive 34 | Archive 35 | Archive 36 | Archive 37 | Archive 38 | → | Archive 40 |
While there is agreement to use the definite article for The Gambia, there is no agreement on Wikipedia or in reliable sources whether it should be capitalized. A sample Ngrams comparison for "of the/The Gambia" similar ones for several other prepositions is inconclusive; I have not checked if external style guides discuss the capitalization of this country.
The most recent discussion on this topic is Talk:The_Gambia/Archive_2#Is_it_"The_Gambia"_or_"the_Gambia"_in_the_middle_of_a_sentence from 2017.
Unfortunately, the format of MOS:THECAPS makes it impossible to explain this concisely. Proposed addition to THECAPS:
Extended content
| ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
References
References |
– LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄) 15:42, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
"only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia". It's not a choice between the usage of the government of the Gambia and the African Union; it's a question of whether it is
"consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources". Look at
"independent, reliable sources". Easy places to look are Google Books, Google Scholar and other search engines. See if it is
"consistently capitalized in a substantial majority"of those sources. Last time I looked it was not a majority, let alone a substantial majority. If there's an RfC, I'll look again, but I doubt it's changed. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 03:18, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
References
In this edit Vic Park ( talk · contribs) has capitalized "Equator" when referring to Earth's equator, mentioning Wiktionary in an edit summary. The editor contends it should be capitalized as a proper noun. I contend that since reliable sources such as the online dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster dictionary entries are not capitalized, and there is no mention of capitalizing even when referring to Earth, the word should not be capitalized. Another place, the Prime Meridian, or prime meridian, was also mentioned in edit summaries. The Wikipedia article name for the latter is "Prime meridian" and I believe the first letter is only capitalized because it is the first word of an article. Jc3s5h ( talk) 18:38, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
Per this ngram, equator is clearly in the lowercase per MOS:CAPS, unless someone can show that Earth's equator is not the major usage. We have this ngram which gives a similar result for prime meridian. The Tropic of Capricorn [1] and Tropic of Cancer [2] give the opposite result. Cinderella157 ( talk) 06:26, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
How should the names of such be capitalized (or not capitalized)? ¿V0!d? {Have a great day!} 00:33, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints#Requested move 18 December 2022 that may be of interest to members of the Manual of Style WikiProject. –– FormalDude (talk) 01:03, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
Is it correct to capitalize "act" and "scene" in descriptions of dramatic works. ≪"To be or not to be", Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1.≫ Or: "… the transition from Scene 1 to Scene 2 in Act 1 …". -- Michael Bednarek ( talk) 00:44, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
I've downcased many thousands of "Did not advance", "Did not start", "Did not finish", "Did not qualify", "Qualified", "Disqualified", etc. in tables of sports results (mostly in the last day or so, but also for many months or years), and had a couple of enquiries as to whether that's the right thing to be doing per the MOS, and a couple of reverts (e.g. [3], [4]; even "Did not Advance"). My interpretation is that caps are not necessary there, and that table entries (not headings) are not like list items (which can have line-leading caps, if consistent). Any opinions/guidance on this? Dicklyon ( talk) 09:28, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
A couple of reverts were for where "Did not advance to free skating" and such were used in tables on lines of their own, serving as headings. I agree and have just reverted back a bunch of those "headings", which are functionally distinct from "did not advance" as an entry in a cell or group of cells. Similary for "Did not bat:". I thanked the reverters. Dicklyon ( talk) 10:15, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
Relevant discussion starts on the topic can be found at these three user talk pages: User talk:Dicklyon#Case fixes and User talk:Oknazevad#Capitalizing first letter of fragments in table entries. and User talk:DragonFury#Why cap this table entry?. Dicklyon ( talk) 10:51, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
@ Pelmeen10, Why? I Ask, Oknazevad, Anbans 586, DragonFury, Harrias, and Bgsu98: – editors involved in discussions and/or reverts mentioned above. Dicklyon ( talk) 10:58, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
@ Sahaib: who thanked me for at least one of these edits. Dicklyon ( talk) 12:16, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
Turns out this is already in the MOS. WP:LISTCASE says use sentence case, even for a fragment. Which includes an initial capital. oknazevad ( talk) 12:39, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
For the last few years, those of us who edit the Indigenous articles, many of whom participate in the Indigenous Wikiproject have been standardizing the capitalization of "Indigenous", as this is the convention in the world at large at this time. Older print sources don't always do it, so there are sources that have both. But we are going with those preferred by the people being described. I've added the ones we have up now, such as those from the Associated Press, The Chicago Manual of Style, The Native American Journalists Association, and the APA Style. There are many more who just haven't published their style guides, but their use of this convention can be seen in reading sources that are considered reliable for Indigenous coverage. I have tweaked the sources a bit at the wikiproject page, and in the WP:TRIBE notes, and fixed a link. So, my proposal is to simply add the word "Indigenous" in this part, as it is a synonym for "Native American", with a footnote link to the fuller explanations at WP:TRIBE. Current text:
Ethno-racial "color labels" may be given capitalized (Black and White) or lower-case (black and white). The capitalized form will be more appropriate in the company of other upper-case terms of this sort (Asian–Pacific, Black, Hispanic, Native American, and White demographic categories).
Proposed:
Ethno-racial "color labels" may be given capitalized (Black and White) or lower-case (black and white). The capitalized form will be more appropriate in the company of other upper-case terms of this sort (Asian–Pacific, Black, Hispanic, Native American, Indigenous, [a] and White demographic categories).
- CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 21:01, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
this is the convention in the world at large at this time; however, this is not supported by ngram evidence here and here. The term is not inherently a proper noun. It may be appropriate to capitalise it in certain cases but not in all instances. I would also observe that WP:TRIBE has evolved to give advice that is at odds with MOS:CAPS. It would capitalise circumpolar in Circumpolar peoples which is contrary to the ngram evidence and tribe in Tribe of Naphtali which is contrary to the ngram evidence. Cinderella157 ( talk) 06:55, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
this is the convention in the world at large at this time, I am referring to the recent portion of the ngram evidence. Cinderella157 ( talk) 23:39, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
It may be appropriate to capitalise it in certain cases but not in all instances.Cinderella157 ( talk) 07:49, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
IMHO, our MOS doc is overly tricky regarding our guidelines for the expansion casing of acronyms & initialisms. There are more than a dozen scattered, brief, and muddy paragraphs of MOS guidelines on the topic and very few clear sample expansions showing our preferred casings. It would be helpful to consolidate the MOS acronym paragraphs into one guideline area and also to add more samples. I will expand on this thread with specifics. Right now the fragmentation, muddiness, and brevity of the paragraphs in our MOS cause unnecessary confusion & editing drama. Following our MOS needs to be simpler for mainstream & newbie editors who do not have their Ph.D. in our MOS nuances. Please post shortcuts to all the MOS caps guidance you are aware of regarding acronym & initialism expansion. Hint: the unchecked default on the wild Wiki is title casing, whereas my read is that sentence casing would more often satisfy our MOS. Thank you to all of you here that do the heavy lifting on the technical issues in the MOS department! I truly appreciate your hard work, dedication, and effort. You are all rock stars. Cheers! {{u|
WikiWikiWayne}} {
Talk}
18:56, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
And yet I thought I'd seen discussion in an MoS at some point. Seems relevant here. Doug Weller talk 08:58, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
MOS:RACECAPS is our current guidance on capitalizing ethno-racial color labels (e.g. Black/black, White/white), and it emphasizes the need for consistency within an article. How have editors interpreted this when it comes to direct quotations?
MOS:CONFORM says "Formatting and other purely typographical elements of quoted text should be adapted to English Wikipedia's conventions without comment"
and later describes such recommended changes as "alterations which make no difference when the text is read aloud"
. Does this apply to ethno-racial color labels? I'm not pushing for a change to this guideline, just wondering what common practice is.
Firefangledfeathers (
talk /
contribs)
02:56, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
Which is correct
or
or is it personal choice? Herostratus ( talk) 03:21, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
The page currently includes "... person/people of colo[u]r is not offensive, and not capitalized". I venture that instead the phrase should be with black/Black and white/White in that it can be "Person of Color" or "person of color", and the choice depends upon the same considerations. I propose to edit the article accordingly. — Quantling ( talk | contribs) 14:57, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
"Person of color" is overwhelmingly lowercase in sources. Dicklyon ( talk) 08:59, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
Should we update/hedge "is not offensive"? Our own article on the term observes that "Many critics of the term, both white and non-white, object to its lack of specificity and find the phrase racially offensive" and that "Political scientist Angelo Falcón argues that the use of broad terms like "person of color" is offensive", and there are more examples. EddieHugh ( talk) 18:26, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
Sometimes (often) we use title-case article titles for things that are listed in title case in heritage listings, e.g. Pyrmont and Glebe Railway Tunnels; other times we don't, e.g. Glebe and Wentworth Park railway viaducts. I've recently been riding the L1 light rail line and exploring both of these areas that are part of the same system finished back in 1922; got lots more photos to upload. But I couldn't help but notice the capitalization inconsistency. My impression is that people who make articles on things that wouldn't be notable except for the heritage listing like to copy the title case from the listing, as there are typically few or no other sources using the same name or description. But does that make it a proper name? Or just a title-cased description? I can't find many sources with names for the railway tunnels in Pyrmont or Glebe. The heritage site uses "Glebe railway tunnel" in text, and just descriptive terms on the other one, so I suppose I'll downcase it. Dicklyon ( talk) 08:49, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
Similarly, I downcased "building" in Railway Institute Building, and provide the missing article "the" where it seemed sensible. Dicklyon ( talk) 12:06, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
Any opinions on heritage-listed things more generally? For things like the Smith–Jones House and Farm, we routinely capitalize, even though the title is essentially descriptive, just because it got stuck on a hertitage list that way (though usually listed with a hyphen when a dash is appropriate). There are typically no sources using the name unless it has been made into a park or something, in which case it is more clearly a proper name. I'm not proposing to go and downcase all the houses, but wondering what others think about such things. Dicklyon ( talk) 09:22, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
I wish to repost a question which I originally posted on WT:Manual of Style/Organisms but which received no reply.
What's the standard for grape varieties such as
Pinot Noir,
Cabernet Sauvignon or
Sauvignon Blanc? For example, currently the article on
Pinot Noir apparently consistently does not capitalize ("pinot noir
").
Cabernet Sauvignon does capitalize the name of that variety, but otherwise the capitalization appears to be not very consistent: in the lead we have "the grape is ... the product of a chance crossing between Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon blanc ...
". Here, both words in "Cabernet Franc" are capitalized, but only the first word in "Sauvignon blanc". Why is that? What would be the official rules? -- 04:58, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
2001:16B8:A8:2900:B834:EF24:15B0:A140 (
talk)
04:58, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
"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."(emphasis in the original)
"consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources". Wine lovers may disagree, but we should follow Wikipedia's long established style. The other question is whether it's worth your time to make the changes and then probably argue about them. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 13:23, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Often publications have e.g., chapter name, section names, titles, in all capitals. It would be helpful to have explicit guidance on when, whether and how to change the case per WP:CONFORM when citing parts of such works.
If such case change is appropriate, is there a widget to automate case changes to parameters of citation templates? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul ( talk) 10:32, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
What are the rules regarding the capitalisation of words ancient and classical in language names? I see that the article Ancient Greek uses capitalised Ancient, but this MOS guideline provides examples such as ancient Latin, Gaulish, etc. as well as classical Latin, Greek. -- TadejM my talk 00:21, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for the clarification. The text contains "letterforms in classical Latin, Greek, and other unicase scripts". I don't think classical should be capitalised here as it also refers to Greek and is thus descriptive rather than part of a proper name.-- TadejM my talk 17:04, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
As many of you know, I have been somewhat focused on fixing over-capitalization recently, with about 30,000 edits so far in 2023, and about 200,000 edits in 2022. My typical MO, when I'm not otherwise too busy, is to click through "random articles" looking for obvious over-capping. When I see something, I fix it, like I did here a few minutes ago. Then I do a search on some of the things I fixed to see if they are patterns that repeat in other articles. In this case, I found only one more, and fixed it. But sometimes I find thousands more, so I work on those via JWB. In a few cases (see for example some sections above and some recent or open RM discussions), I get some pushback, so I stop and discuss. This is less than 1% of cases, I think, and has been almost all from sports enthusiasts wanting to cap things that are not so commonly capped in sources (not surprisingly, since most of the over-capitalization I found and worked on was in sports articles). Depending on how discussion goes, my attempts stop, or resume. These edits have fixed well over a million unnecessary capital letters, with very little controversy and pushback, and I think help make the encyclopedia better by having caps really mean something, in conformance with our Manual of Style and the usually strong consensus to follow what it says at MOS:CAPS. I'm not expecting any great kudos for this work, but I'm happy that I've gotten more thanks than complaints. Progress. It's hard to say how much more is to be done, but I find I have to click a lot of random articles before noticing any over-capping problems these days. I hope people will continue to scrutinize my edits, and speak up if I make mistakes, as I sometimes do. Dicklyon ( talk) 08:51, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
Sometimes progress on case fixing is hard due to the shear numbers of sports fans, rail fans, or whatever, that like to capitalize their stuff. For example, the RM just closed with no consensus because "While those in support had a stronger argument, the argument was not sufficiently strong to overcome the numerical opposition to this proposal" as the non-admin closer put it, even those many of the opposers just repeated things that were clearly false. Without more people taking style issues seriously, it will generally be difficult to make progress toward compliance with guidelines in areas that can be dominated by fans of over-capitalization of their special stuff. Oh, well, win some, lose some. Dicklyon ( talk) 11:02, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
I found another big area of over-capitalization: Stars, Actors, Writers, Producers, Directors, Hosts, Co-Hosts, Narrators, etc. of TV Film, TV Series, etc. I did about 10,000 edits on that in the last few days, fixing maybe 100,000 unneeded capital letters. A few mistakes were reverted (which I gave thanks for), but so far no pushback on this. Further checking is always welcome. Dicklyon ( talk) 06:24, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
I was over-optimistic on the sports progress, I think. I found and fixed a few thousand more football, and a thousand or so volleyball articles with widespread over-capitalization of staff and player positions and such. Looks like the same will apply to other sports. Dicklyon ( talk) 11:28, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
@ Jweiss11: Doing lots more sports case fixing, I ran into this one with a claim of proper name status: BCS National Championship Game. The "logo" and many sources don't consider "Game" to be part of the name, so I could see compromising on BCS National Championship game or just BCS National Championship. Then there are contexts such as "their first BCS National Championship", which should be "their first BCS national championship", right? Dicklyon ( talk) 23:59, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
The main problem is that sports editors don't seem to know about MOS:JOBTITLE. Every player position, every staff position, in every imaginable style or context, is title-cased. I've been fixing these for months; just did a few thousand more in football, from Tight Ends to Graduate Assistants. The over-capitalization of events that aren't capped in sources is small potatoes by comparison, but that's what they fight for. Dicklyon ( talk) 13:08, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
Do not apply initial capitals in a full term that is a common-noun phrase, just because capitals are used in its abbreviationOr course, WP is full of amateur writers (myself included)— Bagumba ( talk) 11:07, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
MOS:LCITEMS says Wikipedia articles may use lowercase variants of personal names if they have regular and established use in reliable third party sources, why is this not also true of uppercase variants? For example MF DOOM, who has specifically requested his name be stylized as such. 2601:603:207E:170:D0E4:8ED5:FBD:A9C5 ( talk) 19:36, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
There is a request for comment regarding whether MOS:SECTIONCAPS should advise capitalizing after a colon in a heading. Discuss it here. Wracking talk! 05:57, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
Have I missed any guidance about whether these can be mixed? I’ve seen occasions where one is upper case and another lower case? Doug Weller talk 08:31, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm starting a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#What next for The Gambia? about how to followup on the RfC which changed Wikipedia style to use a capital "T" for The Gambia mid-sentence and mid-article title. Please participate in the discussion there. Thank you, SchreiberBike | ⌨ 04:02, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Thoughts on this title. Cinderella157 ( talk) 08:20, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
Google books search has it all over the place, including all caps and first letter caps (and different combos in between). Cinderella157 ( talk) 08:28, 17 June 2023 (UTC)