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Should the first word after a dash in the name of a sports article, such as
Rowing at the 1988 Summer Olympics – Men's coxed four, be capitalized?~
T
P
W
18:45, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
To get us started on how to put the above result into action, I've compiled a list of 40,000 or so articles that could use a lowercase after the dash. It's too many to list in one page, so I split into these two: User:Dicklyon/Cap after dash titles and User:Dicklyon/Cap after dash titles more. Someone (including me) should look the lists over carefully to see if my query swept up anything it shouldn't have. When we're happy with the lists, we can ask for a TolBot task and get bot approval to automate the moves (I won't be executing that, but I can help get the lists in shape and so on). Dicklyon ( talk) 19:05, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
Some findings so far:
... there is no consensus on capitalization for sporting events in general, and there is a rough consensus that specific capitalization rules for the tennis project are permissible at this time ...[emphasis added]. The other two discussions linked on your TP were not RfCs. Consensus can and has changed. It sounds very much like you are accusing either the nom of the RfC here (or perhaps somebody else) of bad faith or worse? Cinderella157 ( talk) 04:15, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
This was already handled in a couple of large rfcs' for tennis articles a year or so ago.My response (immediately above) did refer to the three discussions you initially linked on your talk page, including those two you now link here. I will say it again, only one of those was an RfC. Cinderella157 ( talk) 10:23, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
I think the fundamental problem is that we don't have any guidance on such a role for the dash in titles. Guidance says we don't do subtitles, but that's how some want to use the dash. I think the reason we don't is that we want to be able to directly use titles in article text (perhaps with pipe trick), and this construct won't work for that. As Fyunck points out, we avoided a case disagreement elsewhere by some rearranging. Maybe that's a good idea here, too. E.g. "2023 Blah Blah men's singles" without the dash. Or "Men's singles at the 2023 Blah Blah". Dicklyon ( talk) 17:40, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Guidance says we don't do subtitles– Wait, which guideline? InfiniteNexus ( talk) 21:23, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Note: Please see #RfC on capitalization after a colon or dash. InfiniteNexus ( talk) 17:48, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
Should the term Shoot the Chute be capitalized? In reading the article, I get the clear sense that this is a type of carnival ride, rather than a brand name; the fact that there have been at least three manufacturers brings it home for me. I think it is a common term that should not be capitalized. ~ T P W 14:27, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
Please see: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics#ALL-CAPS for "keywords for lexical sets"?. Involves MOS:ALLCAPS. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:52, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
On the Provinces of Italy page, there are both upper and lowercase "Provinces" in the list (e.g.: "province of Arezzo", and "Province of Naples"). Could someone very kindly fix this for all the provinces of Italy? Thanks in advance. JackkBrown ( talk) 11:48, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
To me, named 'incidents' and 'affairs' are not meaningfully proper nouns in themselves, and the current distribution of articles on Wiki seems to go either way, e.g.
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Though, oddly, on a skim there seems to be far more capitalized 'Incidents' than there are 'Affairs', perhaps this is due to different source language trends, since 'incident' seems to be a common East Asian translation, while 'affair' is more European? Either way, I think they are pragmatically equivalent, and as a rule they should both be lowercase in the form {} affair. Remsense 聊 16:47, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
I started a move discussion for a few of these that were not easily moved, at Talk:Marco Polo Bridge Incident#Requested move 31 October 2023. Dicklyon ( talk) 00:18, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
This discussion concerned capitalization following dashes and colons in article titles, section titles, and list items. This was a well-attended followup RfC to an earlier RfC that had resulted in the imminent renaming of tens of thousands of articles.
A prliminary note: editors responding to the RfC as stated seemed to have two readings. The more common reading ended up being that either uppercase or lowercase after such punctuation would be allowed for, this reading became an explicitly proposed alternative partway through the discussion. Some editors did seem to read the RfC as being a strict switch to uppercase, but this was less common and did not gain much traction.
Given the format of this RfC and the variety of supports and opposes, we have a clear outcome but an undecided implementation, which I will describe.
The ideas of applying WP:RETAIN and WP:CONSISTENT were invoked explicitly and implicitly and were well recieved. Evidence of current practice was provided in support of the proposals. Arguments in opposition relied largely on the guidelines in question, and specific preferences in external style guides. There were also arguments that articles should be titled differently, which I will address again later.
With that in mind, the outcome of this discussion is rough consensus to allow for lowercase or capital letters after dashes or colons in article titles, section titles, and list items. Because of the way the discussion developed from the initial RfC, I believe that the implementation must be discussed, including which specific pages and sections to update, and how to do so, including how to incorporate ideas from RETAIN and CONSISTENT. There doesn't seem to be a desire for substantial additional verbiage in the guidelines.
This outcome overturns the outcome of the earlier RfC specifically about sports articles.
There was a concern that such sports event articles constitute subsidiary articles, but that was both explicitly rebutted, as well as implictly rebutted. These articles are currently widely accepted on Wikipedia, and there was no consensus around changing WP:AT to allow for subsidiary articles.
There were some concerns about how some of these articles are titled in general, with various suggestions for possible improvements. One thing seems clear, if editors have a desire to change the naming patterns of such sports event articles, which number in the tens of thousands, or articles with colons and dashes more broadly, a lot more legwork, advocacy, and consensus building is needed prior to an RfC to try to change such titles.
Lastly, editors voiced concerns about canvassing. Aside from a single procedural oppose there was no followup on this through the rest of the discussion, even amongst those who disagreed with the accused, so I have considered the concern lightly, and didn't see it shifting this outcome. If I have erred in this, I will be understanding of the need to go to WP:AN. ( non-admin closure) — siro χ o 10:49, 28 October 2023 (UTC)
Should MOS:COLON, MOS:ENDASH, WP:NCCAPS, MOS:SECTIONCAPS, and MOS:LISTCAPS be amended to allow for the first letter after a colon or en dash in an article title, section heading, or list item to be capitalized? InfiniteNexus ( talk) 17:45, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
Current Wikipedia guidelines dictate that the first letter after a colon (or en dash, by extension, since they function the same way when being used as separators) in an article title, section heading, or list item should be in lowercase, as the phrase that comes after the colon or dash is not a complete sentence. However, this rule is near-universally ignored by editors (see data presented above here and here), because common sense tells us that this does not make sense. Unlike in prose where the rule does make sense, article titles, section headings, and list items are not complete sentences but rather sentence fragments, so it is illogical to apply capitalization or grammar rules intended for prose.
Capitalizing the first letter after a colon or dash is the widespread standard among English-language publications that use sentence case in article titles. For example: Reuters ( [1] [2] [3]), the Associated Press ( [4] [5] [6]), The Washington Post ( [7] [8] [9]), the Los Angeles Times ( [10] [11] [12]), CNN ( [13] [14] [15]), CNBC ( [16] [17] [18]), ABC News ( [19] [20] [21]), etc. For article titles and section headings, the use of colons and dashes is akin to subtitles in titles of works, in that they both provide supplemental or explanatory information attached via a punctuational separator. MOS:TITLECAPS instructs that the first letter of a subtitle always be capitalized, even if it is an a or the or of; the same logic should apply here. For list items, you can liken them to Wikipedia glossaries, only instead of line breaks, we are using colons or en dashes.
Examples on Wikipedia articles
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Example of an article title:
Example of a section heading:
Example of a list item:
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See also past discussions that tangentially touched on this subject: Aug 2023, Jun 2023, May 2023, Oct 2022, Dec 2021, and Oct 2021. InfiniteNexus ( talk) 17:45, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
Subtitles: ... For titles with subtitles or parenthetical phrases, capitalize the first word of each element, even if it would not normally be capitalized, if the element is ... given in parentheses or following a colon or dash: "Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)", "Linking Albinism and Immunity: The Secrets of Secretory Lysosomes", Star Trek: The Motion Picture.This is about externally published works. When it comes to our own pagenames, there is no reason to capitalize the "w" in "women's" in "Swimming at the 2020 Summer Olympics – women's 100 metre backstroke". That we're using an en-dash here is entirely incidental, and it could just as easily be a comma (and actually should be, per WP:COMMADIS; there is no "WP:DASHDIS"). The "women's 100 metre backstroke" portion of this is not an independent subtitle, but just narrowing detail to more WP:PRECISEly identify the topic of the article. It's a form of disambiguation. In the actual title of a published work, like the "Luke Skywalker: A pilot in the Rebel Alliance and apprentice Jedi" example given above, capitalization would follow the colon because there we are dealing with a subtitle, and we could not replace the colon with a comma. In short, we already capitalize after a colon when something is a subtitle, and we have no reason to capitalize after a colon or an en dash when something is not a subtitle, such as PRECISE-narrowing additional detail in WP's own article titles. This proposal is so vaguely worded that it would probably result in a whole lot of mis-capitalization of partial-sentence phrases after colons and en dashes in mid-sentence that have nothing to do with titles of anything at all. Also the claim that "this rule is near-universally ignored by editors" is ridiculously overblown. And "you can liken them to Wikipedia glossaries, only instead of line breaks, we are using colons or en dashes" makes no sense at all; most glossary entries are lower-case because they are not proper names, and a title and alleged subtitle of something are completely unlike separate glossary entries in any way. I agree with Fyunck(click)'s observation that this proposal was written simply to thwart one other particular editor, and that "we have so many real issues to work on to make our articles better I'm amazed these piss-ant capitalization issues keep taking us from creation and vandal fighting". This is petty "title-warring" and a desperate attempt to preserve over-capitalization in a subset of sports articles. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:13, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
An additional oppose reason: This proposal conflicts directly with WP:CITE, which permits use of any real-world-attested citation style. Some of them use lower-casing of everything in an article title other than the first letter and proper names, colons and dashes notwithstanding. This is why you'll see article titles in citations so often in the form "Foo bar: baz quux", especially in science articles (and you'll see it in the wild constantly if you spend any time at all on JSTOR and other indexes of journal articles). The claim below that "Foo bar: Baz quux" is some kind of "standard in English" is blatantly false. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 18:59, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
To preserve normal capitalization over the few who want under-capitalizationYep. In past discussions, the main weapon used by pro-lowercase editors has been the MoS and NCCAPS, which prevented logic from prevailing. Everyone was so preoccupied with whether or not they were following the guidelines, they didn't stop to think if they should (i.e. no one stopped to consider whether the guidelines should be changed). InfiniteNexus ( talk) 04:12, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
This proposal is so vaguely worded that it would probably result in a whole lot of mis-capitalization of partial-sentence phrases after colons and en dashes in mid-sentence that have nothing to do with titles of anything at all.How is it vague? We are specifically talking about colons and spaced en dashes when they are being used as a separator in article titles, section headings, and bulleted list items. I don't think we can any more clearer than that.
Abbreviation for three-revert rule.is in uppercase even though it is an incomplete sentence. The glossary entry could might as well have been styled as
3RR: Abbreviation for three-revert rule.instead of using a line break. That was my point.
{{
FYI|pointer=y}}
. But it won't make any difference if the poster of the template follows it with an extremely biased call-to-arms canvassing message. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
11:01, 8 October 2023 (UTC)Capitalizing the first letter after a colon or dash is the widespread standard among English-language publications that use sentence case in article titles. For example: Reuters ([17] [18] [19]), the Associated Press ([20] [21] [22]), The Washington Post ([23] [24] [25]), the Los Angeles Times ([26] [27] [28]), CNN ([29] [30] [31]), CNBC ([32] [33] [34]), ABC News ([35] [36] [37]), etc.I understand we're WP:NOTNEWS and all, but I would say this shows a rough consensus amongst US-publications. ― "Ghost of Dan Gurney" (talk) 14:35, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
I am not disparaging the obvious though, Wiki MOS is different on purpose. Just, feels contrived to be different on one question, what defines a proper noun? In my honest opinion, I have seen thousands of articles where the journalist will capitalize the article heading (and even the subtitle). Conyo14 ( talk) 18:47, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
... there is no consensus on capitalization for sporting events in general, and there is a rough consensus that specific capitalization rules for the tennis project are permissible at this time ...[emphasis added]. The result was that the article titles were changed to reflect sentence case, save that capitalisation after the dash remained an artifact of the original inappropriate use of title case. The noms premise and interpretation of the evidence is therefore incorrect in light of the context as to why this situation exists. MOS:TITLECAPS has no application to this particular question, since it only applies to instances of title case and WP article titles are written in sentence case. We now have the result of #RFC on capitalizing after dash in sports article names, which would tell us not to capitalise after the dash for sports articles. As to the use of the dashed construction, I do disagree with its use for some of the reasons already mentioned, and particularly where there are two dashes in a title (eg 2007–08 UCI Track Cycling World Cup Classics – Round 3 – Women's individual pursuit). But that is not a question at present. Cinderella157 ( talk) 02:01, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
[W]hat you seem to ignore is that "capitalize after a colon or n-dash" is a regular part of the rules for sentence case throughout the English-speaking world ...That is a pretty bold statement made without substantiation (a faulty generalization) - I support it happening. I know it happens. Therefore, it happens everywhere most of the time. To the sources provided by Conyo14:
If it’s equally correct to uppercase or lowercase after a colon in most instances, why does the matter deserve attention at all? Editors have actual errors to attend to. Why not let this slide? That’s an option. But the best reading experience results from a great many editing choices that are insignificant in themselves. Taken together, they add up to elegant and coherent writing.
In sentence case, the first word and all proper nouns and proper adjectives are capitalized. All other words are lowercased (just like in a regular English sentence): Bank of America is missing out on Wall Street’s boom. Umm, certainly doesn't support capping after a colon in any context.
... as various people have pointed out ...: I consider the comments of those that have supported the proposal so far in order.
I think this makes sense.Lacks substantive reasoning.
It's intuitive and widely used in English.Lacks substantive reasoning or evidence.
... look more proper.Lacks substantive reasoning - opinion.
It is standard English usage.Lacks substantiation.
Because there is no good reason to change [things that don't comply with the existing guidance] ...
This is standard linguistic practice ...- an assertion made without evidence.
... I have seen thousands of articles where the journalist will capitalize the article heading (and even the subtitle).Yes, but are they using sentence case or title case. TBH, I couldn't see any logic to what was being said.
Support per InfiniteNexus. Offers nothing independent.
only the first word and proper nouns have initial capitals.It makes no exception for a colon.
In sentence case only the first word of the sentence and all proper nouns are capitalized.
The use of case (ie upper or lower) follows the normal rules of a sentence in the English language. Specifically, capital letters are used for the first letter of the first word; proper nouns; and abbreviations/ acronyms. All other words are lower case.[emphasis added]
If the colon is used to introduce an independent clause, capitalization is optional.
If a colon introduces a complete sentence, more than one sentence, a formal statement, quotation, or speech in a dialogue, capitalise the first word of the sentence- otherwise, don't.
... only the first letter of the heading or title is capitalised, along with any proper nouns.
Capitalise the first letter of the first word and proper nouns only: Lorde talks about headlining Splendour.No exception for colons.
Oppose capitalisation after a dash in article titles when that which follows a dash would not otherwise be intrinsically capitalised.If anything has been ignored, it is that I have expressed a view at this time on one particular aspect of the RfC. I am yet to address views on the other aspects of the RfC, as I indicated in my edit summary - there is
[m]ore to follow on other questions. Cinderella157 ( talk) 14:56, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
... some specific instances that are perhaps too "subtle" ..., subtle is in quote marks because it is being quoted from the source in respect to capitalisation after a colon in running prose. I did report that CMOS would capitalise after a colon in sentence case headings regardless of these subtleties. I don't think it is I that have totally missed a point. I have already listed CMOS and APA, and what they have to say on the subject, so adding them again achieves nothing of substance. Counterexamples do exist, they are reported and they can be read. As to
[how] many of them actually cover this specific case, where they do (and many do), I have reported this. If a guide gives advice on capitalisation in sentence case generally, it is nonetheless relevant if they do not specifically mention headings and titles. The only reason to do so would be if there are rules different from the general advice for sentence case. Cinderella157 ( talk) 00:28, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
applies to title case, not sentence case, and is therefore irrelevant.Is title case not what this RfC is about??
This [RfC] is too vague and over-broad. I tend to agree. It would apply to both colons and dashes (different forms of punctuation, albeit that they are somewhat similar) in three different situations (albeit that titles and headings are also similar). In total, there are six different discrete situations to consider. One cannot reasonably assert that the evidence and rationale by which a proposal may be supported or opposed in each particular situation would be the same. Nor can one reasonably assume that there is good reason to support or oppose the proposal in all of these situations. What I am seeing in a number of responses so far is blanket support or opposition being given where the rational being given clearly indicates that the view applies to perhaps only one of the situations in question. How are such comments to be weighed by the closer? Because the RfC is more complex than a single question, I have responded to a single situation so far and will give further responses dealing with the other situations in due course. Cinderella157 ( talk) 02:30, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
punctuation mark as a separatorbut two specific punctuation marks. It is not just any
non-prose contextor even one non-prose context, but three - two of which are similar but not identical and one of which is unrelated to the other two. While you may not see the distinction, others do. Cinderella157 ( talk) 02:34, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
... an article title, section heading, or list item to be capitalized?[from the RfC question - emphasis added]. This somewhat goes to prove my point, that people are offering support for the proposal without fully understanding what they are supporting. Cinderella157 ( talk) 06:44, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
work as well if not betterusing a comma instead of a colon. A total of 3 randomly selected samples evidencing use of a colon is not sufficient to determine consistent widespread use of capitalisation in such a situation - use in list items. However, we can conclude that a colon is probably being misused in such circumstances. Cinderella157 ( talk) 10:23, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
is near-universally ignored by editors. Neither of these two premises have been objectively established. There is no evidence whatsoever of capitalisation occurring in these two cases, let alone that it is a near universal practice. Therefore, there is no sound basis to support the RfC in respect to these two cases. Cinderella157 ( talk) 03:56, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
is near-universally ignored by editors. Neither of these two premises have been objectively established. Where I have looked for more evidence (see above), it is quite clear that where a colon is being used within cast lists, it would be preferrable to use a comma. Consequently, I see no sound basis to support the RfC in respect to these two cases. Cinderella157 ( talk) 11:13, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
1962–1967: Early career to debut album). This is a very specific instance and quite probably an artifact of a perception that the first letter in sentence should be capitalised - regardless of whether it is preceded by other characters such as numbers. To quote from this web page,
many style guides advise against using a numeral at the beginning of a sentence. The page then cites several acknowledged style guides. I recall that there was some advice that may have addressed this to a degree but I believe the specific examples that might have clarified this have been removed and I don't see any specific advice that would clearly resolve how to deal with this specific issue (capitalisation of the first letter v capitalisation of the first character of a sentence). If there is any change required to the MOS it is probably this issue ( SMcCandlish?) but this is not the question at hand. There is no evidence offered of capitalisation after a colon in section headings that do not suffer from this ambiguity. The premise of the RfC is that the proposed capitalisation is a consistently followed global capitalisation convention and that WP:P&G contrary to said convention
is near-universally ignored by editors. I do not see that this has been established in this particular case that the RfC would embrace. Cinderella157 ( talk) 12:32, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
When a colon is used in a headline, the next word is usually lowercase, eg Osborne: there is no plan B.
Use sentence case for headings and headlines (and also remember to use lower case after a colon)
Headlines, journal articles, chapter titles and lecture titles: Only capitalise the first word... ‘Multiplicity of data in trial reports and the reliability of meta-analyses: empirical study’
Sentence case should be used for headlines and the titles of articles, chapters and lectures... ‘The impact of sleep and hypoxia on the brain: potential mechanisms for the effects of obstructive sleep apnea’
One exception to this rule is in web furniture where the colon comes after the title of a series, for example as in the headline “Digested week: Words mattered to Stephen Sondheim”. Similarly, in a standfirst after a descriptive tag such as “Exclusive” or “Analysis” the next word should take an initial cap. Another exception on the web is when the colon introduces a complete sentence in quotation marks, such as Maro Itoje: ‘Whenever England take the field we should win’. In special cases, capitalization is not just allowed, but required. XOR'easter ( talk) 19:52, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
I thank the closer for closing the RfC. In their closing statement, they wrote that there is consensus to allow for uppercase, but that there doesn't seem to be a desire for substantial additional verbiage in the guidelines
. At present,
MOS:COLON states: When what follows the colon is also a complete sentence, start it with a capital letter, but otherwise, do not capitalize after a colon except where doing so is needed for another reason, such as for a proper name.
Because what follows a colon in titles, headings, and lists is typically not a complete sentence, editors have interpreted MOS:COLON as calling for the use of lowercase. As such, I do believe it is necessary to note an exception to the three instances listed.
InfiniteNexus (
talk)
16:36, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
When a colon is being used as a separator in an article title, section heading, or list item, editors may choose whether to capitalize what follows, taking into consideration the existing practice and consistency with related articles.InfiniteNexus ( talk) 17:32, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
substantial additional verbiage, I am trying to limit the number of guidelines we amend. As MOS:COLON is the only one that "forbids" capitalizing after a colon, it is the only one where additional verbiage is essential. MOS:ENDASH doesn't say anything about capitalization, but since they function the exact same way when being used as a separator, it can be understood/interpreted that the new wording on MOS:COLON applies to them as well. InfiniteNexus ( talk) 19:38, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
Hi, is it correct to write "Agri Valley" or "Agri valley"? JackkBrown ( talk) 23:47, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
Does Commonwealth Final require an RM? GoodDay ( talk) 00:24, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
The manual doesn't make it entirely clear whether 'Siege of' should be capitalised and it seems to be falling between the cracks of the naming policy and causing confusion. Most sources capitalise Siege of (Place) and then use the lowercase for generic uses as with Battle of and the battle. At the moment the word siege is only listed under generic uses which I think is causing the confusion. What's the view on this? Ecrm87 ( talk) 12:12, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
Every so often I search up articles with leads starting with "The Siege of ..." and lowercase "siege" there. I just did a hundred or so of those, which is probably what prompted this inquiry. They were less then 10% of all "The siege of ..." articles, a combination of new ones and ones that had been re-capitalized without comment, presumably because editors felt that the capital letter there matched the title better. I'm willing to admit the possibility that there might be one or more that are consistently capitalized in sources, but I haven't been able to find one (except I seem to recall there was one that was the title of a play or something, but now I can't recall or find it). See some sample stats. Dicklyon ( talk) 04:31, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
As for the Siege of Saint-Omer example, only the lowercase version has enough occurrences in books to show up in the n-gram stats. See book hits for a better view of how common each is. Certainly nowhere close to "consistently capitalised in sources" as Ecrm87 claims. Also note that the ones with capitalized Siege are mostly table or list entries, not in sentence context, so don't provide any information on the question of whether they'd treat "Siege of Saint-Omer" as a proper name or not. Dicklyon ( talk) 04:38, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
@ Crecy1346: maybe you can say why you re-capitalized that one back in 2022? Actually, I see you re-capped quite a few in 2022 and 2023, but haven't edited in the last few months, so I'm not expecting an answer. Dicklyon ( talk) 04:43, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
With capitalized "Siege of Saint-Omer" too rare a phrase to turn up in ngrams, I tried looking around otherwise. Most Google hits for the term are titles of works, by Stefano della Bella and P[i]eter Snayers. There would be a high risk of WP:SSF in a case like this, with some editors trying to argue that it "must" be a proper name just because the handful of military-history sources that bother to cover the topic lean toward the bad habit of capitalizing everything like this (every appellation of any battle, any term used for an identifiable phase of a battle, and other random descriptive phrases that identify something of military-history interest). This would likely be reinforced by regional and general history material from the Victorian era through mid-20th century, that also happened to cover the conflict, leaning toward capitalization simply because the habit in English of that period was to "big-note" events with capital letters all the time, a habit which has fallen into disfavour in modern source material, and which is not permitted here ( MOS:SIGCAPS). WP really doesn't care how writers generations ago approached this question; only modern sources are relevant for our style questions (which is a good reason to restrain viable ngram seraches to maybe 1980 and later or even 2000 and later, depending on the nature of the question). In researching tartan and Highland dress and Scottish clans, I run into this over-capitalization problem in older material constantly, in regard to far more than mil-hist matters.
However, in this particular case, the term shows up in enough academic material to put this to rest: all Google Scholar hits are lowercased except seemingly two [25]. It's not a large body of data, due to topical obscurity, but it's sufficient to show that it's not consistently capitalized in sources. If the ratio were the other way around I would conclude it is probably consistently enough treated as a proper name for WP to do so. Other terms even in this case are in attested use, e.g. "[b|B]attle of Saint-Omer" [26] (with capitalization varying depending on the proclivities of the writer/publisher). While it is possible for a single event to have multiple proper names in this language (e.g. the Great War and World War I for the same conflict), this is rare, and conflicting "names" for something as obscure as the conflict at Saint-Omer doesn't encourage treating either as a proper name.
Our typical procedure (in RM discussions, etc.) with regard to modern conflicts is to not treat any term for a battle (or whatever) as a proper name unless there is a demonstration that both a particular one is vastly preferred by sources and that it is consistently capitalized by them, including in everyday writing like news, not just specialist mil-hist or poli-sci or governmentese material. For historical ones, the question is somewhat clouded by old-source writing, as noted above, but this can be worked past by simply excluding pre-modern sources from the capitalization analysis since they cannot tell us anything useful about current style questions. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:58, 6 January 2024 (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 35 | ← | Archive 37 | Archive 38 | Archive 39 | Archive 40 | Archive 41 |
Should the first word after a dash in the name of a sports article, such as
Rowing at the 1988 Summer Olympics – Men's coxed four, be capitalized?~
T
P
W
18:45, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
To get us started on how to put the above result into action, I've compiled a list of 40,000 or so articles that could use a lowercase after the dash. It's too many to list in one page, so I split into these two: User:Dicklyon/Cap after dash titles and User:Dicklyon/Cap after dash titles more. Someone (including me) should look the lists over carefully to see if my query swept up anything it shouldn't have. When we're happy with the lists, we can ask for a TolBot task and get bot approval to automate the moves (I won't be executing that, but I can help get the lists in shape and so on). Dicklyon ( talk) 19:05, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
Some findings so far:
... there is no consensus on capitalization for sporting events in general, and there is a rough consensus that specific capitalization rules for the tennis project are permissible at this time ...[emphasis added]. The other two discussions linked on your TP were not RfCs. Consensus can and has changed. It sounds very much like you are accusing either the nom of the RfC here (or perhaps somebody else) of bad faith or worse? Cinderella157 ( talk) 04:15, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
This was already handled in a couple of large rfcs' for tennis articles a year or so ago.My response (immediately above) did refer to the three discussions you initially linked on your talk page, including those two you now link here. I will say it again, only one of those was an RfC. Cinderella157 ( talk) 10:23, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
I think the fundamental problem is that we don't have any guidance on such a role for the dash in titles. Guidance says we don't do subtitles, but that's how some want to use the dash. I think the reason we don't is that we want to be able to directly use titles in article text (perhaps with pipe trick), and this construct won't work for that. As Fyunck points out, we avoided a case disagreement elsewhere by some rearranging. Maybe that's a good idea here, too. E.g. "2023 Blah Blah men's singles" without the dash. Or "Men's singles at the 2023 Blah Blah". Dicklyon ( talk) 17:40, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Guidance says we don't do subtitles– Wait, which guideline? InfiniteNexus ( talk) 21:23, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Note: Please see #RfC on capitalization after a colon or dash. InfiniteNexus ( talk) 17:48, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
Should the term Shoot the Chute be capitalized? In reading the article, I get the clear sense that this is a type of carnival ride, rather than a brand name; the fact that there have been at least three manufacturers brings it home for me. I think it is a common term that should not be capitalized. ~ T P W 14:27, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
Please see: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics#ALL-CAPS for "keywords for lexical sets"?. Involves MOS:ALLCAPS. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:52, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
On the Provinces of Italy page, there are both upper and lowercase "Provinces" in the list (e.g.: "province of Arezzo", and "Province of Naples"). Could someone very kindly fix this for all the provinces of Italy? Thanks in advance. JackkBrown ( talk) 11:48, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
To me, named 'incidents' and 'affairs' are not meaningfully proper nouns in themselves, and the current distribution of articles on Wiki seems to go either way, e.g.
|
Though, oddly, on a skim there seems to be far more capitalized 'Incidents' than there are 'Affairs', perhaps this is due to different source language trends, since 'incident' seems to be a common East Asian translation, while 'affair' is more European? Either way, I think they are pragmatically equivalent, and as a rule they should both be lowercase in the form {} affair. Remsense 聊 16:47, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
I started a move discussion for a few of these that were not easily moved, at Talk:Marco Polo Bridge Incident#Requested move 31 October 2023. Dicklyon ( talk) 00:18, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
This discussion concerned capitalization following dashes and colons in article titles, section titles, and list items. This was a well-attended followup RfC to an earlier RfC that had resulted in the imminent renaming of tens of thousands of articles.
A prliminary note: editors responding to the RfC as stated seemed to have two readings. The more common reading ended up being that either uppercase or lowercase after such punctuation would be allowed for, this reading became an explicitly proposed alternative partway through the discussion. Some editors did seem to read the RfC as being a strict switch to uppercase, but this was less common and did not gain much traction.
Given the format of this RfC and the variety of supports and opposes, we have a clear outcome but an undecided implementation, which I will describe.
The ideas of applying WP:RETAIN and WP:CONSISTENT were invoked explicitly and implicitly and were well recieved. Evidence of current practice was provided in support of the proposals. Arguments in opposition relied largely on the guidelines in question, and specific preferences in external style guides. There were also arguments that articles should be titled differently, which I will address again later.
With that in mind, the outcome of this discussion is rough consensus to allow for lowercase or capital letters after dashes or colons in article titles, section titles, and list items. Because of the way the discussion developed from the initial RfC, I believe that the implementation must be discussed, including which specific pages and sections to update, and how to do so, including how to incorporate ideas from RETAIN and CONSISTENT. There doesn't seem to be a desire for substantial additional verbiage in the guidelines.
This outcome overturns the outcome of the earlier RfC specifically about sports articles.
There was a concern that such sports event articles constitute subsidiary articles, but that was both explicitly rebutted, as well as implictly rebutted. These articles are currently widely accepted on Wikipedia, and there was no consensus around changing WP:AT to allow for subsidiary articles.
There were some concerns about how some of these articles are titled in general, with various suggestions for possible improvements. One thing seems clear, if editors have a desire to change the naming patterns of such sports event articles, which number in the tens of thousands, or articles with colons and dashes more broadly, a lot more legwork, advocacy, and consensus building is needed prior to an RfC to try to change such titles.
Lastly, editors voiced concerns about canvassing. Aside from a single procedural oppose there was no followup on this through the rest of the discussion, even amongst those who disagreed with the accused, so I have considered the concern lightly, and didn't see it shifting this outcome. If I have erred in this, I will be understanding of the need to go to WP:AN. ( non-admin closure) — siro χ o 10:49, 28 October 2023 (UTC)
Should MOS:COLON, MOS:ENDASH, WP:NCCAPS, MOS:SECTIONCAPS, and MOS:LISTCAPS be amended to allow for the first letter after a colon or en dash in an article title, section heading, or list item to be capitalized? InfiniteNexus ( talk) 17:45, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
Current Wikipedia guidelines dictate that the first letter after a colon (or en dash, by extension, since they function the same way when being used as separators) in an article title, section heading, or list item should be in lowercase, as the phrase that comes after the colon or dash is not a complete sentence. However, this rule is near-universally ignored by editors (see data presented above here and here), because common sense tells us that this does not make sense. Unlike in prose where the rule does make sense, article titles, section headings, and list items are not complete sentences but rather sentence fragments, so it is illogical to apply capitalization or grammar rules intended for prose.
Capitalizing the first letter after a colon or dash is the widespread standard among English-language publications that use sentence case in article titles. For example: Reuters ( [1] [2] [3]), the Associated Press ( [4] [5] [6]), The Washington Post ( [7] [8] [9]), the Los Angeles Times ( [10] [11] [12]), CNN ( [13] [14] [15]), CNBC ( [16] [17] [18]), ABC News ( [19] [20] [21]), etc. For article titles and section headings, the use of colons and dashes is akin to subtitles in titles of works, in that they both provide supplemental or explanatory information attached via a punctuational separator. MOS:TITLECAPS instructs that the first letter of a subtitle always be capitalized, even if it is an a or the or of; the same logic should apply here. For list items, you can liken them to Wikipedia glossaries, only instead of line breaks, we are using colons or en dashes.
Examples on Wikipedia articles
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Example of an article title:
Example of a section heading:
Example of a list item:
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See also past discussions that tangentially touched on this subject: Aug 2023, Jun 2023, May 2023, Oct 2022, Dec 2021, and Oct 2021. InfiniteNexus ( talk) 17:45, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
Subtitles: ... For titles with subtitles or parenthetical phrases, capitalize the first word of each element, even if it would not normally be capitalized, if the element is ... given in parentheses or following a colon or dash: "Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)", "Linking Albinism and Immunity: The Secrets of Secretory Lysosomes", Star Trek: The Motion Picture.This is about externally published works. When it comes to our own pagenames, there is no reason to capitalize the "w" in "women's" in "Swimming at the 2020 Summer Olympics – women's 100 metre backstroke". That we're using an en-dash here is entirely incidental, and it could just as easily be a comma (and actually should be, per WP:COMMADIS; there is no "WP:DASHDIS"). The "women's 100 metre backstroke" portion of this is not an independent subtitle, but just narrowing detail to more WP:PRECISEly identify the topic of the article. It's a form of disambiguation. In the actual title of a published work, like the "Luke Skywalker: A pilot in the Rebel Alliance and apprentice Jedi" example given above, capitalization would follow the colon because there we are dealing with a subtitle, and we could not replace the colon with a comma. In short, we already capitalize after a colon when something is a subtitle, and we have no reason to capitalize after a colon or an en dash when something is not a subtitle, such as PRECISE-narrowing additional detail in WP's own article titles. This proposal is so vaguely worded that it would probably result in a whole lot of mis-capitalization of partial-sentence phrases after colons and en dashes in mid-sentence that have nothing to do with titles of anything at all. Also the claim that "this rule is near-universally ignored by editors" is ridiculously overblown. And "you can liken them to Wikipedia glossaries, only instead of line breaks, we are using colons or en dashes" makes no sense at all; most glossary entries are lower-case because they are not proper names, and a title and alleged subtitle of something are completely unlike separate glossary entries in any way. I agree with Fyunck(click)'s observation that this proposal was written simply to thwart one other particular editor, and that "we have so many real issues to work on to make our articles better I'm amazed these piss-ant capitalization issues keep taking us from creation and vandal fighting". This is petty "title-warring" and a desperate attempt to preserve over-capitalization in a subset of sports articles. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:13, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
An additional oppose reason: This proposal conflicts directly with WP:CITE, which permits use of any real-world-attested citation style. Some of them use lower-casing of everything in an article title other than the first letter and proper names, colons and dashes notwithstanding. This is why you'll see article titles in citations so often in the form "Foo bar: baz quux", especially in science articles (and you'll see it in the wild constantly if you spend any time at all on JSTOR and other indexes of journal articles). The claim below that "Foo bar: Baz quux" is some kind of "standard in English" is blatantly false. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 18:59, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
To preserve normal capitalization over the few who want under-capitalizationYep. In past discussions, the main weapon used by pro-lowercase editors has been the MoS and NCCAPS, which prevented logic from prevailing. Everyone was so preoccupied with whether or not they were following the guidelines, they didn't stop to think if they should (i.e. no one stopped to consider whether the guidelines should be changed). InfiniteNexus ( talk) 04:12, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
This proposal is so vaguely worded that it would probably result in a whole lot of mis-capitalization of partial-sentence phrases after colons and en dashes in mid-sentence that have nothing to do with titles of anything at all.How is it vague? We are specifically talking about colons and spaced en dashes when they are being used as a separator in article titles, section headings, and bulleted list items. I don't think we can any more clearer than that.
Abbreviation for three-revert rule.is in uppercase even though it is an incomplete sentence. The glossary entry could might as well have been styled as
3RR: Abbreviation for three-revert rule.instead of using a line break. That was my point.
{{
FYI|pointer=y}}
. But it won't make any difference if the poster of the template follows it with an extremely biased call-to-arms canvassing message. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
11:01, 8 October 2023 (UTC)Capitalizing the first letter after a colon or dash is the widespread standard among English-language publications that use sentence case in article titles. For example: Reuters ([17] [18] [19]), the Associated Press ([20] [21] [22]), The Washington Post ([23] [24] [25]), the Los Angeles Times ([26] [27] [28]), CNN ([29] [30] [31]), CNBC ([32] [33] [34]), ABC News ([35] [36] [37]), etc.I understand we're WP:NOTNEWS and all, but I would say this shows a rough consensus amongst US-publications. ― "Ghost of Dan Gurney" (talk) 14:35, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
I am not disparaging the obvious though, Wiki MOS is different on purpose. Just, feels contrived to be different on one question, what defines a proper noun? In my honest opinion, I have seen thousands of articles where the journalist will capitalize the article heading (and even the subtitle). Conyo14 ( talk) 18:47, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
... there is no consensus on capitalization for sporting events in general, and there is a rough consensus that specific capitalization rules for the tennis project are permissible at this time ...[emphasis added]. The result was that the article titles were changed to reflect sentence case, save that capitalisation after the dash remained an artifact of the original inappropriate use of title case. The noms premise and interpretation of the evidence is therefore incorrect in light of the context as to why this situation exists. MOS:TITLECAPS has no application to this particular question, since it only applies to instances of title case and WP article titles are written in sentence case. We now have the result of #RFC on capitalizing after dash in sports article names, which would tell us not to capitalise after the dash for sports articles. As to the use of the dashed construction, I do disagree with its use for some of the reasons already mentioned, and particularly where there are two dashes in a title (eg 2007–08 UCI Track Cycling World Cup Classics – Round 3 – Women's individual pursuit). But that is not a question at present. Cinderella157 ( talk) 02:01, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
[W]hat you seem to ignore is that "capitalize after a colon or n-dash" is a regular part of the rules for sentence case throughout the English-speaking world ...That is a pretty bold statement made without substantiation (a faulty generalization) - I support it happening. I know it happens. Therefore, it happens everywhere most of the time. To the sources provided by Conyo14:
If it’s equally correct to uppercase or lowercase after a colon in most instances, why does the matter deserve attention at all? Editors have actual errors to attend to. Why not let this slide? That’s an option. But the best reading experience results from a great many editing choices that are insignificant in themselves. Taken together, they add up to elegant and coherent writing.
In sentence case, the first word and all proper nouns and proper adjectives are capitalized. All other words are lowercased (just like in a regular English sentence): Bank of America is missing out on Wall Street’s boom. Umm, certainly doesn't support capping after a colon in any context.
... as various people have pointed out ...: I consider the comments of those that have supported the proposal so far in order.
I think this makes sense.Lacks substantive reasoning.
It's intuitive and widely used in English.Lacks substantive reasoning or evidence.
... look more proper.Lacks substantive reasoning - opinion.
It is standard English usage.Lacks substantiation.
Because there is no good reason to change [things that don't comply with the existing guidance] ...
This is standard linguistic practice ...- an assertion made without evidence.
... I have seen thousands of articles where the journalist will capitalize the article heading (and even the subtitle).Yes, but are they using sentence case or title case. TBH, I couldn't see any logic to what was being said.
Support per InfiniteNexus. Offers nothing independent.
only the first word and proper nouns have initial capitals.It makes no exception for a colon.
In sentence case only the first word of the sentence and all proper nouns are capitalized.
The use of case (ie upper or lower) follows the normal rules of a sentence in the English language. Specifically, capital letters are used for the first letter of the first word; proper nouns; and abbreviations/ acronyms. All other words are lower case.[emphasis added]
If the colon is used to introduce an independent clause, capitalization is optional.
If a colon introduces a complete sentence, more than one sentence, a formal statement, quotation, or speech in a dialogue, capitalise the first word of the sentence- otherwise, don't.
... only the first letter of the heading or title is capitalised, along with any proper nouns.
Capitalise the first letter of the first word and proper nouns only: Lorde talks about headlining Splendour.No exception for colons.
Oppose capitalisation after a dash in article titles when that which follows a dash would not otherwise be intrinsically capitalised.If anything has been ignored, it is that I have expressed a view at this time on one particular aspect of the RfC. I am yet to address views on the other aspects of the RfC, as I indicated in my edit summary - there is
[m]ore to follow on other questions. Cinderella157 ( talk) 14:56, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
... some specific instances that are perhaps too "subtle" ..., subtle is in quote marks because it is being quoted from the source in respect to capitalisation after a colon in running prose. I did report that CMOS would capitalise after a colon in sentence case headings regardless of these subtleties. I don't think it is I that have totally missed a point. I have already listed CMOS and APA, and what they have to say on the subject, so adding them again achieves nothing of substance. Counterexamples do exist, they are reported and they can be read. As to
[how] many of them actually cover this specific case, where they do (and many do), I have reported this. If a guide gives advice on capitalisation in sentence case generally, it is nonetheless relevant if they do not specifically mention headings and titles. The only reason to do so would be if there are rules different from the general advice for sentence case. Cinderella157 ( talk) 00:28, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
applies to title case, not sentence case, and is therefore irrelevant.Is title case not what this RfC is about??
This [RfC] is too vague and over-broad. I tend to agree. It would apply to both colons and dashes (different forms of punctuation, albeit that they are somewhat similar) in three different situations (albeit that titles and headings are also similar). In total, there are six different discrete situations to consider. One cannot reasonably assert that the evidence and rationale by which a proposal may be supported or opposed in each particular situation would be the same. Nor can one reasonably assume that there is good reason to support or oppose the proposal in all of these situations. What I am seeing in a number of responses so far is blanket support or opposition being given where the rational being given clearly indicates that the view applies to perhaps only one of the situations in question. How are such comments to be weighed by the closer? Because the RfC is more complex than a single question, I have responded to a single situation so far and will give further responses dealing with the other situations in due course. Cinderella157 ( talk) 02:30, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
punctuation mark as a separatorbut two specific punctuation marks. It is not just any
non-prose contextor even one non-prose context, but three - two of which are similar but not identical and one of which is unrelated to the other two. While you may not see the distinction, others do. Cinderella157 ( talk) 02:34, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
... an article title, section heading, or list item to be capitalized?[from the RfC question - emphasis added]. This somewhat goes to prove my point, that people are offering support for the proposal without fully understanding what they are supporting. Cinderella157 ( talk) 06:44, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
work as well if not betterusing a comma instead of a colon. A total of 3 randomly selected samples evidencing use of a colon is not sufficient to determine consistent widespread use of capitalisation in such a situation - use in list items. However, we can conclude that a colon is probably being misused in such circumstances. Cinderella157 ( talk) 10:23, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
is near-universally ignored by editors. Neither of these two premises have been objectively established. There is no evidence whatsoever of capitalisation occurring in these two cases, let alone that it is a near universal practice. Therefore, there is no sound basis to support the RfC in respect to these two cases. Cinderella157 ( talk) 03:56, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
is near-universally ignored by editors. Neither of these two premises have been objectively established. Where I have looked for more evidence (see above), it is quite clear that where a colon is being used within cast lists, it would be preferrable to use a comma. Consequently, I see no sound basis to support the RfC in respect to these two cases. Cinderella157 ( talk) 11:13, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
1962–1967: Early career to debut album). This is a very specific instance and quite probably an artifact of a perception that the first letter in sentence should be capitalised - regardless of whether it is preceded by other characters such as numbers. To quote from this web page,
many style guides advise against using a numeral at the beginning of a sentence. The page then cites several acknowledged style guides. I recall that there was some advice that may have addressed this to a degree but I believe the specific examples that might have clarified this have been removed and I don't see any specific advice that would clearly resolve how to deal with this specific issue (capitalisation of the first letter v capitalisation of the first character of a sentence). If there is any change required to the MOS it is probably this issue ( SMcCandlish?) but this is not the question at hand. There is no evidence offered of capitalisation after a colon in section headings that do not suffer from this ambiguity. The premise of the RfC is that the proposed capitalisation is a consistently followed global capitalisation convention and that WP:P&G contrary to said convention
is near-universally ignored by editors. I do not see that this has been established in this particular case that the RfC would embrace. Cinderella157 ( talk) 12:32, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
When a colon is used in a headline, the next word is usually lowercase, eg Osborne: there is no plan B.
Use sentence case for headings and headlines (and also remember to use lower case after a colon)
Headlines, journal articles, chapter titles and lecture titles: Only capitalise the first word... ‘Multiplicity of data in trial reports and the reliability of meta-analyses: empirical study’
Sentence case should be used for headlines and the titles of articles, chapters and lectures... ‘The impact of sleep and hypoxia on the brain: potential mechanisms for the effects of obstructive sleep apnea’
One exception to this rule is in web furniture where the colon comes after the title of a series, for example as in the headline “Digested week: Words mattered to Stephen Sondheim”. Similarly, in a standfirst after a descriptive tag such as “Exclusive” or “Analysis” the next word should take an initial cap. Another exception on the web is when the colon introduces a complete sentence in quotation marks, such as Maro Itoje: ‘Whenever England take the field we should win’. In special cases, capitalization is not just allowed, but required. XOR'easter ( talk) 19:52, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
I thank the closer for closing the RfC. In their closing statement, they wrote that there is consensus to allow for uppercase, but that there doesn't seem to be a desire for substantial additional verbiage in the guidelines
. At present,
MOS:COLON states: When what follows the colon is also a complete sentence, start it with a capital letter, but otherwise, do not capitalize after a colon except where doing so is needed for another reason, such as for a proper name.
Because what follows a colon in titles, headings, and lists is typically not a complete sentence, editors have interpreted MOS:COLON as calling for the use of lowercase. As such, I do believe it is necessary to note an exception to the three instances listed.
InfiniteNexus (
talk)
16:36, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
When a colon is being used as a separator in an article title, section heading, or list item, editors may choose whether to capitalize what follows, taking into consideration the existing practice and consistency with related articles.InfiniteNexus ( talk) 17:32, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
substantial additional verbiage, I am trying to limit the number of guidelines we amend. As MOS:COLON is the only one that "forbids" capitalizing after a colon, it is the only one where additional verbiage is essential. MOS:ENDASH doesn't say anything about capitalization, but since they function the exact same way when being used as a separator, it can be understood/interpreted that the new wording on MOS:COLON applies to them as well. InfiniteNexus ( talk) 19:38, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
Hi, is it correct to write "Agri Valley" or "Agri valley"? JackkBrown ( talk) 23:47, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
Does Commonwealth Final require an RM? GoodDay ( talk) 00:24, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
The manual doesn't make it entirely clear whether 'Siege of' should be capitalised and it seems to be falling between the cracks of the naming policy and causing confusion. Most sources capitalise Siege of (Place) and then use the lowercase for generic uses as with Battle of and the battle. At the moment the word siege is only listed under generic uses which I think is causing the confusion. What's the view on this? Ecrm87 ( talk) 12:12, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
Every so often I search up articles with leads starting with "The Siege of ..." and lowercase "siege" there. I just did a hundred or so of those, which is probably what prompted this inquiry. They were less then 10% of all "The siege of ..." articles, a combination of new ones and ones that had been re-capitalized without comment, presumably because editors felt that the capital letter there matched the title better. I'm willing to admit the possibility that there might be one or more that are consistently capitalized in sources, but I haven't been able to find one (except I seem to recall there was one that was the title of a play or something, but now I can't recall or find it). See some sample stats. Dicklyon ( talk) 04:31, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
As for the Siege of Saint-Omer example, only the lowercase version has enough occurrences in books to show up in the n-gram stats. See book hits for a better view of how common each is. Certainly nowhere close to "consistently capitalised in sources" as Ecrm87 claims. Also note that the ones with capitalized Siege are mostly table or list entries, not in sentence context, so don't provide any information on the question of whether they'd treat "Siege of Saint-Omer" as a proper name or not. Dicklyon ( talk) 04:38, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
@ Crecy1346: maybe you can say why you re-capitalized that one back in 2022? Actually, I see you re-capped quite a few in 2022 and 2023, but haven't edited in the last few months, so I'm not expecting an answer. Dicklyon ( talk) 04:43, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
With capitalized "Siege of Saint-Omer" too rare a phrase to turn up in ngrams, I tried looking around otherwise. Most Google hits for the term are titles of works, by Stefano della Bella and P[i]eter Snayers. There would be a high risk of WP:SSF in a case like this, with some editors trying to argue that it "must" be a proper name just because the handful of military-history sources that bother to cover the topic lean toward the bad habit of capitalizing everything like this (every appellation of any battle, any term used for an identifiable phase of a battle, and other random descriptive phrases that identify something of military-history interest). This would likely be reinforced by regional and general history material from the Victorian era through mid-20th century, that also happened to cover the conflict, leaning toward capitalization simply because the habit in English of that period was to "big-note" events with capital letters all the time, a habit which has fallen into disfavour in modern source material, and which is not permitted here ( MOS:SIGCAPS). WP really doesn't care how writers generations ago approached this question; only modern sources are relevant for our style questions (which is a good reason to restrain viable ngram seraches to maybe 1980 and later or even 2000 and later, depending on the nature of the question). In researching tartan and Highland dress and Scottish clans, I run into this over-capitalization problem in older material constantly, in regard to far more than mil-hist matters.
However, in this particular case, the term shows up in enough academic material to put this to rest: all Google Scholar hits are lowercased except seemingly two [25]. It's not a large body of data, due to topical obscurity, but it's sufficient to show that it's not consistently capitalized in sources. If the ratio were the other way around I would conclude it is probably consistently enough treated as a proper name for WP to do so. Other terms even in this case are in attested use, e.g. "[b|B]attle of Saint-Omer" [26] (with capitalization varying depending on the proclivities of the writer/publisher). While it is possible for a single event to have multiple proper names in this language (e.g. the Great War and World War I for the same conflict), this is rare, and conflicting "names" for something as obscure as the conflict at Saint-Omer doesn't encourage treating either as a proper name.
Our typical procedure (in RM discussions, etc.) with regard to modern conflicts is to not treat any term for a battle (or whatever) as a proper name unless there is a demonstration that both a particular one is vastly preferred by sources and that it is consistently capitalized by them, including in everyday writing like news, not just specialist mil-hist or poli-sci or governmentese material. For historical ones, the question is somewhat clouded by old-source writing, as noted above, but this can be worked past by simply excluding pre-modern sources from the capitalization analysis since they cannot tell us anything useful about current style questions. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:58, 6 January 2024 (UTC)