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Regarding the recent discussion of capitalization of job titles in the form of "List of mayors of X" or "List of Lord Mayors of X", please note that I have filed another RM request at Talk:List of mayors of Finsbury, since the outcome of the RM discussion at Talk:List of Lord Mayors of Birmingham resulted in an undesirable direct conflict between the format of our "List of mayors of X" and "List of Lord Mayors of X" articles within Category:Lists of mayors of places in England and Category:Lists of mayors of London boroughs. It would be nice to resolve this, so participation in the discussion at Talk:List of mayors of Finsbury is hereby encouraged. — BarrelProof ( talk) 15:52, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
Third RM is now open to resolve the conflict between the previous two: Talk:List of Lord Mayors of Birmingham#Requested move 5 September 2017. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 19:45, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
Summary: This is something I've been meaning to address for several years. Every time I go back to the Cultivar group article, I find that the symbol "Group" (with a capital-G), which is used in actual scientific names – e.g., Solanum tuberosum 'Desirée' (Maincrop Group) – has re-invaded the article's plain-English running prose, e.g. A Group is usually united by a distinct common trait .... Even in its lead sentence. Worse yet, this is being done in innumerable articles on plants, plant products, and plant parasites. I did a couple of hours of sourcing on the talk page (hopefully some of it will be useful for something else – I formatted it in citation templates) to dispel this WP:Specialized-style fallacy. It's a use–mention distinction failure, like changing material about a unit of measure to use the symbol for the unit as would be used in an actual measurement, e.g. changing The light-year is a unit of length used to express astronomical distances to The ly is a unit of length .... This "A Group is ..." style has spread here because ICNCP's publisher writes that way and advocates that others do so. Telling WP how to write plain English in our articles about plants is beyond the remit of the ISHS, and WP doesn't use their house style. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 23:21, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
There is no consensus in this RfC, which was started by a sockpuppet. This RfC was superseded by #RfC 2: Specific proposal to revise the third bullet of MOS:JOBTITLES.
WP:JOBTITLES currently offers us conflicting advice with regard to capitalization. A general rule is stated that titles are “common nouns and therefore should be in lower case when used generically.” This includes “king” and “French king,” but not “King of France,” at least according to this puzzling example: “Louis XVI was King of France but Louis XVI was the French king." This example goes against the advice of The Chicago Manual of Style, which gives "King Abdullah; the king of Jordan" (8.21) and “Charles I (king of England)” (16.98). This mistake has been in the Manual of Style for a long time. It at one point, it was
supported by bogus CMOS and Guardian references. In the archive, I found a history of editors puzzling over this passage, but no one who could explain what it means or where it came from. Various editors have, in good faith, interpreted the “King of France” example to mean that Wikipedia style is to upper case titles. This interpretation is in opposition to the rule the example is supposed to be illustrating. I propose that we resolve the conflict by removing the bulleted section with the “King of France” example.
Great scott (
talk) 08:46, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
The RFC author is a CHECKUSER BLOCKED AS A SOCKPUPPET ACCOUNT. [1] RFC participants are invited to continue or terminate the RFC as they see fit. Alsee ( talk) 08:08, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
There's another subtlety about the example Louis XVI was King of France. If it's correct to omit a determiner here, and not write instead "Louis XVI was the king of France", then "King of France" would be classed grammatically as a proper noun phrase rather than a common noun phrase, and so would be capitalized. What this example shows, I think, is that, unfortunately, capitalization in contemporary English cannot be reduced to a simple set of guidelines. I would write:
Peter coxhead ( talk) 08:53, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
Radical idea: There is, however, a simplifying approach. We have a "down style" here (default to lower case for everything unless there's a reason to capitalize), and we could really stick to it. We could simply be clear that we capitalize such titles only a) when the title is prepended to or surrounds a name ("Count Dracula", "King Louis XVI of France"); b) when the title stands in for a specific individual's name ("President Trump went to meet the Queen [i.e., Elizabeth II] but was turned away at the Buckingham Palace gates."); and c) when discussing the office/position as the thing itself ("The role of Vice President of the United States has shifted markedly in the last 200 years" – and do this last thing only for high office, not for things like "Her responsibilities as Peoria city attorney included ..."). Do not capitalize otherwise. If it comes after a name ("Louis XVI was the king of France who ..."), is plural ("Three dukes of Cambridge in a row had gout"), is adjectival ("a new presidential candidacy"), or whatever other circumstance, then just lower-case it. (I think this would affect none of Peter's examples except the first one, rendering it as "Louis XVI was king of France".) This would not maximally please all of the Proper name (philosophy) people and traditional style sticklers (including me), but it would make things much simpler here and reduce the presently continuous and circular disputes about this stuff. Regardless, I do agree with the OP that the current wording is potentially confusing to a lot of editors and may be why there's so much dispute about this. It's s understood by some but not by others, so one revision or another is in order. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 15:30, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
The distinction is basically a form of words-as-words, or mention-versus-use, matter. It's the difference between "SMcCandlish does not have the Administrator bit, and has never run for Arbitrator, at the English Wikipedia" and "SMcCandlish is not among the English Wikipedia's administrators or arbitrators." And: "Trump's surprise election as President of the United States", versus "Trump is a controversial US president". It's capitalized when the title/role itself is under discussion (and is one that is apt to be treated as a proper name), not when it's being used as a descriptor or classifier.
On the proper name matter: we need not capitalize titles even when used in front of names when it's something like "According to assistant manager Herman K. Essell, the assault occurred at 11:46 pm." – i.e., something most people aren't apt to think of as high office. This style is increasingly favored even in business and news (but not marketing) writing, e.g. "according to executive director Chris Ng", versus "according to Executive Director Chris Ng"; it's just plain easier to read when it's not all capitalized. The caps are mostly used for titles-discussed-as-such material: "Ng was promoted to Outreach and Advocacy Director (roughly equivalent to a vice-president of marketing), then later selected by the board as interim then permanent Executive Director (a role previously named President until Hidalgo's resignation)."
PS: One way to look at it is that if a particular string could be interpreted as a title-as-such or as descriptive, and the reader has no reason to care about the distinction, treat it as a description and lower-case it. We just
DGaF what, in these examples, the exact formal title in HR paperwork might really be for Essell or (in "according to executive director Chris Ng") for Ng; we care about the generally understood role. Various companies, especially in the computer and Internet industries, have silly invented job titles, like "UI Evangelist" and we shouldn't use them WP's voice at all, because they're confusing to readers and are an NPoV problem.
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SMcCandlish ☺
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¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 01:02, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
The style in your example "...not the most respected duke of Wellington in history..." is taking the principle of minimal capitalisation too far, outside of common usage as shown by this ngram. A Duke of Wellington isn't like a king of France or a president of the United States. A peer's connection to the place name in his title is often very minimal; the town of Wellington, Somerset, shouldn't be given undue prominence in a sentence about Dukes of Wellington. Whereas "the third and seventh dukes" and "even among other dukes" both seem fine to me. Similarly, Prince William is in no real sense a duke of Cambridge but he is a Duke of Cambridge. Ham II ( talk) 11:52, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
I know I'm opening up a hornet's nest here, but of all the "clear as "mud-ness" of this guideline, arguably, the worst and most contentious is this phrase "correct formal title." Can't count the number of disagreements I've personally experienced over this.
It seems to me all 3 words are in play. A "correct title" is not necessarily formal. As in "French king." A formal title is not necessarily correct. As in "The United States President." And when discussing nobility titles, just how far do we need to go to satisfy all three words? Is the difference between "Queen of England" and "English Queen or queen" really all that relevant went the individual's actual "correct formal title" is: "Queen Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God Queen of this Realm and of Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith!" What the hell are we supposed to do with that? Even shortened, isn't the country now called the "United Kingdom" and not "England" - or "Great Britain" - making even "Queen of England" not the correct formal title anymore?
Also what about officeholders? As I've had to say many times, "Secretary of State" is actually not the correct formal title. It gives no country designation. Just as "Governor" gives no state designation. According to the rule, they are common nouns. So even though "U.S. Secretary of State" is more useful, isn't the correct formal title "Secretary of State of the United States of America." And if you omit "of America" isn't that no longer the correct formal title?
So is seems to me that some clarity and guidance on this particular issue is desperately needed. Otherwise, I fear we might as well just chuck the whole thing and adopt a "some proximity" rule. Which, effectively, is precisely what we have, de facto, right now. X4n6 ( talk) 12:24, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
We shouldn't be capitalizing "things that some people may interpret as titles" unless:
Re: "WP is unlikely to ever elevate its guide to the level of policy. So ... that which we wonk over lacks teeth" – Even those who have worked the most on MoS would not support and effort to brand it a policy. It isn't policy material. The difference between policies and guidelines on WP is that the former are required, core necessities for the project to be functional and to produce an encyclopedia, while the latter are best practices that make going about that goal more smooth and practical. You'll see this difference clearly if you read a bunch of policies and then read a bunch of a guidelines. The only parts of MoS that the community has ever felt rise to policy level are already policy (in
WP:AT), on the basis that unbridled strife over article titles was destructively disruptive (due to
WP:NPOV and
WP:NOR policy problems, for the most part), not just a nuisance. MoS lacks no teeth;
WP:P&G,
WP:CONSENSUS,
WP:IAR, and related policies and guidelines don't draw any sort of "disobedience" line between the P and the G. If the community thought that MoS could and should just be ignored at editorial whim, it wouldn't be a guideline, and it would have have existed and been followed all this time, including as part of the
WP:FAC process. What shouldn't happen is a bunch of
WP:WIKILAWYER behavior trying to "enforce" MoS or any other guideline as if it's some kind of law. Even our policies are (per
WP:IAR) not treated as utterly inviolable (except those imposed on the community by
WP:OFFICE to reflect real-world laws, e.g.
WP:COPYVIO; those really should have a variant of {{
Policy}}
on them that distinguishes them from policies originated from within the editorial community, but that's another matter for another time and place). —
SMcCandlish ☺
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¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 07:26, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
Another edge case: "the former Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director of the CIA, Victor Marchetti", which I just ran across. There's likely to be a strong desire among many editors to capitalize that lengthy job title despite it not being attached to a name directly (which would be "former CIA Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director Victor Marchetti", which itself is awkward, and can be misread to imply that Marchetti is the deputy director and we have not named the executive assistant to the DD yet). People are apt to miss the distinction between the versions with and without the comma. An argument can't really be made that the title itself/position itself, as such, is under discussion here (as it is in "The role of Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director is ..."). The clumsiness of both constructions can be fixed with rearrangement: "Victor Marchetti, a former executive assistant to the deputy director of the CIA"; that's the style we want and which other mainstream style guides want, so how to we ensure we get it? — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 08:31, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
What's really happening here is exactly the same linguistic process involved in some other discussions on this page. Take this sentence:
To my eyes using "duke of Wellington" looks rather old fashioned, and it is the style used in EB1911 see for example the EB article on Arthur Wellesley where apart from the first line of the article all mentions of the "duke of Wellington" is with "duke" not "Duke" as similar thing is done with the article Great Rebellion where the style is "earl of Essex", "duke of Argyll" etc. However to my surprise the modern EB article called English Civil Wars uses a similar lower-case style, as does its article on Arthur Wellesley.
I want to pick up on something that User:Great scott wrote "Obama is a 21st-century American president (generic), Three prime ministers shook President Obama's hand (generic prime ministers but "President" is a title)". I thought that the president of the USA was an office not a title. I have noticed the same thing creeping into British English over the last decade or so as British journalists have started to write "Prime Minister Theresa May" rather than "Theresa May, the Prime Minister" or "the Prime Minister, Theresa May".
Overall I agree with position that Blueboar had taken in this conversation. -- PBS ( talk) 14:51, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
I will try to shed some darkness on this illuminating discussion. In the first instance, I will address the opening analogy. A proper name is a unique identifier. Consequently, a proper name cannot be pluralised nor (as a general rule) does the definite article, "the", attach to a proper name. However, some noun phrases are capitalised because they are derived from a proper name. Hence, of all the John Smiths in America, the one from Kalamazoo is the tallest. Multiple unique entities can have the same name. Every "John Smith" is unique, even though they have the same name. In the opening analogy, the correct example would be: "Of all the Union Stations in America, the one in Chicago is the largest." (assuming we are referring to the train station and not a trade union office).
It is important to distinguish between a proper name, a proper noun and something which is a discrete identifier by virtue of the definite article (don't mention the universe). Proper nouns (nouns which are capitalised) are most frequently capitalised because they are derived from a proper name - in the case of Christian, which is derived from Christ.
Wind back time a bit and it was common to capitalise shortened forms of proper nouns. So, where we are talking about the 9th Battalion, we might write: "The Battalion deployed to ...". WP; however, has chosen to generally deprecate the use of capitals except in the case of proper nouns (and proper names). I am not saying I agree with this fully but it is the nature of the beast. On the matter of a proper name, it is also my recollection that that which is named must be "concrete and tangible". To this extent, a job title is not concrete and tangible, even if it is occupied. It would therefore be correct to refer to the "mayor of Boston" and not the "Mayor of Boston". There are, perhaps, exceptions (as with every rule in English), such as God - and it is way to existential to debate here (whether God is a "concrete, tangible" entity).
There is the matter of a job position also being a title, in which case, it is appropriate (I think) to refer to Mr President or Prime Minister May but the American president, Donald Trump, and the British prime minister, Teressa May. We might also have "Mayor Smith of Boston" but not "the Mayor of Boston, John Smith". It is pertinent to note that the definite article attaches to the job title and this is an indicator that the full job title should not be capitalised and "the mayor of Boston, John Smith", preferred.
The Case of the Duke of Wellington is perhaps a little more complicated. As pointed out before, Arthur Wellesley assumed the name "Wellington". Certainly, in reference to Wellesley as the "Duke of Wellington", it is much the same as "Prime Minister May". The trick, though, might be to disentangle the specific from the generic. Certainly, "dukes of Wellington"... or in "11th earl of Blandings" would appear to be more correct, where that part which is derived from a proper name (viz Wellington and Blandings) is capitalised. These are not proper names, even if, in the first case, they refer to a collection of discrete entities called "Wellington" and, in the second, a very specific earl of Blandings.
Again, though, we come to the point where usage might dictate deviation from the application of "rules". Must we choose to say "the President of America", "the Queen" for Elizabeth II (or similarly for any other monarch) and "the Pope" for His Holiness? If so, these specific (and other limited) instances should be identified and prescribed as acknowledged exceptions.
MOS:CAPS can be somewhat problematic. It defers, in the first instance, to usage in sources to determine if something should be capitalised. To some extent, this tends to impose, rather than negate "specialist style fallacy". My preference would be to defer to linguistic theory in the first instance. The biggest fallacy is the notion that a "discrete" entity referred to by a discrete "name" is ipso facto a proper name. Linguistic theory; however, requires that a name be assigned by a person (or entity) entitled to do so (eg, a parent or owner). It also allows that "the collective" and not some specialist group, can accept (over time) that a common name becomes a proper name. It is at this point that that sources might come into play. The trick is to disentangle specialist style fallacy from linguistic theory and balance this against "general usage". To this end, MOS:CAPS should provide clear guidance that facilitates minimal disruption to WP. To this extent (this discussion and others similar) MOS:CAPS is failing. I am not saying that I agree with MOS:CAPS but this is how I analyse the issue within the constructs that are in place. Regards Cinderella157 ( talk) 11:42, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
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What you're saying about randomly walking around renaming things and others not going along with you doesn't have anything to do with proper name distinctions, but is about idiolect and protologism versus actual communication (shared language). In a great many cases people have walked up to things and renamed them and people have gone along with it, most often when the renamer has a conquering army lined up behind him. Not related to this thread, though it's tangentially related to MoS in the sense that we don't permit randomly capitalizing stuff just because it seems like a name to someone; we apply this in various ways, e.g., with respect to descriptive article titles, disambiguations, Wikipedian-created translations of titles of works, and other WP-invented phrasing. We've never desperately needed to have an MoS line item about not capitalizing such things in general, but it probably wouldn't hurt to add one to MOS:CAPS, since "don't capitalize what you made up" seems like WP:Common sense but might not be as common as we'd like. (The discussion above includes at least one example of someone wanting to capitalize a description ("the French king") due to confusing it with the actual title ("King of France", in conventional, reliably sourced English translation of the Modern French, Middle French, etc., versions of the title, e.g. Roi de France, which is also rendered with roi when used generically and not attached to a name as a title, just like in English).
Just drawing a line at heads of state and heads of world religions, as you suggest, and lower-casing every title below this is one possible approach, but is not the one WP has selected, because "there have been several queens of England who were sovereigns, not just wives of kings of England" is now normal modern English (it wasn't in mid-20th-century English). The distinction modern style guides seem to most often agree on is whether it's used as a title with a name or not (a narrow form of
use versus mention distinction).
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SMcCandlish ☺
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¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 08:16, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
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Yes, the barrel of a gun is another acknowledged way of conferring naming rights. I did say that, as a "general rule" the definite article does not attach to a proper name. And yes, there are exceptions, though proper names "cannot normally be modified by an article or other determiner". At Proper noun#Strong and weak proper names: "Because they are used to refer to an individual entity, proper names are, by their nature, definite; so a definite article would be redundant, and personal names (like John) are used without an article or other determiner. However, some proper names (especially certain geographical names) are usually used with the definite article." Further, at Proper noun#Proper names: "proper nouns are limited to single words only (possibly with the), while proper names include all proper nouns (in their primary applications) as well as noun phrases". If I am wrong (as you say) then the article needs rewriting? In arguements over caps, the most common statements I have seen in support of caps is something the effect of: "there is only one" or "it refers to this particular one" - which is actually an arguement for caps for distinction and falls to the fallacy that a specific referent "implies" a proper name. "Not every noun or noun phrase that refers to a unique entity is a proper name." A job title is a name but is it a proper name? I submit not - another fallacy, that name is synonymous with proper name and yet we also have common names. Another "property" of a proper name is that they are not descriptive (though again there are exceptions which are more generally historical) - hence Oxford. Many job titles are inherently descriptive. I believe the observation was made that job titles are written in title case as a way of identifying those words that make the noun phrase that is the job title - a form of distinction which might also be achieved by italics or quote marks. The fallacy is that: "since they are capitalise, a job title is a proper name", yet in multiple respects, linguistics ( onomastics) tells us they are not proper names - hence, Post hoc ergo propter hoc. If we acknowledge this, the focus of discussion can shift. The current debate is circular in nature - because we capitalise job titles, they are proper names; therefore, we must capitalise job titles. Recognising the fallacy of the circular arguement is empowering. We can acknowledge the general advice to deprecate capitals but make a conscious choice to permit certain exceptions - because the Pope, the Queen, the President (and anyone else we choose to acknowledge) are "important people" and "deserve" to have their job titles capitalise (or whatever other arbitrary case is made) - not because of a fallacy that these job titles are proper names. You have already indicated quite arbitrary criteria by which job titles are capitalise. |
Regards Cinderella157 ( talk) 11:01, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
{{
cite book}}
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(
help): The central cases of proper names are expressions which have been conventionally adopted as the name of a particular entity. ...In their primary use, proper names normally refer to the particular entities that they name: in this use they have the syntactic status of NPs. For the most part, however, they can be nominals that are part of larger NPs: such nominals may be attributive modifiers or heads that are accompanied by dependents that are not part of the proper name itself. ... Proper nouns, by contrast are word-level units belonging to the category noun. Clinton and Zealand proper nouns, but New Zealand is not. America is a proper noun, but The United States of America is not – and nor are The United States or United and States on their own. ... many proper names have alternant versions , and one type of alternation is between a formal name with a common noun as its head and a less formal version with the common noun omitted: The Tate Gallery v The Tate."
We may therefore draw a distinction between a PROPER NOUN, which is a single word, and a NAME, which may or may not consist of one word."
May we please have clarification on what to go with here. 1) Name was the 45th Governor of State or 2) Name was the 45th governor of State. GoodDay ( talk) 02:02, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
The point of disputation on this particular matter is the confusing third bullet at MOS:JOBTITLES. It's resulted in argument about whether particular titles "are" proper names, rather than what the intent of the bullet point is, to address treatment in a particular context as a proper name – which was never the practical conceptualization of the issue, due to the sharp disagreement between proper name (linguistics) and proper name (philosophy) approaches to defining "proper name". Even head-of-state titles like President of the United States and King of France are not treated consistently capitalized in reliable sources, except when used in front of an individual's name.
The way to fix the third bullet is probably to replace the "proper name" wording (and it has also been objected to in other ways, like the weird "correct formal title" phrasing). I'll propose a revision below.
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SMcCandlish ☺
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¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 08:52, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
There is a clear consensus to revise the third bullet of MOS:JOBTITLES as proposed.
Given all that's been said in the general-discussion RfC above, it is proposed here to change the third bullet of MOS:JOBTITLES, on when to capitalize titles, to the following, including some additional examples (to make it clearer there isn't a different rule for civic and noble titles on Wikipedia):
The present wording of this line item is:
When the correct formal title is treated as a proper name (e.g., King of France; it is correct to write Louis XVI was King of France but Louis XVI was the French king)
It has been termed confusing and disputed, in multiple ways, including: perceptions of self-contradiction; conflicts between linguistics and philosophy conceptions of the meaning of "proper name"; complaints that "correct formal title" is PoV or simply meaningless; lack of guidance about cases of the form "Name was a/the title"; and implication that every occurrence of something like "King of France" should be capitalized regardless of context (e.g. use as a common-noun phrase or plural). [This is not my personal opinion, but a summary of debate above and of previous discussions.]
The current wording of the entire section
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Offices, titles, and positions such as president, king, emperor, pope, bishop, abbot, and executive director are common nouns and therefore should be in lower case when used generically: Mitterrand was the French president or There were many presidents at the meeting. They are capitalized only in the following cases:
When an unhyphenated compound title such as vice president or chief executive officer is capitalized (unless this is simply because it begins a sentence), [1] each word begins with a capital letter: On October 10, 1973, Vice President Agnew resigned and Gerald Ford was appointed to replace him. This does not apply to unimportant words such as the "of" in White House Chief of Staff John Doe. When hyphenated, as Vice-president is in some contexts other than U.S. politics, the second (and any subsequent) elements are not capitalized. Honorifics and styles of nobility should normally be capitalized, e.g., Her Majesty, His Holiness, but see also WP:Manual of Style/Biographies § Honorifics. References
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I believe this proposal will be about the best compromise we can achieve any time soon, while the current wording is definitely confusing to a lot of editors and leading to recurrent dispute, while off-Wikipedia style guides do not give consistent advice on the matter, though they mostly lean in this direction, and the proposed solution should be stable for a long time.
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SMcCandlish ☺
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¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 17:16, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
A note from the "drafter" (more like assembler) of the proposed version: I'm not trying to capture the Truth or what's Correct – sources radically conflict on such notions, which are prescriptivist PoV anyway – just to distill it to a "rule" that is simple, cohesive (self-consistent), also consistent with our general approach to capital letters, and which is what at least some of the sources are doing. @ Blueboar: On the ordinal case, I can't think of a reason that ordinals would be a special exception among modifiers, once the "ah ha" moment comes that this can be put in modifier terms and a cloud is suddenly lifted. I also didn't originate or inject the view that "the king of France shouldn't be capped", but it's advanced so often I gave up resisting it, especially as it's consistent with other "genericization", like use of an indefinite article, and pluralizing. It's also a concession that can be made to the philosophy set without getting the linguistics set to scream and throw rocks, and without dumping the linguistic approach to proper names entirely in favor of the philosophical one, which people without degrees in philosophy generally don't understand. >;-) In this, I've been dusting off my old lobbyist and policy analyst hat, and gritting the teeth for real compromise in hopes of "a lasting peace". — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 22:52, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
It's the same case as "Nixon was the guy I most admired in 1972"; you can't (idiomatically in English) say *"Nixon was guy I most admired in 1972"; the presence of the indefinite article modifies the role the string plays (it doesn't properly play one at all in the second case); it's just harder to see the change with a title than with a longer phrase. You can also clearly see the difference between "I am Communications Director", the assertion of a title as such, and "I am the communications director", a description, a statement of role (which might not even be the actual job title; I picked this example on purpose because my actual job title was Director of Activism and Outreach when I said "I'm the communications director", using wording that would translate, in others' senses of an org chart's layout).
The idea here is to make this as easy to use and as hard to foul up as possible. Most style is arbitrary at one level or another, and no one style encapsulates that which is
the Truth or
most Right. For this "does it have a modifier?" approach, it takes a long time to explain, but very little space to express as a rule to use, thus it's simple to remember and apply. PS, re the words-as-words case, e.g. "Nixon used the title President of the United States": It's so obvious that this qualifies that I didn't want to browbeat people by including such an example.
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SMcCandlish ☺
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¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 23:23, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Title case?. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 17:52, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
Should an album title be Right On Time, or Right on Time? I opt for the former because "on time" is being used as an adjectival phrase, but this isn't covered by the exceptions to the 'lower case if it's a preposition' rule that are currently listed ("Particles of phrasal verbs"; "The first word in a compound preposition") or by the rule covering "adjectives". Also see Right On Time, which currently is a redirect (with an attempted explanation) to Right on Time. I've already moved my creation – Right On Time (Harold Mabern album) – but would like confirmation before moving other pages. EddieHugh ( talk) 23:24, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
These debates are recurrent because lots of solutions are "obvious", just to different mindsets.
The first item in that list fails to be obvious to some editors because they have failed to conceptualize a difference between WP's encyclopedic facts and internal WP governance; they're the same people who keep calling
WP:POLICY pages "articles" and demanding that sources be cited in them, when the "source" for them is editorial consensus (though often informed, when feasible, with talk page citation of relevant off-WP material – not always feasible because there is no third-party source that can tell us how to best do WP-specific things). Some other reasons are that specialists of various sorts often fail to see the forest for the trees, and have arrived at Wikipedia not just to write in specialized style for specialists, rather than for everyday readers, but are actively seeking to impose norms from their favorite journal, newspaper, magazine, etc. A problematic variant has been the occasional cluster of editors proceeding from a credentialist viewpoint, in which only specialist editors should have any real say in specialized topics, and should aggressively impose external style from specialist works (sometimes tied to promoting a specific organization), to make WP more "reliable" and "reputable" among members of that profession; i.e., they are mistaking WP's purpose as a tertiary, generalist work and are instead trying to jigger it into a secondary collection of specialist ones, subject to their own personal peer review on a topical basis. Still others just treat WP as some kind of "not really a real publication" playground, a huge sandbox, and are resistant to rules being applied to them while they goof off; they're angry that WP's style is not the style they want to use on their blog or their social media posts, or simply what they learned twenty or forty years ago in 7th grade. Fortunately, all of these misperceptions and misapproaches are curable, in any editor likely to pass the
WP:CIR test; it just takes longer with some than with others.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 06:23, 27 October 2017 (UTC)
Somehow, Talk:Tyler, The Creator#Requested move 17 October 2017 has failed to come to a numeric consensus (even if the policy one is clear), despite being relisted once already. This should not be allowed to close as "no consensus" since it would lend a false sense of controversy and inspire further re-litigation about capital letters in pop-culture topics (already too much of a source of style-related dispute as it is). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 04:12, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Merger of scattered and redundant material to MOS:TITLES for details. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 22:53, 23 November 2017 (UTC) See also:
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 00:24, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
I propose compressing the entire MOS:CAPS#Anglo- and similar prefixes a short statement that capitalization of these terms is not consistent in the real world, less apt to be capitalized in Canada, and should default to capitalized in other MOS:ENGVARs. All the detailia is patently original research. It's also unhelpful instruction creep, since it's doesn't really advise anything, and there isn't any widespread dispute about this stuff (most editors capitalize these words). Its just someone's pet ideas about usage frequency, which is a moving target anyway, and will also vary widely by context (e.g., lowercasing is far more frequent in a linguistic context than a historical one, regardless of dialect). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 01:04, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
PS: What material we do keep on this should be merged with anything we have on lower-casing of proper adjectives that have lost all connection to the namesake, e.g. "french fries", and "a platonic relationship"; these are the same kind of exception as lowercasing of "romanization" in linguistics, and the word "italic" in reference to fonts/typefaces. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 01:06, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
I've done a detailed revision ( before and after) of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters#All caps and small caps. The major fixes are:
{{
GOD}}
, and Unicode code point names (certainly much better than huge ALL CAPS – there's quite a bit of all caps for code points in articles still, but various editors have been slowly cleaning it up to use the less visually assaulting small caps).Maybe EEng or other regulars can think of some ways to compress further, though I don't think the length is an issue; this is not a section people consult frequently, and it should be sufficiently specific when they do so. Of course, if I have anything wrong, let me know!
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 12:08, 24 November 2017 (UTC); "after" link updated to reflect later tweaks, 05:38, 27 November 2017 (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 20 | ← | Archive 23 | Archive 24 | Archive 25 | Archive 26 | Archive 27 | → | Archive 30 |
Regarding the recent discussion of capitalization of job titles in the form of "List of mayors of X" or "List of Lord Mayors of X", please note that I have filed another RM request at Talk:List of mayors of Finsbury, since the outcome of the RM discussion at Talk:List of Lord Mayors of Birmingham resulted in an undesirable direct conflict between the format of our "List of mayors of X" and "List of Lord Mayors of X" articles within Category:Lists of mayors of places in England and Category:Lists of mayors of London boroughs. It would be nice to resolve this, so participation in the discussion at Talk:List of mayors of Finsbury is hereby encouraged. — BarrelProof ( talk) 15:52, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
Third RM is now open to resolve the conflict between the previous two: Talk:List of Lord Mayors of Birmingham#Requested move 5 September 2017. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 19:45, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
Summary: This is something I've been meaning to address for several years. Every time I go back to the Cultivar group article, I find that the symbol "Group" (with a capital-G), which is used in actual scientific names – e.g., Solanum tuberosum 'Desirée' (Maincrop Group) – has re-invaded the article's plain-English running prose, e.g. A Group is usually united by a distinct common trait .... Even in its lead sentence. Worse yet, this is being done in innumerable articles on plants, plant products, and plant parasites. I did a couple of hours of sourcing on the talk page (hopefully some of it will be useful for something else – I formatted it in citation templates) to dispel this WP:Specialized-style fallacy. It's a use–mention distinction failure, like changing material about a unit of measure to use the symbol for the unit as would be used in an actual measurement, e.g. changing The light-year is a unit of length used to express astronomical distances to The ly is a unit of length .... This "A Group is ..." style has spread here because ICNCP's publisher writes that way and advocates that others do so. Telling WP how to write plain English in our articles about plants is beyond the remit of the ISHS, and WP doesn't use their house style. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 23:21, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
There is no consensus in this RfC, which was started by a sockpuppet. This RfC was superseded by #RfC 2: Specific proposal to revise the third bullet of MOS:JOBTITLES.
WP:JOBTITLES currently offers us conflicting advice with regard to capitalization. A general rule is stated that titles are “common nouns and therefore should be in lower case when used generically.” This includes “king” and “French king,” but not “King of France,” at least according to this puzzling example: “Louis XVI was King of France but Louis XVI was the French king." This example goes against the advice of The Chicago Manual of Style, which gives "King Abdullah; the king of Jordan" (8.21) and “Charles I (king of England)” (16.98). This mistake has been in the Manual of Style for a long time. It at one point, it was
supported by bogus CMOS and Guardian references. In the archive, I found a history of editors puzzling over this passage, but no one who could explain what it means or where it came from. Various editors have, in good faith, interpreted the “King of France” example to mean that Wikipedia style is to upper case titles. This interpretation is in opposition to the rule the example is supposed to be illustrating. I propose that we resolve the conflict by removing the bulleted section with the “King of France” example.
Great scott (
talk) 08:46, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
The RFC author is a CHECKUSER BLOCKED AS A SOCKPUPPET ACCOUNT. [1] RFC participants are invited to continue or terminate the RFC as they see fit. Alsee ( talk) 08:08, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
There's another subtlety about the example Louis XVI was King of France. If it's correct to omit a determiner here, and not write instead "Louis XVI was the king of France", then "King of France" would be classed grammatically as a proper noun phrase rather than a common noun phrase, and so would be capitalized. What this example shows, I think, is that, unfortunately, capitalization in contemporary English cannot be reduced to a simple set of guidelines. I would write:
Peter coxhead ( talk) 08:53, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
Radical idea: There is, however, a simplifying approach. We have a "down style" here (default to lower case for everything unless there's a reason to capitalize), and we could really stick to it. We could simply be clear that we capitalize such titles only a) when the title is prepended to or surrounds a name ("Count Dracula", "King Louis XVI of France"); b) when the title stands in for a specific individual's name ("President Trump went to meet the Queen [i.e., Elizabeth II] but was turned away at the Buckingham Palace gates."); and c) when discussing the office/position as the thing itself ("The role of Vice President of the United States has shifted markedly in the last 200 years" – and do this last thing only for high office, not for things like "Her responsibilities as Peoria city attorney included ..."). Do not capitalize otherwise. If it comes after a name ("Louis XVI was the king of France who ..."), is plural ("Three dukes of Cambridge in a row had gout"), is adjectival ("a new presidential candidacy"), or whatever other circumstance, then just lower-case it. (I think this would affect none of Peter's examples except the first one, rendering it as "Louis XVI was king of France".) This would not maximally please all of the Proper name (philosophy) people and traditional style sticklers (including me), but it would make things much simpler here and reduce the presently continuous and circular disputes about this stuff. Regardless, I do agree with the OP that the current wording is potentially confusing to a lot of editors and may be why there's so much dispute about this. It's s understood by some but not by others, so one revision or another is in order. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 15:30, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
The distinction is basically a form of words-as-words, or mention-versus-use, matter. It's the difference between "SMcCandlish does not have the Administrator bit, and has never run for Arbitrator, at the English Wikipedia" and "SMcCandlish is not among the English Wikipedia's administrators or arbitrators." And: "Trump's surprise election as President of the United States", versus "Trump is a controversial US president". It's capitalized when the title/role itself is under discussion (and is one that is apt to be treated as a proper name), not when it's being used as a descriptor or classifier.
On the proper name matter: we need not capitalize titles even when used in front of names when it's something like "According to assistant manager Herman K. Essell, the assault occurred at 11:46 pm." – i.e., something most people aren't apt to think of as high office. This style is increasingly favored even in business and news (but not marketing) writing, e.g. "according to executive director Chris Ng", versus "according to Executive Director Chris Ng"; it's just plain easier to read when it's not all capitalized. The caps are mostly used for titles-discussed-as-such material: "Ng was promoted to Outreach and Advocacy Director (roughly equivalent to a vice-president of marketing), then later selected by the board as interim then permanent Executive Director (a role previously named President until Hidalgo's resignation)."
PS: One way to look at it is that if a particular string could be interpreted as a title-as-such or as descriptive, and the reader has no reason to care about the distinction, treat it as a description and lower-case it. We just
DGaF what, in these examples, the exact formal title in HR paperwork might really be for Essell or (in "according to executive director Chris Ng") for Ng; we care about the generally understood role. Various companies, especially in the computer and Internet industries, have silly invented job titles, like "UI Evangelist" and we shouldn't use them WP's voice at all, because they're confusing to readers and are an NPoV problem.
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 01:02, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
The style in your example "...not the most respected duke of Wellington in history..." is taking the principle of minimal capitalisation too far, outside of common usage as shown by this ngram. A Duke of Wellington isn't like a king of France or a president of the United States. A peer's connection to the place name in his title is often very minimal; the town of Wellington, Somerset, shouldn't be given undue prominence in a sentence about Dukes of Wellington. Whereas "the third and seventh dukes" and "even among other dukes" both seem fine to me. Similarly, Prince William is in no real sense a duke of Cambridge but he is a Duke of Cambridge. Ham II ( talk) 11:52, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
I know I'm opening up a hornet's nest here, but of all the "clear as "mud-ness" of this guideline, arguably, the worst and most contentious is this phrase "correct formal title." Can't count the number of disagreements I've personally experienced over this.
It seems to me all 3 words are in play. A "correct title" is not necessarily formal. As in "French king." A formal title is not necessarily correct. As in "The United States President." And when discussing nobility titles, just how far do we need to go to satisfy all three words? Is the difference between "Queen of England" and "English Queen or queen" really all that relevant went the individual's actual "correct formal title" is: "Queen Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God Queen of this Realm and of Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith!" What the hell are we supposed to do with that? Even shortened, isn't the country now called the "United Kingdom" and not "England" - or "Great Britain" - making even "Queen of England" not the correct formal title anymore?
Also what about officeholders? As I've had to say many times, "Secretary of State" is actually not the correct formal title. It gives no country designation. Just as "Governor" gives no state designation. According to the rule, they are common nouns. So even though "U.S. Secretary of State" is more useful, isn't the correct formal title "Secretary of State of the United States of America." And if you omit "of America" isn't that no longer the correct formal title?
So is seems to me that some clarity and guidance on this particular issue is desperately needed. Otherwise, I fear we might as well just chuck the whole thing and adopt a "some proximity" rule. Which, effectively, is precisely what we have, de facto, right now. X4n6 ( talk) 12:24, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
We shouldn't be capitalizing "things that some people may interpret as titles" unless:
Re: "WP is unlikely to ever elevate its guide to the level of policy. So ... that which we wonk over lacks teeth" – Even those who have worked the most on MoS would not support and effort to brand it a policy. It isn't policy material. The difference between policies and guidelines on WP is that the former are required, core necessities for the project to be functional and to produce an encyclopedia, while the latter are best practices that make going about that goal more smooth and practical. You'll see this difference clearly if you read a bunch of policies and then read a bunch of a guidelines. The only parts of MoS that the community has ever felt rise to policy level are already policy (in
WP:AT), on the basis that unbridled strife over article titles was destructively disruptive (due to
WP:NPOV and
WP:NOR policy problems, for the most part), not just a nuisance. MoS lacks no teeth;
WP:P&G,
WP:CONSENSUS,
WP:IAR, and related policies and guidelines don't draw any sort of "disobedience" line between the P and the G. If the community thought that MoS could and should just be ignored at editorial whim, it wouldn't be a guideline, and it would have have existed and been followed all this time, including as part of the
WP:FAC process. What shouldn't happen is a bunch of
WP:WIKILAWYER behavior trying to "enforce" MoS or any other guideline as if it's some kind of law. Even our policies are (per
WP:IAR) not treated as utterly inviolable (except those imposed on the community by
WP:OFFICE to reflect real-world laws, e.g.
WP:COPYVIO; those really should have a variant of {{
Policy}}
on them that distinguishes them from policies originated from within the editorial community, but that's another matter for another time and place). —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 07:26, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
Another edge case: "the former Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director of the CIA, Victor Marchetti", which I just ran across. There's likely to be a strong desire among many editors to capitalize that lengthy job title despite it not being attached to a name directly (which would be "former CIA Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director Victor Marchetti", which itself is awkward, and can be misread to imply that Marchetti is the deputy director and we have not named the executive assistant to the DD yet). People are apt to miss the distinction between the versions with and without the comma. An argument can't really be made that the title itself/position itself, as such, is under discussion here (as it is in "The role of Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director is ..."). The clumsiness of both constructions can be fixed with rearrangement: "Victor Marchetti, a former executive assistant to the deputy director of the CIA"; that's the style we want and which other mainstream style guides want, so how to we ensure we get it? — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 08:31, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
What's really happening here is exactly the same linguistic process involved in some other discussions on this page. Take this sentence:
To my eyes using "duke of Wellington" looks rather old fashioned, and it is the style used in EB1911 see for example the EB article on Arthur Wellesley where apart from the first line of the article all mentions of the "duke of Wellington" is with "duke" not "Duke" as similar thing is done with the article Great Rebellion where the style is "earl of Essex", "duke of Argyll" etc. However to my surprise the modern EB article called English Civil Wars uses a similar lower-case style, as does its article on Arthur Wellesley.
I want to pick up on something that User:Great scott wrote "Obama is a 21st-century American president (generic), Three prime ministers shook President Obama's hand (generic prime ministers but "President" is a title)". I thought that the president of the USA was an office not a title. I have noticed the same thing creeping into British English over the last decade or so as British journalists have started to write "Prime Minister Theresa May" rather than "Theresa May, the Prime Minister" or "the Prime Minister, Theresa May".
Overall I agree with position that Blueboar had taken in this conversation. -- PBS ( talk) 14:51, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
I will try to shed some darkness on this illuminating discussion. In the first instance, I will address the opening analogy. A proper name is a unique identifier. Consequently, a proper name cannot be pluralised nor (as a general rule) does the definite article, "the", attach to a proper name. However, some noun phrases are capitalised because they are derived from a proper name. Hence, of all the John Smiths in America, the one from Kalamazoo is the tallest. Multiple unique entities can have the same name. Every "John Smith" is unique, even though they have the same name. In the opening analogy, the correct example would be: "Of all the Union Stations in America, the one in Chicago is the largest." (assuming we are referring to the train station and not a trade union office).
It is important to distinguish between a proper name, a proper noun and something which is a discrete identifier by virtue of the definite article (don't mention the universe). Proper nouns (nouns which are capitalised) are most frequently capitalised because they are derived from a proper name - in the case of Christian, which is derived from Christ.
Wind back time a bit and it was common to capitalise shortened forms of proper nouns. So, where we are talking about the 9th Battalion, we might write: "The Battalion deployed to ...". WP; however, has chosen to generally deprecate the use of capitals except in the case of proper nouns (and proper names). I am not saying I agree with this fully but it is the nature of the beast. On the matter of a proper name, it is also my recollection that that which is named must be "concrete and tangible". To this extent, a job title is not concrete and tangible, even if it is occupied. It would therefore be correct to refer to the "mayor of Boston" and not the "Mayor of Boston". There are, perhaps, exceptions (as with every rule in English), such as God - and it is way to existential to debate here (whether God is a "concrete, tangible" entity).
There is the matter of a job position also being a title, in which case, it is appropriate (I think) to refer to Mr President or Prime Minister May but the American president, Donald Trump, and the British prime minister, Teressa May. We might also have "Mayor Smith of Boston" but not "the Mayor of Boston, John Smith". It is pertinent to note that the definite article attaches to the job title and this is an indicator that the full job title should not be capitalised and "the mayor of Boston, John Smith", preferred.
The Case of the Duke of Wellington is perhaps a little more complicated. As pointed out before, Arthur Wellesley assumed the name "Wellington". Certainly, in reference to Wellesley as the "Duke of Wellington", it is much the same as "Prime Minister May". The trick, though, might be to disentangle the specific from the generic. Certainly, "dukes of Wellington"... or in "11th earl of Blandings" would appear to be more correct, where that part which is derived from a proper name (viz Wellington and Blandings) is capitalised. These are not proper names, even if, in the first case, they refer to a collection of discrete entities called "Wellington" and, in the second, a very specific earl of Blandings.
Again, though, we come to the point where usage might dictate deviation from the application of "rules". Must we choose to say "the President of America", "the Queen" for Elizabeth II (or similarly for any other monarch) and "the Pope" for His Holiness? If so, these specific (and other limited) instances should be identified and prescribed as acknowledged exceptions.
MOS:CAPS can be somewhat problematic. It defers, in the first instance, to usage in sources to determine if something should be capitalised. To some extent, this tends to impose, rather than negate "specialist style fallacy". My preference would be to defer to linguistic theory in the first instance. The biggest fallacy is the notion that a "discrete" entity referred to by a discrete "name" is ipso facto a proper name. Linguistic theory; however, requires that a name be assigned by a person (or entity) entitled to do so (eg, a parent or owner). It also allows that "the collective" and not some specialist group, can accept (over time) that a common name becomes a proper name. It is at this point that that sources might come into play. The trick is to disentangle specialist style fallacy from linguistic theory and balance this against "general usage". To this end, MOS:CAPS should provide clear guidance that facilitates minimal disruption to WP. To this extent (this discussion and others similar) MOS:CAPS is failing. I am not saying that I agree with MOS:CAPS but this is how I analyse the issue within the constructs that are in place. Regards Cinderella157 ( talk) 11:42, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
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What you're saying about randomly walking around renaming things and others not going along with you doesn't have anything to do with proper name distinctions, but is about idiolect and protologism versus actual communication (shared language). In a great many cases people have walked up to things and renamed them and people have gone along with it, most often when the renamer has a conquering army lined up behind him. Not related to this thread, though it's tangentially related to MoS in the sense that we don't permit randomly capitalizing stuff just because it seems like a name to someone; we apply this in various ways, e.g., with respect to descriptive article titles, disambiguations, Wikipedian-created translations of titles of works, and other WP-invented phrasing. We've never desperately needed to have an MoS line item about not capitalizing such things in general, but it probably wouldn't hurt to add one to MOS:CAPS, since "don't capitalize what you made up" seems like WP:Common sense but might not be as common as we'd like. (The discussion above includes at least one example of someone wanting to capitalize a description ("the French king") due to confusing it with the actual title ("King of France", in conventional, reliably sourced English translation of the Modern French, Middle French, etc., versions of the title, e.g. Roi de France, which is also rendered with roi when used generically and not attached to a name as a title, just like in English).
Just drawing a line at heads of state and heads of world religions, as you suggest, and lower-casing every title below this is one possible approach, but is not the one WP has selected, because "there have been several queens of England who were sovereigns, not just wives of kings of England" is now normal modern English (it wasn't in mid-20th-century English). The distinction modern style guides seem to most often agree on is whether it's used as a title with a name or not (a narrow form of
use versus mention distinction).
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 08:16, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
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Yes, the barrel of a gun is another acknowledged way of conferring naming rights. I did say that, as a "general rule" the definite article does not attach to a proper name. And yes, there are exceptions, though proper names "cannot normally be modified by an article or other determiner". At Proper noun#Strong and weak proper names: "Because they are used to refer to an individual entity, proper names are, by their nature, definite; so a definite article would be redundant, and personal names (like John) are used without an article or other determiner. However, some proper names (especially certain geographical names) are usually used with the definite article." Further, at Proper noun#Proper names: "proper nouns are limited to single words only (possibly with the), while proper names include all proper nouns (in their primary applications) as well as noun phrases". If I am wrong (as you say) then the article needs rewriting? In arguements over caps, the most common statements I have seen in support of caps is something the effect of: "there is only one" or "it refers to this particular one" - which is actually an arguement for caps for distinction and falls to the fallacy that a specific referent "implies" a proper name. "Not every noun or noun phrase that refers to a unique entity is a proper name." A job title is a name but is it a proper name? I submit not - another fallacy, that name is synonymous with proper name and yet we also have common names. Another "property" of a proper name is that they are not descriptive (though again there are exceptions which are more generally historical) - hence Oxford. Many job titles are inherently descriptive. I believe the observation was made that job titles are written in title case as a way of identifying those words that make the noun phrase that is the job title - a form of distinction which might also be achieved by italics or quote marks. The fallacy is that: "since they are capitalise, a job title is a proper name", yet in multiple respects, linguistics ( onomastics) tells us they are not proper names - hence, Post hoc ergo propter hoc. If we acknowledge this, the focus of discussion can shift. The current debate is circular in nature - because we capitalise job titles, they are proper names; therefore, we must capitalise job titles. Recognising the fallacy of the circular arguement is empowering. We can acknowledge the general advice to deprecate capitals but make a conscious choice to permit certain exceptions - because the Pope, the Queen, the President (and anyone else we choose to acknowledge) are "important people" and "deserve" to have their job titles capitalise (or whatever other arbitrary case is made) - not because of a fallacy that these job titles are proper names. You have already indicated quite arbitrary criteria by which job titles are capitalise. |
Regards Cinderella157 ( talk) 11:01, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
{{
cite book}}
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(
help): The central cases of proper names are expressions which have been conventionally adopted as the name of a particular entity. ...In their primary use, proper names normally refer to the particular entities that they name: in this use they have the syntactic status of NPs. For the most part, however, they can be nominals that are part of larger NPs: such nominals may be attributive modifiers or heads that are accompanied by dependents that are not part of the proper name itself. ... Proper nouns, by contrast are word-level units belonging to the category noun. Clinton and Zealand proper nouns, but New Zealand is not. America is a proper noun, but The United States of America is not – and nor are The United States or United and States on their own. ... many proper names have alternant versions , and one type of alternation is between a formal name with a common noun as its head and a less formal version with the common noun omitted: The Tate Gallery v The Tate."
We may therefore draw a distinction between a PROPER NOUN, which is a single word, and a NAME, which may or may not consist of one word."
May we please have clarification on what to go with here. 1) Name was the 45th Governor of State or 2) Name was the 45th governor of State. GoodDay ( talk) 02:02, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
The point of disputation on this particular matter is the confusing third bullet at MOS:JOBTITLES. It's resulted in argument about whether particular titles "are" proper names, rather than what the intent of the bullet point is, to address treatment in a particular context as a proper name – which was never the practical conceptualization of the issue, due to the sharp disagreement between proper name (linguistics) and proper name (philosophy) approaches to defining "proper name". Even head-of-state titles like President of the United States and King of France are not treated consistently capitalized in reliable sources, except when used in front of an individual's name.
The way to fix the third bullet is probably to replace the "proper name" wording (and it has also been objected to in other ways, like the weird "correct formal title" phrasing). I'll propose a revision below.
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 08:52, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
There is a clear consensus to revise the third bullet of MOS:JOBTITLES as proposed.
Given all that's been said in the general-discussion RfC above, it is proposed here to change the third bullet of MOS:JOBTITLES, on when to capitalize titles, to the following, including some additional examples (to make it clearer there isn't a different rule for civic and noble titles on Wikipedia):
The present wording of this line item is:
When the correct formal title is treated as a proper name (e.g., King of France; it is correct to write Louis XVI was King of France but Louis XVI was the French king)
It has been termed confusing and disputed, in multiple ways, including: perceptions of self-contradiction; conflicts between linguistics and philosophy conceptions of the meaning of "proper name"; complaints that "correct formal title" is PoV or simply meaningless; lack of guidance about cases of the form "Name was a/the title"; and implication that every occurrence of something like "King of France" should be capitalized regardless of context (e.g. use as a common-noun phrase or plural). [This is not my personal opinion, but a summary of debate above and of previous discussions.]
The current wording of the entire section
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Offices, titles, and positions such as president, king, emperor, pope, bishop, abbot, and executive director are common nouns and therefore should be in lower case when used generically: Mitterrand was the French president or There were many presidents at the meeting. They are capitalized only in the following cases:
When an unhyphenated compound title such as vice president or chief executive officer is capitalized (unless this is simply because it begins a sentence), [1] each word begins with a capital letter: On October 10, 1973, Vice President Agnew resigned and Gerald Ford was appointed to replace him. This does not apply to unimportant words such as the "of" in White House Chief of Staff John Doe. When hyphenated, as Vice-president is in some contexts other than U.S. politics, the second (and any subsequent) elements are not capitalized. Honorifics and styles of nobility should normally be capitalized, e.g., Her Majesty, His Holiness, but see also WP:Manual of Style/Biographies § Honorifics. References
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I believe this proposal will be about the best compromise we can achieve any time soon, while the current wording is definitely confusing to a lot of editors and leading to recurrent dispute, while off-Wikipedia style guides do not give consistent advice on the matter, though they mostly lean in this direction, and the proposed solution should be stable for a long time.
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SMcCandlish ☺
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¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 17:16, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
A note from the "drafter" (more like assembler) of the proposed version: I'm not trying to capture the Truth or what's Correct – sources radically conflict on such notions, which are prescriptivist PoV anyway – just to distill it to a "rule" that is simple, cohesive (self-consistent), also consistent with our general approach to capital letters, and which is what at least some of the sources are doing. @ Blueboar: On the ordinal case, I can't think of a reason that ordinals would be a special exception among modifiers, once the "ah ha" moment comes that this can be put in modifier terms and a cloud is suddenly lifted. I also didn't originate or inject the view that "the king of France shouldn't be capped", but it's advanced so often I gave up resisting it, especially as it's consistent with other "genericization", like use of an indefinite article, and pluralizing. It's also a concession that can be made to the philosophy set without getting the linguistics set to scream and throw rocks, and without dumping the linguistic approach to proper names entirely in favor of the philosophical one, which people without degrees in philosophy generally don't understand. >;-) In this, I've been dusting off my old lobbyist and policy analyst hat, and gritting the teeth for real compromise in hopes of "a lasting peace". — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 22:52, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
It's the same case as "Nixon was the guy I most admired in 1972"; you can't (idiomatically in English) say *"Nixon was guy I most admired in 1972"; the presence of the indefinite article modifies the role the string plays (it doesn't properly play one at all in the second case); it's just harder to see the change with a title than with a longer phrase. You can also clearly see the difference between "I am Communications Director", the assertion of a title as such, and "I am the communications director", a description, a statement of role (which might not even be the actual job title; I picked this example on purpose because my actual job title was Director of Activism and Outreach when I said "I'm the communications director", using wording that would translate, in others' senses of an org chart's layout).
The idea here is to make this as easy to use and as hard to foul up as possible. Most style is arbitrary at one level or another, and no one style encapsulates that which is
the Truth or
most Right. For this "does it have a modifier?" approach, it takes a long time to explain, but very little space to express as a rule to use, thus it's simple to remember and apply. PS, re the words-as-words case, e.g. "Nixon used the title President of the United States": It's so obvious that this qualifies that I didn't want to browbeat people by including such an example.
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SMcCandlish ☺
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¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 23:23, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Title case?. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 17:52, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
Should an album title be Right On Time, or Right on Time? I opt for the former because "on time" is being used as an adjectival phrase, but this isn't covered by the exceptions to the 'lower case if it's a preposition' rule that are currently listed ("Particles of phrasal verbs"; "The first word in a compound preposition") or by the rule covering "adjectives". Also see Right On Time, which currently is a redirect (with an attempted explanation) to Right on Time. I've already moved my creation – Right On Time (Harold Mabern album) – but would like confirmation before moving other pages. EddieHugh ( talk) 23:24, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
These debates are recurrent because lots of solutions are "obvious", just to different mindsets.
The first item in that list fails to be obvious to some editors because they have failed to conceptualize a difference between WP's encyclopedic facts and internal WP governance; they're the same people who keep calling
WP:POLICY pages "articles" and demanding that sources be cited in them, when the "source" for them is editorial consensus (though often informed, when feasible, with talk page citation of relevant off-WP material – not always feasible because there is no third-party source that can tell us how to best do WP-specific things). Some other reasons are that specialists of various sorts often fail to see the forest for the trees, and have arrived at Wikipedia not just to write in specialized style for specialists, rather than for everyday readers, but are actively seeking to impose norms from their favorite journal, newspaper, magazine, etc. A problematic variant has been the occasional cluster of editors proceeding from a credentialist viewpoint, in which only specialist editors should have any real say in specialized topics, and should aggressively impose external style from specialist works (sometimes tied to promoting a specific organization), to make WP more "reliable" and "reputable" among members of that profession; i.e., they are mistaking WP's purpose as a tertiary, generalist work and are instead trying to jigger it into a secondary collection of specialist ones, subject to their own personal peer review on a topical basis. Still others just treat WP as some kind of "not really a real publication" playground, a huge sandbox, and are resistant to rules being applied to them while they goof off; they're angry that WP's style is not the style they want to use on their blog or their social media posts, or simply what they learned twenty or forty years ago in 7th grade. Fortunately, all of these misperceptions and misapproaches are curable, in any editor likely to pass the
WP:CIR test; it just takes longer with some than with others.
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SMcCandlish
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¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 06:23, 27 October 2017 (UTC)
Somehow, Talk:Tyler, The Creator#Requested move 17 October 2017 has failed to come to a numeric consensus (even if the policy one is clear), despite being relisted once already. This should not be allowed to close as "no consensus" since it would lend a false sense of controversy and inspire further re-litigation about capital letters in pop-culture topics (already too much of a source of style-related dispute as it is). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 04:12, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Merger of scattered and redundant material to MOS:TITLES for details. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 22:53, 23 November 2017 (UTC) See also:
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 00:24, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
I propose compressing the entire MOS:CAPS#Anglo- and similar prefixes a short statement that capitalization of these terms is not consistent in the real world, less apt to be capitalized in Canada, and should default to capitalized in other MOS:ENGVARs. All the detailia is patently original research. It's also unhelpful instruction creep, since it's doesn't really advise anything, and there isn't any widespread dispute about this stuff (most editors capitalize these words). Its just someone's pet ideas about usage frequency, which is a moving target anyway, and will also vary widely by context (e.g., lowercasing is far more frequent in a linguistic context than a historical one, regardless of dialect). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 01:04, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
PS: What material we do keep on this should be merged with anything we have on lower-casing of proper adjectives that have lost all connection to the namesake, e.g. "french fries", and "a platonic relationship"; these are the same kind of exception as lowercasing of "romanization" in linguistics, and the word "italic" in reference to fonts/typefaces. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 01:06, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
I've done a detailed revision ( before and after) of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters#All caps and small caps. The major fixes are:
{{
GOD}}
, and Unicode code point names (certainly much better than huge ALL CAPS – there's quite a bit of all caps for code points in articles still, but various editors have been slowly cleaning it up to use the less visually assaulting small caps).Maybe EEng or other regulars can think of some ways to compress further, though I don't think the length is an issue; this is not a section people consult frequently, and it should be sufficiently specific when they do so. Of course, if I have anything wrong, let me know!
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SMcCandlish
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¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 12:08, 24 November 2017 (UTC); "after" link updated to reflect later tweaks, 05:38, 27 November 2017 (UTC)