Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters: Difference between revisions

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→‎Founding Fathers of the United States: striking this — on rereading, I think the "opinion essay" was in reference to the SSF link. apologies for misunderstanding.
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:::::{{tq|The faulty reasoning behind the fallacy of specialized style is this: because the specialized literature on a topic is (usually) the most reliable source of detailed facts about the specialty, such as we might cite in a topical article, it must also be the most reliable source for deciding how Wikipedia should title or style articles about the topic and things within its scope.}} [[User:Popcornfud|Popcornfud]] ([[User talk:Popcornfud|talk]]) 17:29, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
:::::{{tq|The faulty reasoning behind the fallacy of specialized style is this: because the specialized literature on a topic is (usually) the most reliable source of detailed facts about the specialty, such as we might cite in a topical article, it must also be the most reliable source for deciding how Wikipedia should title or style articles about the topic and things within its scope.}} [[User:Popcornfud|Popcornfud]] ([[User talk:Popcornfud|talk]]) 17:29, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
:::::: You quoted an opinion essay, not WP policy. Several cases were cited where scholarship is preferred over news, and the attempt to hold news articles above the scholarship, which is how the article is sourced, not to mention all history articles, presents its own fallacy. -- [[User:Gwillhickers|''Gwillhickers'']] ([[User talk:Gwillhickers |talk]]) 17:36, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
:::::: You quoted an opinion essay, not WP policy. Several cases were cited where scholarship is preferred over news, and the attempt to hold news articles above the scholarship, which is how the article is sourced, not to mention all history articles, presents its own fallacy. -- [[User:Gwillhickers|''Gwillhickers'']] ([[User talk:Gwillhickers |talk]]) 17:36, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
:::::::I don't hold any source over any other when trying to determine if we should capitalize — as long as it's a reliable secondary source then it's fair game. And if the term isn't capped in substantial majority of those sources, then we don't cap. That seems to be what [[MOS:CAPS]] says.
:::::::I don't hold any source over any other when trying to determine if we should capitalize — as long as it's a reliable secondary source then it's fair game. And if the term isn't capped in substantial majority of those sources, then we don't cap. That seems to be what [[MOS:CAPS]] says. [[User:Popcornfud|Popcornfud]] ([[User talk:Popcornfud|talk]]) 17:48, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
:::::::[[WP:MOSCAPS]] is not an "opinion essay". Those are a different thing — essays (see [[Wikipedia:Essays]]). MOSCAPS is a guideline, which advises best practice on Wikipedia. [[User:Popcornfud|Popcornfud]] ([[User talk:Popcornfud|talk]]) 17:47, 12 February 2024 (UTC)


== THEBAND ==
== THEBAND ==

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When to capitalize the name of an academic major or a department

@SomethingForDeletion: At this revert by SomethingForDeletion, the question is when to capitalize Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, in the context of a major field of study offered by a university. My thought was that we only cap when it's a full department names, as Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, but not in contexts like "... many of the same courses as the College of Engineering's Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS)". Normally, if someone has a degree in a subject (say physics), we say "BS in physics", not "BS in Physics"; is it different for a school offering a "BS in Physics"? I think the only thing I did wrong in this edit was to not also lowercase some other fields, such as Computer Science in a similar context. But what do others think? Dicklyon (talk) 16:46, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

We've certainly discussed this before (somewhere...). I think we should downcase always subjects and majors, even to the point of "...was a professor of chemistry at...", but it's trickier (for me) with department names: "Department of Chemistry", but "chemistry department"?
I agree with you on "...the College of Engineering's Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS),..." (where, BTW, the college is capped just like the department's proper name). I also note that electrical engineering and computer science redirects to computer science and engineering, which page has been (appropriately) lowercased since June 2020. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 02:05, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I now find MOS:INSTITUTIONS, which includes examples like The university offers programs in arts and sciences. There's also some relevant discussion from 2021 in this archive. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 02:21, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. I believe this edit is about right for Berkeley. There may be quite a few others still to fix. Dicklyon (talk) 06:05, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
My interpretation of "proper name" is the full name: I'll capitalize Oxford University Department of Chemistry, but not department of chemistry on its own because it's generic, and could refer to any number of chemistry departments. ~TPW 14:38, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The proper name of a specific department at a specific institution is a proper noun, but the academic subject is not. There's confusion because institutions, which tend to capitalize for their own importance, will refer to their "Computer Science Program", but that should stay lower case, in contrast to the Department of Computer Science, or whatever the unit is formally called there. Same with academic majors or fields of study, they are commonly capitalized by institutions and on resumes, but not in general sources. For positions, I'd say "she was a professor of sociology at Fancy Pants University", but that "she held the John Smith Endowed Chair of Sociology at Fancy Pants University", assuming that's what the endowed chair is named. SchreiberBike | ⌨  11:47, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I used to work for a university, in its administration. At most universities, a major is a proper noun, because it is a specific thing – a set of rules about which units you have to pass in order to graduate with that major. (Sometimes they are given other names such as "academic program".) There is generally a formal bureaucratic process to create, modify and discontinue majors - while it varies from university to university, very often Department of X just can't alter their majors at will, they need to send a request to higher in the administration for approval (exactly how far up it needs to go depends on the institution, but in some institutions it needs to go to pretty much all the way to the very top, even if only for a rubberstamp.) The major (or each successive version thereof–whether changes only apply to new students or also apply to existing students is a complex topic) is an entity in the IT systems, a separate row in a database table. To give a concrete example, Macquarie University in Australia currently offers a major called Entrepreneurship and another called Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Is "Entrepreneurship" a different academic discipline from "Entrepreneurship and Innovation". Not really. Majors aren't academic disciplines, they are rules about which units are required for graduation–indeed, if you compare the list of units required for those two majors, you will find that although there is a lot of overlap, there are some differences (the E&I major requires MGMT1002, "Principles of Management", plain E doesn't; whereas, the plain E major requires MGMT3000, "The Art of Negotiation", which the E&I major doesn't). Hence they are proper nouns not common nouns. It is true that sometimes there is a reasonably direct correspondence between majors and academic disciplines, but that isn't always true, and hence that correspondence cannot be the essence of the concept of "major". Also, while that concrete example is from an Australian university, I know universities in the US and Canada aren't fundamentally different – in fact, when I worked for an Australian university, we purchased a software package developed by a North American university to help us manage this stuff – so I have every reason to believe that at UCB it is largely similar. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 06:00, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's often ambiguous in our writing whether a term is the name for a specific degree program (a name, capitalized) or whether it is the name of the field that the degree program covers (a word, uncapitalized). To go back to SchreiberBike's example: one would write "she was a professor of sociology at Fancy Pants University" (lower case; that phrasing generally means it's the field of sociology) but "she was a professor in the Department of Sociology at Fancy Pants University" (but if you're doing it that way, make sure that it really is called the Department of Sociology rather than the Sociology Department or the J. Q. Richdonor Department of Sociology or whatever). —David Eppstein (talk) 06:46, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree it can be ambiguous sometimes, but I don't think there was any ambiguity in the specific edit we are discussing here. It started with this edit of User:Dicklyon which was about the College of Engineering's Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). When we are talking about a specific institution's "Bachelor of X in Y", the Y is a major/program not an academic discipline (even when it happens to have the same name as an academic discipline), so title case is correct (indeed UCB's own website puts it in title case), whereas changing that to all lower case is making it less correct. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 10:52, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, in that case I agree that it was unambiguously the name of a program (should be capitalized) not the name of a field, because it was contrasting two differently named programs in basically the same field. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:09, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, while there are plenty of ambiguous cases, this doesn't look like one of them. Berkeley, for whatever reason, gives the degree name in the plural (Computer Sciences), so it really doesn't coincide with the generic noun for the field [1]. XOR'easter (talk) 19:44, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I am wondering if the Manual of Style should mention this issue specifically? I think the distinction between an academic major/program (should be capitalised, at least in the context of a specific program offered by a specific institution) and an academic discipline (should not be capitalised) is one many editors don't seem to understand – and their ignorance is understandable, since unless someone has actually worked in higher education, they are unlikely to have picked up on it. And I agree the distinction isn't always clearcut, but certainly in some cases (like this one) it is. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 04:02, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see any harm in at least thinking up a couple illustrative examples. XOR'easter (talk) 05:43, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Department of Computer Science (title). She majored in computer science (generic). Tony (talk) 05:53, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, but "The UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science also offers a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science", because as discussed above it's being used as the name of a degree program, not the name of a field. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:31, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think when it's rendered like that it becomes a proper name, so capping is acceptable. But I too often see caps misused for majoring, for example. And "a PhD in mechanical engineering" should be normal, unless the PhD degree and coursework are specifically called "PhD in Mechanical Engineering". Usually not. Tony (talk) 12:32, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think "She has a PhD in mechanical engineering" is fine in a biography, although "PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Woolloomooloo" would also be fine if that is the actual title of the degree/program she graduated with. Whereas, if the article is about an institution, listing the degrees/programs/majors it offers, it should be "PhD in Mechanical Engineering", assuming that is the formal title of the degree/program/major. But suppose hypothetically the formal title was actually "PhD in Engineering (Mechanical)", then it wouldn't be right to call that a "PhD in Mechanical Engineering", it would have to be either "PhD in Engineering (Mechanical)" or "PhD in mechanical engineering". SomethingForDeletion (talk) 00:02, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's rare for a PhD to have a formal name that includes the field. A PhD is a PhD, simple as that. Tony (talk) 02:51, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think degrees and programs are different things. If the degree name includes "in Computer Science" or whatever, then OK, let's cap it. I'm not sure how often that's the case. For a program in computer science, though, I don't see how that becomes a proper name. And thanks, SomethingForDeletion, for letting me know about the University of Woolloomooloo – I lived for a month, earlier this year, at 1 Boomerang Place in Woolloomoolo (no kidding!), and hadn't been aware of the Monty Python connection. Dicklyon (talk) 05:23, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Dicklyon: I come back to my example of Macquarie University – "Entrepreneurship" is a major of the degree "Bachelor of Commerce"; "Entrepreneurship & Innovation" of the degree "Bachelor of Professional Practice". Both the major and the degree are proper nouns. At least as far as Macquarie University is concerned, "Bachelor of X in Y" means the combination of degree "Bachelor of X" and major Y; the "Bachelor of X in Y" is not the degree, it is the name of the degree/major combination. I remember (from 20-ish years ago) that one student enrolled in a "Bachelor of Science in Computer & Information Systems" at Macquarie University, and then complained upon graduation that their piece of paper just said "Bachelor of Science" – Macquarie University's position is that "Bachelor of Science" is the degree, "Computer & Information Systems" was just the major, and they don't print the major on the actual degree, only on the academic transcript–the student was so upset about this they tried to sue the university, but soon discovered the law was on the university's side. But you see how the university viewed both as proper nouns. And that is hardly specific to Australian universities–if you study the websites of US colleges/universities, you will find very many of them take the same approach, including UCB (just with "majors" instead being called "programs", which is an accepted synonym. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 09:46, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Coincidentally, I'm on staff at Macquarie U. Their page on E&I says "A major allows you to focus on an area of study, such as Entrepreneurship and Innovation, within more generalist degrees." So they cap it even when referring to a "field of study". I wouldn't think their style has much relation to ours, where we avoid unnecessary caps. Dicklyon (talk) 19:30, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I used to work for Macquarie as well. I was never an academic, I was a general staff member, working on administrative IT systems. From my viewpoint – of course a "program/major" is a proper noun, because we had a database table called PROGRAMS (pretty sure that wasn't its actual name, I forget the database schema now), and every "program/major" was a row in it, and there were defined processes around adding rows to that table and retiring old rows (we never deleted data, we just "end-dated" things to indicate they were no longer current). Coming to "field of study", I should point out they actually use the phrase "area of study"–which is important, because historically at Macquarie "Area of Study" was also an entity in IT systems, there was a database table called something like AREA_OF_STUDY, and each Area of Study was a row in it. See for example "Accounting" Area of Study in 2004 Handbook: back in 2004, an "Area of Study" was a categorisation scheme for organising "Programs of Study", and every "Program of Study" had a primary "Area of Study" and zero or more secondary Areas of Study linked to it (which is where the "Other Relevant Programs of Study" on that page is coming from). There were two types of "Programs of Study" – "Coherent Study" (example: ACC01) and "Study Pattern" (example: DY002). The main difference, you will notice, is whether the requirements were expressed in a free-form text or in a tabular format. "Programs of Study" are not the same thing as "Degrees" – "Degrees" are a different database table again, and a single degree can have more than one program of study – see for example Bachelor of Commerce, which in 2004 had 14 programs. I'm sure it has all changed greatly by now, but the basic point that "programs/majors/etc are proper nouns not common nouns" hasn't. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 01:46, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Just for the record, I'm a contractor for Macquarie University. Sigh. Tony (talk) 02:13, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Jeez. Are we allowed to contribute here if we're not associated with Macquarie? — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 12:40, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Tony1: Right, but "PhD in Mechanical Engineering" isn't the name of the degree, it is the name of the program. And many PhDs do have formal programs of study, including required coursework. "PhD in Mechanical Engineering" is a different program from "BEng in Mechanical Engineering" because (1) it ends in the award of a different degree; (2) it contains different core units and electives. Also, when I worked for a university, we actually treated a PhD thesis as a notional "unit of study" – we had a notional number of hours a PhD thesis was supposed to take, so we enrolled all the PhD students in a "thesis unit" which was specified as taking that many hours. As far as the IT systems were concerned, a mathematics PhD student would be enrolled in a unit with a name like "MATH999: Mathematics PhD thesis", and while that was a very different unit from "MATH101: Introduction to Mathematics", as far as the student administration system was concerned, they were both just units. And the "PhD in Mathematics" program/major would have MATH999 as a mandatory unit, while "BSc in Mathematics" program/major might have a bunch of MATH1xx/MATH2xx/MATH3xx/etc mandatory units instead. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 10:02, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Department of Computer Science (title). She majored in computer science (generic). Absolutely correct. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:17, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The real debate here though is about The College of Letters and Science (L&S) also offers a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science, which requires many of the same courses as the College of Engineering's Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), but has different admissions and graduation criteria.. In that sentence neither Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science nor Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science are generic. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 08:36, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes they are. The College of Letters and Science (L&S) also offers a bachelor of arts in computer science, which requires many of the same courses as the College of Engineering's bachelor of science in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS), but has different admissions and graduation criteria. What's wrong with that? It's just a bachelor of arts (level of degree) in computer science (subject of degree). It's not a proper name. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:25, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No but that's my point – it is a proper name. For the university bureaucracy, majors/degrees/programs are specific abstract entities, with defined formal processes for creating/discontinuing/modifying them - from a university administration perspective, they absolutely are proper names not common nouns. The University of X's "Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science" may have rather different content from the University of Y's, or even the University of X's five years ago or five years from now, and the University of X may even have both a "Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science" and "Bachelor of Science in Computer Science" with different content (core subjects and electives), admission standards, etc. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 02:08, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As someone who has had to evaluate whether course credit can transfer from one university to another, yes, majors/degrees/programs are specific abstract entities, and their names are proper nouns. XOR'easter (talk) 19:06, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Encyclopaedia Britannica website says ("Are school subjects proper nouns or common nouns?"): School subjects are common nouns when used generally unless they are the name of a language. Names of specific classes or courses are proper nouns. I agree with the editors of the Britannica here. So, as a subject/discipline, physics is lowercase. But in the name of a specific educational offering (course/class/unit/degree/program/major/etc), it is a proper noun and hence title case ("Physics" not "physics"). SomethingForDeletion (talk) 02:11, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The central issue here is that while "Bachelor of Science in Computer Science" is the correct name of the degree and program, "bachelor of science in computer science" is also correct as a generic description. And it is not always clear which is meant in a particular usage. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 16:54, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It might not always be clear, but if we are talking about a degree/program being offered by a particular academic institution, in an article about that particular institution – then I think in that context it is clearly being used specifically rather than generically. And that was the context of the edit which started this discussion. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 05:56, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The original question was about: "... many of the same courses as the College of Engineering's Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS)". In that case, it is not clear if that is a named major or an area of study. It is capitalized and linked, but when clicked, it goes to the page Computer science and engineering which is not about the named program. I think it would be a surprise for a reader to click on what appears to be a proper name, then to go to the general page about the topic. It's not different in type from clicking on University of California and being redirected to University.
I have been persuaded by the discussion above that sometimes the name of a field of study can also be a major/program/etc., and hence a proper name, but more often those words are capitalized for emphasis. If the sentence had been "... many of the same courses as the College of Engineering's Bachelor of Science Electrical Engineering and Computer Science program ..." it would not be ambiguous.
As I think about it, I have probably, among the hundreds of times I have knocked down capitalization of majors or fields of study, knocked down specific programs when I shouldn't have. I will be more careful about that in the future and I will try to write better to make the difference between a specific program and an area of study (a proper name and a common noun) more clear. SchreiberBike | ⌨  13:29, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@SchreiberBike: It is capitalized and linked, but when clicked, it goes to the page Computer science and engineering which is not about the named program Personally, I have never thought of link targets as relevant to questions like capitalisation: if we look at the sentence in its context, and it is clear that in that sentence in that context, a particular noun phrase is a proper noun, and therefore deserves title case – I don't see why that judgement would be changed by the fact that someone has wikilinked the phrase to an article whose title is a common noun. We are never going to have articles for every proper noun, and so linking a proper noun to a common noun which names some concept of which that proper noun is an instance is not necessarily wrong, but I don't think doing so is a counterargument to the case that it is a proper noun in that particular sentence and context, nor do I think it even ought to make the matter ambiguous. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 01:26, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

​​​​​​​​​​For a case that doesn't seem to fall quite on one side or the other, would you capitalize "Asian Theatre" in this case? —  AjaxSmack  03:10, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

As the name of a university course of studies? I would capitalize it. Note that their catalog does properly lowercase it ("Asian theatre") when using it in text to describe the theatre of Asia, rather than as the name of the major: [2] (in this link, there is a third use of the phrase, as part of a course title; it is in title case but would probably use a lowercase "theatre" in sentence case). —David Eppstein (talk) 06:46, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@AjaxSmack: In that use, it is ambiguous. The phrase is: "The school offers Asian Theatre as a major and has ...". Based on that sentence, I can't tell if that is a named program or major or if it is a descriptive phrase. If instead of "Asian Theatre", it said "Chemistry", it would be equally ambiguous and I'd change it to lower case with little thought. It could be rewritten as "The school's Asian Theatre program has ..." and it would be clear that it is a proper noun. The university's main page on the program could use some copy editing, but generally refers to the field of study in lower case and the program in upper case. Further reading of the college's pages show that the major is in theater and the Asian subset is called either a concentration, focus area or a program, so it appears to be an error to call it a major. I hope that helps. SchreiberBike | ⌨  12:49, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
​​Thanks to both of you. I just noticed the factual problems with the statement after you posted your link. I'll leave the sentence alone for now. I agree that "chemistry" would be lowercased as chemistry exists as an encyclopedic entity and "chemistry program" could be a program that studies chemistry. On the other hand, "Asian Theatre" doesn't really exist as an encyclopedic entity except as a program name so it's more of a proper name. But that requires a lot of thought be put in to each case, hence my question. After years of Wikiconditioning to decimate capitals whenever possible, I would have lowercased it (unless it was written "Major in Asian Theatre"). —  AjaxSmack  13:14, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Asian theatre" is clearly not a term consistently capitalized in sources as a proper name [3]. Capitalization is common, almost certainly reflecting non-independent university/college materials, because it's a descriptive phrase most often used for departments/programs (which such institutions will always put in upper case) and not an actual genre (it's a cross-cultural categorization). But it's not so common that WP would capitalize it. It's most instructive to look at Google Scholar results, which include lots of arts journals hits, etc. [4]: usage is almost totally uniformly lowercase outside of title-case titles and headings, and a few proper names of particular venues and projects. And there would never be a reason to capitalize "major[ed] in Asian theatre" per DOCTCAPS, since fields of study are not capitalized and "academic major/minor" is also not capitalized as a proper name in sources [5][6][7]. See what happens when you combine terms like this: [8][9].  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:18, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, per MOS:DOCTCAPS. ~TPW 13:52, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think the capitals are acceptable there, since it's a particular school's specialization (with its own institutional history, course requirements, etc.) rather than the overall subject area. XOR'easter (talk) 17:48, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No, since the cited source says "Students can focus on Asian theatre as part of graduate degrees..." Dicklyon (talk) 15:56, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Use lower case for all this stuff when possible. The entire problem with the idea 'I think "She has a PhD in mechanical engineering" is fine in a biography, although "PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Woolloomooloo" would also be fine if that is the actual title of the degree/program she graduated with' is that it would require WP:OR with primary sources to try to prove that one way or another, and even if you found, say, a PDF of a degree certificate from a particular university, you have no evidence that it precisely matches the one issued to the bio subject, since the names of these things vary over time, and sometimes people do custom majors/minors (I did), but may summarize them in more conventional terms. And even if you could prove it with regard to that specific bio subject, the capital letter sprinkling is meaningless to the reader and inconsistent with treatment everywhere else in our materials. As for departments, it's fine but not necessarily ideal to refer to "the Department of Basketweaving at Fancy Pants University" if you have RS proof that the actual name of the department is (and was at the pertinent time) "the Department of Basketweaving" and not "the Basketweaving Department" or "the Faculty of Basketweaving" within the "the Department of Textile Arts" or "the X. Y. Zounds School of Basketweaving", or yadda yadda yadda. And this, too, is something that may have changed over time. Even if the name that pertained to the period can be proven to be "the Department of Basketweaving", this is really descriptive, and it would not be wrong to simply write it as "the department of basketweaving" anyway, switching to purely descriptive wording that happens to coincide by pure chance with what the actual name is. This would be more consistent with other usage when the exact names of other departments is unknown (which is most of the time), would not confuse anyone, and uses fewer uppercase letters that are not strictly required, which is the WP way. PS: Yes, use "a professor of basketweaving at Fancy Pants University" but "the X. Y. Zounds Distinguished Professor of Basketweaving at Fancy Pants University"; such endowments are proper-named awards.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:23, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I continue to not understand the obsession of smccandlish and likeminded editors of lowercasing everything imaginable, even proper nouns. If you just abhor the appearance of capital letters, I'm sure you could find a font to install in your preferences that would change them all to lowercase. But names of departments are names; when used as a name, the proper form of the name should be determined and capitalized. My employer has three departments whose concern includes psychology, for instance; saying "the department of psychology" would be incorrect, because there is not a single department that covers that (lowercased) field. Instead, one must properly track down and refer to them by their names: the Department of Psychological Science, the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, or the Department of Cognitive Sciences. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:16, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In 1973 or 1974 (sources I've seen are inconsistent on which year), the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sydney split in two – a "Department of General Philosophy" and a "Department of Traditional and Modern Philosophy". This split was done to resolve political infighting between left-leaning and right-leaning philosophers – the left-leaning philosophers were put in the first department, the right-leaning in the second. The split endured until 2000, when the two departments were finally merged again. This actually comes up in Wikipedia articles, since some of the philosophy academics involved in this split are notable – this very topic is briefly discussed in our article on David Malet Armstrong. And I think this is a good example of where uppercasing is essential. It makes no sense to speak of "general philosophy" and "traditional and modern philosophy", since those are not generally recognised academic subdisciplines. They must be uppercased as "General Philosophy" and "Traditional and Modern Philosophy", since they are phrases which only have meaning in the context of an understanding of the history of that specific university. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 23:41, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@David Eppstein: There is no reason to make up imaginatively pejorative and bullshitty mischaracterizations of people you don't agree with on something. It is frequently said that MoS-related disagreements are "demoralizing" and "corrosive", and this kind of demonizing of "enemies" is an excellent example of why. Our standard is simple: Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. This is based on a strong lower-casing trend, to avoid unnecessary capitalization, across all major English-language style guides, on which MoS is based. If you think that this should be changed to something like "Wikipedia relies on editors' collective sense of what should be capitalized, to suggest importance or significance, and Wikipedia capitalizes anything found capitalized in a substantial minority of sources, especially those that are closely tied to a subject" (and MOS:SIGCAPS and MOS:DOCTCAPS should be deleted), you know how to open an RfC; same goes for everyone else in this thread and every similar one. There is usually no solid sourcing cited for what the proper name of something like this is in a specific time slot; rather, editors just assume that "Department of Foo" or "Foo Department" is the proper name without checking. Highly sub-specific and even unique department names like "Department of Neurobiology and Behavior" and "Department of Traditional and Modern Philosophy", if actually verified with RS, would surely be something to capitalize; I don't think anyone would argue otherwise. But if sources say someone is/was in the psychology department of some university, that shouldn't be capitalized without verifying it's the actual department name (or was at the relevant time period) and not just a descriptive label. Even if it was, what exact benefit is there to capitalizing it when it's that generic? What important fact is being signalled to the reader by "in the Department of Physics at Foobar University" that is not by "in the department of physics at Foobar University" or "in Foobar University's physics department" in someone's bio? Why would the reader care? And, to address other capitalization desires in this thread, why on earth would we ever write "the university's Physics department"?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:18, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Australian Government Style Manual, which is frequently accepted as a guide to good English style even in non-government settings, recommends the principle "Write the name as the organisation writes it". Applying that principle, the capitalisation of university departments should be based on how universities themselves capitalise them. Maybe American or British English is different? I don't know. But if it is, we should still follow Australian English capitalisation rules for articles on Australian universities. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 02:22, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely. But judging from a sample size of one, I don't see any difference between typical Australian and US practice in this regard. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:18, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think Australian and US universities differ significantly in their capitalisation practices. My argument was about the importance of the rule "Write the name as the organisation writes it". Even if editors here think it ought to be disregarded in American or British English style (at least in this specific case), its status as part of Australian English style is a separate question, and a decision to disregard it in the former does not entail necessarily disregarding it in the latter. (And there are some real English style differences in this general area–for example, US English is much keener on putting dots/periods in abbreviations than Australian English is; e.g. many US sources will write "U.S.", "U.N.", "Ph.D.", whereas contemporary Australian English has a rather strong preference for "US", "UN", "PhD" instead–although admittedly the preference is more universal in the first two cases than in the second) SomethingForDeletion (talk) 08:14, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RFC on capitalizing after dash in sports article names

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Consensus was reached in favour of no capitalisation. Timceharris (talk) 00:58, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]


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?~TPW 18:45, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Leaning yes. Outside sources for events often use title case, which could constitute an exception to the guideline for sentence case. Senorangel (talk) 03:50, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, capitalization after the dash is contrary to everything in WP:AT, WP:NCCAPS, MOS:CAPS, etc, which say we use sentence case and avoid unnecessary capitalization. Others have their own style, often using title case in titles, but this would be not even that, and it would be (and is) an outlier w.r.t. normal Wikipedia article titles. Dicklyon (talk) 04:57, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • No thanks: that's a weird look; draws attention to itself. Tony (talk) 09:15, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • No Per above. Also, see MOS:SENTENCECAPS. We don't cap after a colon or a dash. Collectively, the guidance cited says No. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:56, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment From our policy on Article titles. WP:LOWERCASE says — Titles are written in sentence case. The initial letter of a title is almost always capitalized by default; otherwise, words are not capitalized unless they would be so in running text. WP:CONSISTENT says — We strive to make titles on Wikipedia as consistent as possible with other titles on similar subjects. We follow patterns from article titles for similar topics to the extent that this is practical. So at this point, I would say all these sports articles have been consistent in their titles over the years.
And on another note, since this has the potential to affect thousands of articles from a quick review - 1988, 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008, 2004, 2000, 1996, etc. Do you think this RfC has been advertised widely enough for a clear community consensus that has the potential to invoke a mass change of article titles? Isaidnoway (talk) 20:23, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I just wanted to point out that the women's sports articles appear to be titled the same way - Rowing at the 2020 Summer Olympics – Women's coxless four, and the mens and womens Winter Olympic articles are too - Ski jumping at the 2022 Winter Olympics – Men's large hill team. I came to a very rough count of around ~3600 articles whose titles would be affected. And that is just the Olympic articles, I'm not sure about any other National/International sporting event articles that may have similar titles with men and women capitalized. Isaidnoway (talk) 00:01, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
When we downcased things like "– Women's Doubles" to "– Women's doubles", there were about 20,000 tennis articles (outside the Olympics, which didn't have that problem). It's straightforward to compile a list of article moves and to get a bot approval to do the moves if there's a consensus to do so. It's also more or less straightforward to update all the links. Dicklyon (talk) 19:18, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Generally sentence case is used. However, exceptions appear to exist for event names that are usually capitalized in independent sources. This could vary depending on the common usage. Senorangel (talk) 01:57, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Be aware that "usually capitalized in independent sources" is a weaker criterion than MOS:CAPS specifies, which is "consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources". Dicklyon (talk) 19:18, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Looking at titles with dashes, I do see that many of them have proper names after the dash, so those would not be changed. I'd focus on narrower sets such as "– Men's xxx" and "– Women's xxx" for starters (also Boys', Girls', Team, Individual, and such things found to be common in sports articles). Dicklyon (talk) 19:34, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, except for course for a proper name like "Japan". The portions following the dash are not sentences and are not independent subtitles, and could actually be written with a comma (we just happen to have selected a dash). There is no cause for capitalization here, and all our relevant guidelines (MOS:CAPS, WP:NCCAPS, etc.) are consistent in telling us not to use capital letters except when necessary. That a few wikiprojects have gotten into a bad habit behind their WP:OWN / WP:LOCALCONSENSUS garden walls is no reason at all for us to codify some kind of inexplicable exception for them. PS: This really should have been opened at WT:NCCAPS, because MoS is not a title guideline (except inasmuch as a style matter that applies to running prose also applies to the article title; but this is a title-specific question).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:42, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    When I posed this simply as a question, an editor suggested posting a request for comment here among several options. I would certainly welcome help in promoting it more broadly. ~TPW 13:45, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I posted a pointer to it at WT:NCCAPS and the talk page of another naming criteria guideline (I forget which one, but it seemed relevant at the time). Someone else posted a similar notice to WP:VPPOL and I think that in particular will net significant input.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:43, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • No. SMcCandlish's example about commas is useful. Overall, in the long run, the temporary disruption from a bot run moving a bunch of pages is less of a problem than the creep from making an arbitrary exception to our normal rules to acommodate these pages would be. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 00:58, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes – Just like how the first letter after a colon should be capitalized (see what I did there?). Primarily from a visual standpoint, this just makes more sense and looks better. Keep in mind that an article title is not a sentence, even if we use sentence case. An en dash basically starts a new "sentence". InfiniteNexus (talk) 03:45, 31 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Please read MOS:COLON. The guidance tells us specifically that we do not cap after a colon. Cinderella157 (talk) 04:01, 31 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, in prose. InfiniteNexus (talk) 04:15, 31 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Whenever I see an argument "primarily from a visual standpoint," I have to what information this conveys that we do not think is necessary for anyone who receives information via their ears instead of their eyes. ~TPW 15:08, 31 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Per Isaidnoway, the scope of this is just too broad. Plus, there's already concerns about mistakes in updating these articles. Perhaps if the scope was narrowed, but for now I would be against mass changes. Thanks! Nemov (talk) 18:36, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Would you comment more on the concern about the broadness of the scope? My sense of how "too broad" is used is "too vague." Isaidnoway's comment was about the quantity of articles. Is your comment about the technical ability to make a change to multiple articles? That's the sense I get, since you linked to a thread about semi-automated changes.
    Regarding mistakes, the mistakes I have discovered have to do with the gender being capitalized elsewhere in the article, which I surmise (without evidence) might be due to it being capitalized in the article title. I haven't kept a running list of examples, but if you'd like I will keep you posted should I discover more. ~TPW 14:43, 11 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • No. WP:NCCAPS refers to MOS:CAPS for when to capitalize, and CAPS' MOS:SENTENCECAPS is clear that we should not capitalize after a dash. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 22:58, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment The people !voting "no" are all citing NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS. If there is consensus that those guidelines say not to capitalize after an en dash (or colon), then it's time to change that guideline, because it's ridiculous and misguided. Article titles and section headings aren't sentences; they're sentence fragments. Even if we are using sentence case, it doesn't mean we have to follow punctuation rules for sentences. InfiniteNexus (talk) 22:31, 11 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Executing on the above RFC

(listed as a subsection with the RFC so that subscribers to that RFC would be notified)

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)[reply]

Some findings so far:

  • Some of the items listed include things like "– Men's Elite Division" or "– Women's Open Division". I don't see these terms much in sources, so it's hard to say if they should be considered proper names; seems to me that "– men's elite division" etc. would do just fine, but that goes beyond the immediate (word after dash) question. I can remove them from the list if lowercase turns out to be controversial. Dicklyon (talk) 20:16, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Checking books, with query for "handball" with "open division" or "elite division", I find those terms usually lowercase; so I'll go ahead and fix those. Dicklyon (talk) 20:42, 18 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I moved those 9, including lowercase "men's" and "women's", so can take them out of the list now. I've only done case cleanup on 2 so far; they're a mass of over-capitalization, with things like "Semi Final" and "Left Back" and "5th Place" etc. Dicklyon (talk) 00:38, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are 206 with "– (Men's|Women's) Freestyle ..." where Freestyle needs to be downcased to match the rest of the wresting and other sports' "freestyle". I just hadn't gotten around to moving them. I'm started this RM discussion to fix them. Dicklyon (talk) 20:54, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • WAIT... I just saw this bot request. This was already handled in a couple of large rfcs' for tennis articles a year or so ago. Compromises and agreements were made in those decisions. We aren't changing things again because of an rfc that none of the projects were privy to! I just had to change a few back because it was brought to my attention on my talk page. We decided the first letter after the ndash was to remain capitalized in rfc's where projects were informed. Sneaking something by and then doing bot requests would require another bot request by the project to move them all back! Or The project would need to move them back one by one. Goodness... I thought we had finalized this garbage with all the past un-needed moves. This little-bit-here, then little-bit-more, little-bit-later, stuff has got to stop. Please pull those tennis articles off your lists of lower-casing. Heck you probably missed 99% of the tournaments since every single tournament ever done uses the format, plus every player article also uses the format. Fyunck(click) (talk) 00:40, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The close of this RfC would state: ... 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)[reply]
    No it has not changed either in tennis or olympics where all articles are done this way properly. At least not per a consensus where all the sports projects are informed. The same folks who wanted it changed before are pushing it again. This was a done deal so we wouldn't have to go through it again. Thousands of fixes were done the last time and then we moved on. The nom here was not done in bad faith. However the list of pages to automove by someone who knows how contentious this is is mighty strange. He had been in another discussion very recently that might have gone downhill had I not suggested a compromise alternative that all seemed to agree with. Plus he gave a message to another editor about how tough this might be if we had to, god forbid, let many sports projects know about this potential change. Kudus to Dickylon by the way for letting that editor know there could be heavy feedback to page moves from some projects. Had another editor not informed me of their unhappiness I might not have noticed till 100s of automoves happened. That should never occur when almost every Olympic Project and Tennis Project article would be affected. There were large discussions and rfcs... one of which you mentioned... another discussion here. Another right here. The ndash is used as a separator of sentence fragments in multiple projects. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:39, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I would suggest a review of WP:CONLEVEL. Neither tennis nor any other project on WP is a walled garden exempt from the broader community consensus. You appear to be being somewhat liberal in your representations of matters and continue to appear to be casting aspersions about the conduct of other editors. 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)[reply]
    Plus in the previous discussions (RFC, RM, and others) there was never a consensus about the dash, or about caps after the dash. These remain open questions. Dicklyon (talk) 03:07, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    "Heck you probably missed 99%..." – I'm only looking at article titles, not all the other places that might be miscapitalized, which of course should also be fixed. also, the "tennis is special" argument didn't carry much water last time, and still doesn't. Dicklyon (talk) 05:07, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Per the concerns I raised above at #Headings: should content after a colon be capitalized?, I am preparing a formal RfC on challenging/changing the guideline. I cannot force y'all to wait until then, but please consider doing so. Thank you. InfiniteNexus (talk) 00:42, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not in a hurry. More discussion is good. Dicklyon (talk) 04:14, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

Guidance says we don't do subtitles – Wait, which guideline? InfiniteNexus (talk) 21:23, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Dicklyon: Could you clarify? The RfC I'm preparing is basically ready to go, but I'd like to clear this up first. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:44, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
See my response below; I answered after Fyunck. Dicklyon (talk) 15:22, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:25, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There is something else too. Wikipedia changes by usage... it always has. If Usage has swayed a great deal one way then we can incorporate that into our rules as acceptable. Like the English language. It's like weed. Communities getting tired of making criminals out of 25 million people then legalize it instead. We've done that at wikipedia for a couple decades. But Dickylon's suggestion at least is something to look at. It could certainly be done but for linking, visual help, and sorting, it seems unwieldy and unnatural. Look at this years 2023 Wimbledon and it's branches:
  • 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Day-by-day summaries
  • 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Men's singles
  • 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Women's singles
  • 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Men's doubles
  • 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Women's doubles
  • 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Mixed doubles
  • 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Wheelchair men's singles
  • 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Wheelchair women's singles
  • 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Wheelchair quad singles
  • 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Wheelchair men's doubles
  • 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Wheelchair women's doubles
  • 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Wheelchair quad doubles
  • 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Boys' singles
  • 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Girls' singles
  • 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Boys' doubles
  • 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Girls' doubles
  • 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Boys' 14&U singles
  • 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Girls' 14&U singles
  • 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Gentlemen's invitation doubles
  • 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Ladies' invitation doubles
  • 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Mixed invitation doubles
There's like 260+ events a year like this in tennis alone. It is much easier to look at these as subsections of an event rather than heaps of articles starting with "Girl's singles." And tennis isn't the only sport with women's singles. All the Olympic articles are done this way too, so they'll have a big say in starting 120 years of olympics with discipline/year/event rather than year/event/discipline. These work very well as a subsection of sentence fragments and I can't fathom why anyone would really want to mess with them. While it's interesting, I can't see where it does anything but make things messier by using:
  • Ladies' invitation doubles at 2023 Wimbledon Championships
  • Wheelchair quad singles at 2023 Wimbledon Championships
  • Women's singles at 2023 Wimbledon Championships
I really think our readers respond better to and expect "2023 Wimbledon Championships" right up front with an essential subsection of "Wheelchair men's singles." It's tighter, it's more readable, and it's more natural. It's not broken in the least. I'm thinking there aren't a lot of sports that have a need for this type of subtitle sectioning... tennis, Olympics, badminton, curling, other international events like Pan-American games, etc... but this format works quite well for all the sports. We need to show some flexibility here when something works. And we certainly need every sports project and sub sports project notified if all their articles could suddenly change. Fyunck(click) (talk) 22:16, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Probably I was recalling this bit at WP:AT#Subsidiary articles: "Do not create subsidiary articles – Do not use titles suggesting that one article forms part of another: even if an article is considered subsidiary to another (as where summary style is used), it should be named independently. For example, an article on transport in Azerbaijan should not be given a name like "Azerbaijan/Transport" or "Azerbaijan (transport)", use Transport in Azerbaijan." To me, it would make more sense to just have 2023 Wimbledon Championships with sections Day-by-day summaries, Men's singles, etc. Yes, I realize they'd be big. Or use names that don't use subtitles, per that section (in different words). Dicklyon (talk) 23:48, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And that might work best for many articles, but not all articles.. especially sports articles. Subjects that are huge yet intrinsically linked to the subject. We don't have to be a cookie-cutter, especially when something else works much better and has worked well for so long. I think it is a help to our readers the way we do it, and I will always side with what I feel is best for our readers. Fyunck(click) (talk) 00:23, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm definitely with you there. It's just not clear what's best, as this two-part dash-separated title is almost unique to sports, and confuses me when I'm used to caps signaling proper names. Why not just 2023 Wimbledon Championships day-by-day summaries and 2023 Wimbledon Championships men's singles? Or leave out the word Championships even? Dicklyon (talk) 02:04, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Championships is there because it's the official title of the event. In tables, to save room, we simply use Wimbledon. It seems like "2023 Wimbledon Championships day-by-day summaries" doesn't break it down as visually clear as the way we've done for years and years... that's it's an article on 2023 Wimbledon with in essence a subheading of "Day-by-day summaries." As if in an article you have the title but you also have section headings that would begin with a capital. I'm sure that's why every single Olympic and international event article does the same. Did you ever ask the Olympic Project why they do it that way? It is much clearer to my eye when it's separated by an ndash as two separate sentence fragments. Actually all our titles used to be separated by a simple hyphen but we changed it years ago. Could we do it as "2023 Wimbledon Championships men's singles?" It's certainly better than "Men's singles at the 2023 Wimbledon Championships." But it's not better than "2023 Wimbledon Championships – Men's singles" or even "2023 Wimbledon Championships: Men's singles." The ndash is analogous to a slash in some respects... two separate things in one title. It makes it very clear to all our readers. Dealing with sports all my life it seems pretty easy but perhaps being so sports-centric in my life it makes me unaware of how it looks to folks who might only work on something like presidential bios. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:50, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's clear you have thought through your reasons for preferring the dash. I appreciate your clear rationale. I don't have any preference about dashes myself, other than consistency across the site to avoid unnecessary conflict by minimizing special rules that editors are expected to know before reviewing articles of a specific subject.
Since the request for comment was about the capitalization, I'm hoping to better understand why you think the big letter is important after that dash. ~TPW 14:36, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I did find where the Olympic Project discussed this in 2008. So it's been fine with Olympics for 15 years and not sure why anyone would want to change what's worked for so long. Simply incorporate it like we do with flag icons for sports with sourcable use of flag icons for international sports. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:56, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

information Note: Please see #RfC on capitalization after a colon or dash. InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:48, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'll repeat something I said somewhere in one or another of these discussions: This entire squabble is a silly waste of time, because if WP:AT policy (specifically WP:COMMADIS, and note there is no "WP:DASHDIS" or "WP:COLONDIS") were being followed, there would be no dash or colon in any of these page titles, but a comma, and obviously no capital letter would follow the comma. They should all be mass-WP:RMed to use commas instead of dashes, per the title policy, then this entire silly "debate" just instantly goes away.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:59, 17 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Shoot the Chute

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. ~TPW 14:27, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Shoot the Chute is an amusement ride", it says. I'd look to sources to see whether they treat that as a proper name. From books n-grams, looks like it's only half capped, so we should default to lowercase. Dicklyon (talk) 04:24, 1 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for giving another opinion. ~TPW 15:18, 1 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, this shouldn't be capitalized if we don't capitalize "fun house", "ferris wheel", and other carnival attractions. Within this classs of things, if it's not a trademarked name, then it's not a proper name.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:02, 17 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification request: capitalization of "the sun" etc.?

I'm in a discussion with another user about the exact meaning of the sentence "Names of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, stars, constellations, and galaxies are proper names and begin with a capital letter" in the MOS:CELESTIALBODIES section. My understanding is that this does not apply to the earth (our planet), the sun (the star it turns around), and the moon (its natural satellite), as these are already covered by the previous paragraph, which gives more detailed rules. (Capitalization in an astronomical context and in personifications, but not otherwise.) Their understanding, however, is that the sentence nevertheless refers to these three bodies too so that references to them are always to be capitalized.

What's the consensus interpretation here, assuming there is one? Maybe the page could be improved to clearly resolve the apparent ambiguity, one way or the other? Gawaon (talk) 14:28, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The wording "Names of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, stars, constellations, and galaxies are proper names and begin with a capital letter is very clear. Wikipedia uppercases proper names, and of course this applies to the Sun, Moon, Earth and the rest. If anything this should be made clearer. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:38, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps the guideline could be clarified simply by adding other at the beginning of that sentence: "Other names of planets, moons ...", since the foregoing paragraph details when earth, moon, and sun should (and should not) be considered proper names. Deor (talk) 15:47, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This perennial topic has had discussions galore. Do you really think the Sun (the big burning nuclear furnace that keeps us all alive and editing), Moon (that huge rock-like thing that keeps attempting to fall onto...) Earth (hmmmm, no comment) and Solar System don't have proper names? For example, the Moon article, in its section on naming, says "Moon" is a proper name. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:52, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
They're not always used as proper names. Or do you think that ""Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men" and "When the sun beats down and burns the tar up on the roof" contain incorrect lowercasing? Deor (talk) 16:36, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That tar is burning because of the intense heat of the sunlight. Since you are going on about song lyrics how about "When the moon hits your eye/Like a big pizza pie". That's amore! (and lowercased because it alludes to moonlight) Randy Kryn (talk) 22:53, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I, for one, would be happy with the suggested addition of "Other", as it seems quite well to reflect the intended meaning of the rule. See also the wording over at Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Celestial bodies, which includes the example: "The sun was over the mountain top" – very clearly using lowercase for what's evidently a reference to our star as visible in the sky. Gawaon (talk) 16:45, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I have now inserted "Other" as suggested to make it clear that that paragraph is not to overwrite what the previous paragraph said to regard to "Sun, Earth" etc. That by itself should be a fairly uncontroversial change as everybody can read what the previous paragraph say, and why should it be there if it had no meaning? Gawaon (talk) 16:46, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Randy Kryn, I see you have reverted the change "Other names of planets" which Deor had first suggested and which I had then applied. I must say I'm a bit frustrated to this. You can't act as if you own the MoS, preventing even the smallest changes to make the wording clearer. You know, as well as everybody else, that the preceding section says: "The words Sun, Earth, Moon and Solar System are capitalized (as proper names) when used to refer to a specific celestial body in an astronomical context" (emphasis added) – but not outside of an astronomical context, even when referring to the specific celestial bodies. The MoS itself gives "The sun was over the mountain top" as example for lower-case usage, and you yourself have admitted that lower-case it at least possible in phrases such as "They waited for the moon to rise."
Anyway, what do you think about inserting the "other" elsewhere and writing "Names of other planets, moons" etc.? After all, whether "the sun/moon" etc. are indeed names or just generic words which, when used with the definite article, refer to the nearest such object without thereby becoming proper nouns is very much part of the question. (Just like people living near a city might routinely refer to it as "the city", without "the city" therefore becoming a proper name and requiring a capital letter.) So by pushing the "other" back we prevent people from getting confused but without having to address the thorny (and not objectively decidable) question whether or not "the moon/Moon" is indeed a proper noun.
I'll hope others will weigh in on this too. Gawaon (talk) 11:57, 24 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Gawaon, please do not add to or try to "explain" long standing language in the MOS then, if reverted, become frustrated, thanks. "Other" is not needed, as there is no contradiction to address. Proper names are proper names throughout the English language, and have been since the beginning of time when English was first grunted in the caves. The opening paragraph, although it could be written better or even eliminated, just makes clear to editors who may not totally understand proper names that words like "sun" when it means "sunshine", or the common use of "earth" for soil, or that the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, are not uppercased. As to your example, "the city" is an example of a general use nickname but not a proper name as it does not denote to a worldwide readership which city. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:58, 24 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
How come then that "the sun" is considerable more frequent in written English than "the Sun" [10] and likewise "the moon" than "the Moon" [11]? Has it ever, for just one second, occurred to you that you could be wrong rather than the wast majority of the English-speaking world? Also, assuming that there ever is a human colony on Mars, would they really go on using "the Moon" (whether capitalized or not) to refer to Earth's moon? Maybe they would rather give it a proper proper name (say "Luna") and instead start to use the collective noun "the moons" to refer to the moons of their own planet? As long as there is no such colony, we simply cannot know that, and so the question whether "the moon/Moon" is a proper name or rather a definitive use case of a common noun is undecidable. Gawaon (talk) 13:11, 24 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The Mars colony is an interesting scenerio, thanks. I would think they would still call the Moon the Moon and the Sun the Sun, etc. Their own multiple moons already have names, which would be used, and when they strolled under the moons they would lowercase "moons" as a general name. The use of Sun and Moon in ngrams and such has been discussed and decided many times on Wikipedia, retaining the present usage. Yes, I was wrong once, in 1995 (or was it '94?). Randy Kryn (talk) 14:31, 24 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think the phrase "astronomical contexts" is causing some of the problem here. I would say that the name of the astronomical object should always be capitalized. Whenever you mean the specific ball of hot gas, that's the Sun; it's a proper name. That's true whether you're talking about astronomy or not.
When you mean the light or heat that comes from it, that should be lowercase. When you mean the disk of light in the sky — I think that's an in-between situation. So for example it's OK with me if Wikipedia articles say the sun rises earlier in the summer; I personally use a capital letter for this situation, but I recognize it as different, because you're not really talking about the astronomical object here (the Sun doesn't rise at all; rather, the Earth rotates so you get a different view of it). --Trovatore (talk) 18:54, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The moon or sun rising or setting is clearly not an astronomical context; it's a very human-centric viewpoint. Dicklyon (talk) 20:13, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What I'm saying is, the guidance should be clarified. The name of the astronomical object should always be capitalized, even if not in an astronomical context. However, many common uses are not really about the astronomical object, and they can stay lowercase. --Trovatore (talk) 20:19, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What clarification would you propose? Currently the main page requests capitalization "in a scientific or astronomical context", but not "in general use". That's not so bad, and I suppose this wording expresses a consensus view that can't be changed easily. Now, how would you decide whether a usage outside of a scientific or astronomical context is about the astronomical object? To me that seems trickier than simply saying "just use lower-case in such cases", as the current rules do. Gawaon (talk) 21:07, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, aboutness can be fraught, but it is really the center of a lot of editorial decisions. I would change the guidance to put it in terms of aboutness, and then give a couple of examples and let people take it from there. It shouldn't be a huge difference in practice, but it's closer to the real issue.
Maybe a test case: suppose that for some reason, in an article that's not particularly scientific, you had cause to say that something was as hot as the surface of the Sun. I would argue that, even though the broader context is not especially scientific or astronomical, the capital S is basically required there. --Trovatore (talk) 21:24, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That example would of course be uppercased, as "surface of the Sun" refers directly to the star, which has a proper name (Sun). Dicklyon is correct about the sun setting, which has been lowercased for as long as I've been editing. This doesn't seem hard, if the language refers to the Moon, Sun, or Earth when discussing the moon, the star, or the planet, then they have proper names. I don't know even know why we are discussing this, seems like a 1930's comedy (which may be because I'm watching one now, so my feeling watching it is subjective and carried over as I type - sort of like the subjective language that some people want to place onto these proper names). The language could be simplified to "uppercased when used as proper names" and just get rid of the "astronomical" and other contested and confusing language (then clarify with a few examples, but most editors can recognize a proper name when they see one). Randy Kryn (talk) 22:43, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, I agree with you, but I'm not sure the current language that references "context" expresses that idea clearly. It could be interpreted as saying that if you talk about the star, but in some non-astronomical broader context, you'd lowercase it. The "proper names" language is an interesting idea; I could maybe support it, but it does leave some cases a bit unclear. Does the disk of light in the sky have a proper name? It seems like it reasonably could; there's no reason abstract objects can't be named. --Trovatore (talk) 23:07, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That abstract disc in the sky is the Sun (didn't they learn you nuttin' in school?). As for its proper name, the language is already present in the guideline "Names of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, stars, constellations, and galaxies are proper names and begin with a capital letter. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:48, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
But the abstract disk does rise and set. The hot ball of gas does not. --Trovatore (talk) 03:06, 18 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the capitalization in this example ("as hot as the surface of the Sun"), but I'd say that the wording "surface of the Sun" by itself suggests a scientific context – that's hardly everyday language. In general, everyday usage, on the other hand, somebody might say "as hot as the sun" in a metaphorical rather than scientific sense ("very, very hot"), and in such a context lower case would be fine and usual. Likewise with the phrase "reach for the moon", which Randy Kryn once used as example. It has no scientific, let alone astronomical context, but simply means "try to do something very difficult or impossible", so lower case is fine here (and indeed common in general English usage, which Wikipedia largely strives to follow). However, when pursuing the "proper name" idea, it seems hard to explain why such usages should be lower-cased, or even why "the sun rises" should be lower-cased – after all, they clearly do refer, in some way or other, to our planet's star and moon, both of which have a name and are identified by that name in all these phrases. So capitalization depends not really on the name, but rather on the context in which that name is used. Gawaon (talk) 05:36, 18 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that "context" could be taken as the broader context (say, of the article as a whole). It should be surface of the Sun regardless of how pop-culturish the whole article is. --Trovatore (talk) 20:37, 18 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. One way out may be more examples to clarify to intended usage. Gawaon (talk) 20:39, 18 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

When our manual of style has micro-fine shades of meaning, as it does here, I do not believe it serves anyone. That's why there are perennial discussions, because we have rules that are based on subtle differences of context. I believe that words like sun and moon and earth never need be capitalized because it's always obvious what's being talked about. If the word we use to refer to a concept has become a common noun, it's always a common noun. There is no situation in which capitalizing "sun" is going to make it clearer to a reader that the in that instance the word means "the star around which the earth orbits" that cannot be made even clearer just be using clearer words. Moreover, that capitalization does nothing for anyone with a vision impairment; those individuals have no choice but to depend on context. Perennial arguments like this are evidence that we should shift to lower case in all contexts, and trust writing to get the job done. What's the value of creating discord and excluding the visually impaired by digging in heels about this?~TPW 13:24, 18 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think any suggestion that would allow The Apollo project achieved the first human landing on the moon is a non-starter. Also not really following how capitalization "excludes" the visually impaired. --Trovatore (talk) 20:30, 18 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I'd say that such usage must be capitalized, while "they waited for the moon to rise" must be lower-case. So the most simple solutions are (sadly) unavailable. Gawaon (talk) 20:38, 18 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You say "must be capitalized", but sources mostly don't. Nor with the sun. Dicklyon (talk) 15:28, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. I googled "nasa return to moon" and while NASA itself uses capitalization (as do we), most other sources don't. Personally I wouldn't be opposed to a "largely lower-case" resolution, I just think it's important to have a rule that's clear and easy to follow. Gawaon (talk) 16:23, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I googled a bit further to see how others handle this and the first consistent and simple rule I found is from the MLA Style Center: "We usually lowercase sun, moon, and earth, but ... when the does not precede the name of the planet, when earth is not part of an idiomatic expression, or when other planets are mentioned, we capitalize earth." Examples include: "The earth revolves around the sun" and "The space shuttle will return to Earth next year".
Personally, I would be happy with such a simple and consistent rule. However, it deviates significantly from Wikipedia's current usage, which is to use capitalization in many cases (but without an easily detectable consistent pattern). Gawaon (talk) 16:44, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I would prefer that, too. We also over-capitalize Universe and Solar System imho. Dicklyon (talk) 17:27, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
When sources don't support a style that is also inconsistent, that's strong justification for a request for comment. ~TPW 18:05, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
True Pagan Warrior, I see you have started RFCs regarding this manual before, would you be willing to do one for more consistent lower-casing of "the sun" etc. too? I would support it, but I have no experience with starting RFCs. Here's the text I would propose to use instead of the current first paragraph of MOS:CELESTIALBODIES (but it's just a suggestion, I'm open for improvements):

The words sun, moon, solar system, and universe are not generally capitalized (India was the fifth nation to land on the moon; The solar system was formed 4.6 billion years ago), except when used in personifications (Sol Invictus ('Unconquered Sun') was the ancient Roman sun god). References to our planet are written as the earth (lowercase, with article) or Earth (capitalized, no article); if other planets are mentioned as well, the latter form is usually preferable (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are the four terrestrial planets). It is lowercased in colloquial expressions such as what on earth.

Gawaon (talk) 17:46, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I do not have the time at the moment, either to request comment or closely look at your proposed text. That means that we have time for others to weigh in on the text, or request comment themselves. ~TPW 18:25, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Considering that the proposal doesn't seem to generate any enthusiasm, I'm not going to pursue it further. It would probably also be too big a change, considering the frequency of the capitalized spellings the Moon/Sun/Earth throughout Wikipedia. Gawaon (talk) 17:40, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What I'm saying is that a desire to capitalize a word is a desire to convey some information about that word, usually that it's special in some way, but since we do not pronounce capital letters, anyone who uses text-to-speech has no clue that there is information being conveyed. ~TPW 18:00, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, you could take that argument to say we shouldn't have images, because it might tempt us to leave out information from the text that the visually impaired could have used.
But anyway, you're mostly right that conveying extra information is not the main point. The main point is to capitalize proper nouns, which are the names of fixed things like the Sun and the Moon, as is correctly done in English. --Trovatore (talk) 18:45, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No, we have alt-text to convey information about images. As for what's a proper noun, that's the point of this discussion. ~TPW 18:59, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Alt-text gives some information about the image, but it's never going to get across everything the image imparts to sighted readers. Put another way, by your argument, why use capitals at all? They do convey information that's not available to users of text readers. But look, text was developed for use through the visual sense. It's really wonderful that there are ways for those who can't see to nevertheless use text, and we should make that as easy as reasonably possible, but that's not a reason to avoid thinking about the visual presentation and how it can help the reader who uses it in the ordinary way. --Trovatore (talk) 19:15, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think the best way to do that is only to capitalize words that are, per overwhelming consensus, proper nouns. For any argument around the edges like this, with capitalization in some contexts and not in others, it's confusing to visual readers and lost on non-visual readers. I don't see any point to capitalizing such words at all. Whether it's metaphorical or astronomical, the sun is the sun. How does capitalizing the word from time to time improve understanding for anyone, really? ~TPW 16:23, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Completely agree. If a word needs emphasis, tag it as such, don't capitalize it. MOS says reserve caps for proper names, i.e. terms that are consistently capitalized in independent sources – not terms that are just "sometimes" capitalized in sources, or terms that are capitalized in sources that are promoters of those terms. Using caps sparingly is a great service the reader, and I hadn't thought about how it might also help the screen-reader user, but you are right. Dicklyon (talk) 04:17, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment This really isn't all that hard. The words Sun, Earth, Moon ... a specific celestial body in an astronomical context. Astronomical sense means in the context of the science of astronomy - broadly construed. Trying to have it extend to more everyday uses could be construed as pettifogging. Cinderella157 (talk) 23:12, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't hard at all. If a word is a proper name, it is upper-cased. That's a universal rule of the English language. There is no separate category for the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, the Solar System, or the Galactic Center as proper names. Wikipedia status-quo on uppercasing all proper names is clear. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:56, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
But how do you know what a proper name is, as opposed to a descriptor pointing to a specific object (an object that exists just once)? If you want to generally capitalize the Sun, why not equally generally capitalize the Universe, the World, Climate Change, Economics etc., all of which exist just once and could therefore equally well be regarded as proper names? Gawaon (talk) 05:37, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The Sun? You know it when you see it (look, up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, nah, it's the Sun). I think editors can figure out when the Sun is used a proper name or is referring to sunlight, etc. That's where examples can come in, but the proper name for the star is Sun and not much else to say about the topic. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:38, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
According to at least one source, "Although it’s a star – and our local star at that – our sun doesn’t have a generally accepted and unique proper name in English. We English speakers always just call it the sun. ~TPW 16:26, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm convinced by the good people at earthsky, why would humanity go to the trouble of actually naming the nearest star that has given us all life. It's not like it's obvious to anyone or deserving of a proper name, just hanging there, not doing anyone a bit of good. But to be serious, I'm extremely proud of Wikipedia for using obvious proper names for the Sun, Moon, Earth, and Solar System even when many sources, such as the one you point out, do not. By the way, may I ask what do you call it when discussing the Sun (I personally seldom discuss it, but there really should be a holiday honoring the thing, maybe call it Sunday or something). Randy Kryn (talk) 22:24, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just wondering in looking at this, are there times we don't capitalize Jupiter or Saturn? Granted I'm old, but I've used the phrase "jumpin' jupiter" many times. Is Jupiter always lower case in this context? I assumed it would be like cases of lower case sun and earth, but I've never seen it uncapitalized in that phrase. And sure I can see that we would spell it sunrise or sun-rise, but then when NASA talks about Titan and it's lakes and throws up a photo we see a picture of Saturn-rise over Titan? It does get confusing. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:06, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, this is not difficult at all. If you're referring to the daystar as an astronomical object, it's "the Sun". If you're employing a derived usage, as in "lying in the sun too long" (which really means "lying in the light produced by the Sun", not "going into the Sun and lying down"), then it's "the sun". "The Moon looked red because of dust particles in the Earth's atmosphere", but "The moon hits your eye / Like a big pizza pie" and "archaeologists digging in the peaty Scottish earth for months" (an astronomical body did not come down to Earth and hit someone; Scotland does not have its own separate planet).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:34, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Barbie shows with embedded titles?

In the redirect titles Barbie & Her Sisters in A Pony Tale and Barbie and Her Sisters in The Great Puppy Adventure, are "A Pony Tale" and "The Great Puppy Adventure" properly treated as embedded titles, per MOS:THETITLE? Or should the "A" and "The" be lowercase? I'm thinking they're embedded titles, but the user marking them as "miscapitalized" disagrees. Dicklyon (talk) 03:31, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

To summarize my previous comments, this is a pretty straightforward case of MOS:TITLECAPS. Words like "a" and "the" are never capitalized in a work title unless it is the first or last word of a title, or after a colon or dash. The "embedded titles" MOS:THETITLE alludes to is referring to titles of other works embedded in a title, i.e. a title within a title. A Pony Tale and The Great Puppy Adventure are subtitles part of the regular title, which follow TITLECAPS. InfiniteNexus (talk) 04:38, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
But "An indefinite or definite article is capitalized only when at the start of a title, subtitle, or embedded title or subtitle." So if it's a subtitle, that would again make it capitalized, no? Dicklyon (talk) 04:56, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I misspoke. A Pony Tale is not a subtitle, as there is no colon or en dash. It should therefore follow the capitalization conventions of TITLECAPS, which says that a and the are not capitalized. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:41, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Side question: where do you find guidance that subtitles can be placed after dashes? All I can find is MOS:TITLEPUNCT, which includes "Where subtitle punctuation is unclear (e.g. because the subtitle is given on a separate line on the cover or a poster), use a colon and a space, not a dash, comma, or other punctuation, to separate the title elements. If there are two subtitles, a dash can be used between the second and third elements." That seems quite narrow. ~TPW 14:23, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
One example would be the recent Mission: Impossible films. But usually, a dash is used as a "secondary" subtitle. InfiniteNexus (talk) 21:41, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Just as a point of order regarding the M:I films, that was largely a special case because having two colons in the title would be awkward (and, no, we are not omitting the colon from Mission: Impossible, so don't even think about it). It fortunately has been consistent with outside-Wikipedia practice for those films as well. oknazevad (talk) 00:52, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, and we also usually follow the formatting used in the billing block, we don't arbitrarily decide how to punctuate subtitles. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:36, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To A Pony Tale and The Great Puppy Adventure (however capitalised) these are not embedded titles as described in the guidance. They do have a semblance of being a subtitle but are not formatted as a subtitle by using a dash, colon or parenthesis - nor do I see this being done in sources. Consequently, I don't think we should treat this as a subtitle in respect to the guidance that would lead us to capitalise the words in question. A Google search looking at the usual movie sites that are often used as sources show mixed capitalisation on the point in question. If we defer to the general advice at MOS:CAPS, we would lowercase the subject words. That would be my reading of things. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:11, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely not subtitles. But structured as embedded titles, whether "A Pony Tale" is a true title or not. Dicklyon (talk) 15:26, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Dicklyon, they are not embedded titles, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of MOS:THETITLE. "Embedded title" means that the title of Work A is being quoted in the title of Work B. For example, Lorem Ipsum of A Christmas Carol, or Lorem Ipsum of Lorem Ipsum and The Odyssey. InfiniteNexus (talk) 21:41, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It should be capitalized in accordance with MOS:TITLECAPS not because it is a subtitle, but because it is part of the title of the work. InfiniteNexus (talk) 21:41, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see that I am disagreeing with you at all. Cinderella157 (talk) 22:50, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like everyone is on the same subtitle page on this. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:58, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So everyone's good with lowercase articles in these? I have a crazy backwards feeling somehow. Dicklyon (talk) 04:20, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Everyone is okay with uppercased titles, as embedding titles. I thought that's what you had said above. And by the way, a quick quiz, how many of the 297 moons in the Solar System have lowercased names? Randy Kryn (talk) 04:42, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Uppercase "A Pony Tail" and "The Great Puppy Adventure" as embedded titles? I read the discussion as nixing those capped A and The. Clarify? Dicklyon (talk) 04:50, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus uppercases the 'The'. Wouldn't Barbie and her Sisters in a Pony Tail change the meaning or the embedded descriptor which is featured as an embedded title in the film itself? Randy Kryn (talk) 05:05, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
For the last time, those are not embedded titles. ; or,–style subtitles that were popular in classic literature are no longer prevalent. Per MOS:TITLECAPS, words like "the" and "in" are not capitalized in titles of works; this is an extremely straightforward case, and I can guarantee you every single editor from WP:FILM will tell you the same thing. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:20, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad it's for the last time so you won't reply, but either the embedded title of the film's name is uppercased or the film itself should be renamed The Pony Tail on Wikipedia. It's a clear-cut case, but the opposite of what you are arguing. MOS:TITLECAPS is a guideline, and guidelines include the common sense language "...it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply". Randy Kryn (talk) 05:34, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I really don't understand how editors continue to misinterpret MOS:THETITLE when it discusses "embedded titles". The example used there is "An Examination of The Americans: The Anachronisms in FX's Period Spy Drama", in which "An Examination of The Americans: The Anachronisms in FX's Period Spy Drama" is the title of a chapter and The Americans is the title of a TV series. To copy-and-paste my earlier comment, "embedded title" means that the title of Work A is being quoted in the title of Work B. There is consensus above that we are not dealing with subtitles due to the lack of a colon or dash; it is exceedingly rare for an exception be granted, and I see no reason an exception should be granted in this case. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:56, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Duh! This is not an embedded title nor a subtitle for reasons already stated. The guidance is clear as to what constitutes an embedded title. Sources don't truncate the fuller title that is being used. I don't see sources doing this so nor should we. Cinderella157 (talk) 06:21, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The full title has plenty of sources which quote it exactly as titled, with the uppercased 'A'. The on-screen title has the uppercasing, which is logical given the wording. The words 'Barbie and Her Sisters' are presented as if they were 'starring' followed by the title of the film, but since the full title includes the starring roles then it acts as an embedded title (per common sense, which should take preference over strictly-following-guidelines). Randy Kryn (talk) 13:20, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We generally do not conform to how organizations style their names or trademarks, for example, even if they consistently use all-caps or capitalize their leading "the". Additionally, making an exception here would be breaching the long-standing naming conventions of the film project:
InfiniteNexus (talk) 16:40, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
InfiniteNexus, please note that not one of your examples includes wording similar to Barbie and Her Sisters in A Pony Tail. Doctor Strange may come close if you squint a little, but no, that title actually describes where Doctor Strange has found himself in. In this and the other Barbie films it's like Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen if that film was so-named. Big difference. That the studio puts the correct title styling in the clearest terms it could in the film's title sequence and film trailer seems evident and important to this discussion. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:31, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It is also true that there are a good proportion of sources that don't cap "the" and "a" in these titles - sufficient for us to revert to the general advice at MOS:CAPS - which is the common sense approach. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:32, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If I hadn't nailed that horse down, it would have nuzzled up to those bars, bent 'em apart with its teeth, and VOOM! Cinderella157 (talk) 02:42, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I agree that we disagree. On this one, I'm more on Randy's side than Cinderella's, which makes my head spin, but that's where I am. Dicklyon (talk) 04:07, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And I'm actually agreeing with Dicklyon here. The titles are clearly A Pony Tale and The Great Puppy Adventure - Barbie & her Sisters is almost a parenthetical, as in the example from MOS:TITLE, "(Now and Then There's) A Fool Such as I". See also Barbie in A Mermaid Tale, etc. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:01, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've exhausted everything I have to say, but I'll repeat that we always conform to our own MoS rather than follow how organizations (or even sources) style the trademarks they own. For film articles in particular, we never conform to stylization in logos. But I'm not going to continue wasting time pushing a change to a set of redirects about a series of obscure, animated, low-budget, direct-to-DVD films. So, do as you please. InfiniteNexus (talk) 14:46, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Same. I'm not going to waste more time on this. I just wanted to know whether others agreed that these are cases of embedded titles, and I found that opinions are mixed on that point. For me, the substantive issue is whether to "fix" these, or to remove the redirect tag that says these are miscapitalizations. To prevent this coming up more in the linked miscapitalized redirects report, I'll remove that tag, and just call it "other capitalization". Dicklyon (talk) 16:45, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That seems reasonable, since whether they are "errors" is actually dubious. See also footnote "i" at MOS:TITLES: ... the TV-episode article Marge Simpson in: "Screaming Yellow Honkers", the title of which would be given as "Marge Simpson in: 'Screaming Yellow Honkers'" in running text. What we have here is basically the same kind of case, except that the "story name" within the real-world work title doesn't have its own quotation marks around it. I think I would be inclined to treat these as embedded titles. I could write a paper titled "The Impact of Harr's A Civil Action" and a book titled Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and 21st-century Views on Race, both with embedded titles treated as titles (no lowercasing of the A or The). If we already have a MOS:TITLES rule addressing "Screaming Yellow Honkers" as an embedded title albeit a fictive one that doesn't actually refer to a separate work, what would be the rationale for not applying it to the Barbie cases? (Someone might even make a MOS:CONFORM argument to change them to Barbie and Her Sisters in "The Great Puppy Adventure", etc., though I don't think I would go that far.) Anyway, the Barbie cases are qualitatively different from the other works mentioned as allegedly analogous (Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, etc.), which are cases of a character name followed by a situation or nemesis or partner. The only at-first-dubious one in that set was Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings in which it was not immediately clear whether there was a legend (real or fictive) about ten rings or a work (real or fictive) titled The Legend of the Ten Rings, but it turned out to be the former. We might have a problem if something called Harry Potter and [t|T]he Book of the Spirits came out. We'd have to determine whether this refered to something described as "the book of the spirts" or something literally titled The Book of the Spirits within the narrative. Logicking this stuff out leans me more and more toward accepting Barbie and Her Sisters in The Great Puppy Adventure as preferred by the publisher, because it appears to mean "Barbie and her sisters in the story named 'The Great Puppy Adventure'" not "Barbie and her sisters in an adventure about puppies, and it happened to be great". It's the same "character-name[s] in story-name" format as "Marge Simpson in: 'Screaming Yellow Honkers'", just with less punctuation (and the colon in the latter was really quite unnecessary). That said, the usage in independent sources is mixed; I think this is because of the amgiguity caused by there being no punctuation at all. If the title had been Barbie and Her Sisters in "The Great Puppy Adventure" (or even Barbie and Her Sisters in: The Great Puppy Adventure), there would be no question at all in anyone's mind, on-site or off-site. It's not a hill I would die on, because of the general default at the top of MOS:CAPS to go lower-case if in doubt, but I've argued elsewhere that more specific guidelines like MOS:PROPERNAME (and MOS:TITLES by extension) are necessarily codified exceptions to this principle or they could not exist in the guidelines at all.

Side point: There is not actually a requirement that a subtitle be preceded by a colon or dash, or be wrapped in parentheses (round brackets), to be a subtitle. A lot of works from the mid-20th century on back used other formats, e.g. The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, and these formats varied a lot. E.g. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus; these were sometimes presented without any punctuation (Foo or The Bar) in the original publications, though punctuation is sometimes added by later writer for clarity or to comply with a particular style guide. Sometimes "being" or other terms were used in place of "or". An unusual modern case is Star Trek Into Darkness, in which it turned out reliably sourceable that this was word-play, both meaning "a star trek into darkness" ("a trek into darness, among the stars", "a trek between the stars, leading into darkness", however you like to parse it) and being a subtitle to be interpreted as "Star Trek: Into Darkness", with the colon intentionally omitted to produce the ambiguity. It's why our article is not at Star Trek into Darkness or Star Trek: Into Darkness, despite both forms attested in RS and fierce arguments here for one or the other. (Meanwhile the "exception" at Spider-Man Far From Home is no such case and has an improperly capitalized "From", against MOS:5LETTER, simply because of a lame fanboi WP:FALSECONSENSUS rooted in the WP:CSF problem: there's nearly no independnent RS coverage outside of entertainment news material and virtually all such writing uses a 4-letter rule instead of MoS's 5-letter rule. If it had been "high cinema" covered by academic film journals, they would have consistently rendered it Spider-Man: Far from Home and so would we.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:28, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RfC on capitalization after a colon or dash

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

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) —siroχo 10:49, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]


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)[reply]

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 ([12] [13] [14]), the Associated Press ([15] [16] [17]), The Washington Post ([18] [19] [20]), the Los Angeles Times ([21] [22] [23]), CNN ([24] [25] [26]), CNBC ([27] [28] [29]), ABC News ([30] [31] [32]), 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

Example of an article title:

From  Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics – Men's individual road race
Capitalized (de facto) Not capitalized (de jure)
Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics – Men's individual road race Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics – men's individual road race

Example of a section heading:

From  David Bowie
Capitalized (de facto) Not capitalized (de jure)
1962–1967: Early career to debut album
 
1962–1967: early career to debut album
 

Example of a list item:

From  The Empire Strikes Back
Capitalized (de facto) Not capitalized (de jure)
  • Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker: A pilot in the Rebel Alliance and apprentice Jedi[6]
  • Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker: a pilot in the Rebel Alliance and apprentice Jedi[6]

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)[reply]

Survey

Note: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style and Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (capitalization) have been notified of this discussion. InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:45, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Actually I don't think Wikipedia guidelines say anything about ndash capitalization. It's always been pretty silent on the situation. It says ndashes can also be equal to a slash "/" which may or may not have capitalization afterwards. Most bio titles wouldn't need to use a colon or ndash... you'd get a tree or two broken off from the main article. Some sports like the Olympics or tennis are quite different, and it's why Wikipedia has usually been fairly flexible in how it operates, especially when you get heaps of specific disciplines such as Olympic swimming. It's what make Wikipedia great... it evolves with editors. It's only natural to have articles broken down into heading/subheading Swimming at the 2020 Summer Olympics – Women's 100 metre backstroke. It's easier to read for our millions of viewers. Every Olympic article and tennis article is done this way. The Olympics Project handled this way back in 2008. Tennis Project since 2006. When did this procedure suddenly start giving readers problems? I thought we had moved on from this in a recent RFC?. All sports projects need to know about this potential change. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:42, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support- I think this makes sense. I agree that the endash or colon in these cases acts as a bridge between a title and subtitle so I agree with capitalising the first word after it. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 21:21, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support for article titles and section headings, neutral regarding list items. – Capitalizing the "subtitle" (usually separated by a colon, less often by a dash) is intuitive and widely used in English. Gawaon (talk) 21:49, 20 September 2023 (UTC) Update: See the following "Comment on style guides" for additional justification. Gawaon (talk) 16:37, 23 September 2023 (UTC) Update 2+3: I somewhat modified my vote (twice) to explain my position regarding list items. Gawaon (talk) 18:09, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment on style guides: Since some here have doubted that the suggested usage corresponds to popular practice, here's what two of the most widely used style guides say on the topic – italics added by me for emphasis:
    • The Chicago Manual of Style, section 8.158: "In sentence­-style capitalization, only the first word in a title, the first word in a subtitle, and any proper names are capitalized." As example they give: "The house of Rothschild: The world's banker, 1849-1999".
    • Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (a.k.a. APA style), section 6.17: "In sentence case, lowercase most words in the title or heading. Capitalize only the following words: the first word of the title or heading; the first word of a subtitle; the first word after a colon, em dash, or end punctuation in a heading; nouns followed by numerals or letters; proper nouns."
These style guides aren't arbitrarily picked. I used the Massviews Analysis API to check which pages in our Category:Style guides (including subcategories) are most widely read and checked the first three that are actually style guides. For two of them, the results are as above. The third, The Elements of Style, is a much shorter work which, as far as I could find, doesn't contain any detailed rules for capitalization or sentence style. Gawaon (talk) 16:37, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I have no opinion one way or another, but when I see things like this come up again and again, I do think that some editors have completely lost sight of what wikipedia is supposed to be about. Whichever way these RfCs go (I use the plural because no doubt this issue will arise again) if an editor so feels strongly about change to launch an RfC and they win the RfC to change the status quo, they should change all the relevant pages themselves so as to allow other editors to spend their time on more meaningful editing. There are still many pages in need of more sources, better sources and more information. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 22:02, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Boy that's a good point. However this particular Rfc, as worded, would require no changes to articles if passed. The proposer did this to head off changes by bot to these articles and these articles, plus all the peripheral articles that would need reworking/rewording. But for sure 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. Fyunck(click) (talk) 22:36, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I really care so little about the ins and outs of ndash capitalization. I havent even read the RfC proposal, as this would waste five minutes of my time on an issue I do not care about. But I do care about and keep an eye on the editing of tennis articles (I read your post on the tennis project page which alerted me to it) and I can see how you and another prolific tennis editor are continually left to pick up the pieces when editors come along and change trivial things such as capitalization. As you rightly say, this takes you away from vandal fighting. I know you and I have had our disagreements in the past, but you do prevent a lot of vandalism of tennis articles. My main criticism on these issues is not directed primarily at you, because you are the one reacting to the problems caused by others, but I still think it is important for all editors to prioritise the use of their time to deal with the most important issues. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 23:39, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I wasn't the one who dug this matter up — I agree it's trivial and should be left alone in a perfect world, and in fact, that is how we have been operating for years. But now, since editors have decided to crack down on this non-issue, let's just settle the matter once and for all. Capitalizing after a colon or dash is already the status quo in practice, but the problem is that this technically breaches our MoS. InfiniteNexus (talk) 04:12, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    You started an RFC on a question that you think is trivial? Good job. Dicklyon (talk) 05:04, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    It's a trivial matter that needs to be definitively settled so we can move onto more important things. "Trivial" as in we should leave them alone; who cares whether or not they're capitalized? But since you and others are trying to force everyone else to use lowercase, which is against the norm no matter what the MoS says, I have a problem with that. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:52, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Fyunck, how do these ongoing case-fixing issues keep you from creation and vandal fighting? Why not just carry on? Dicklyon (talk) 05:04, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    We all have limited time to perform additions, and fight vandalism. Maybe your time is unlimited but mine isn't. I haven't looked at 100s of articles on my watchlist for two days because I'm writing here or informing projects of the strange rfc that just took place and this rfc. I'm sure vandalism happened in several places and it will now slip by because of what I deem silly capitalization limits. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:09, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    You can just not participate in stuff you think is silly. Dicklyon (talk) 17:20, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Trying to prevent silly mass-renaming initiatives by others is certainly a noble (and non-silly) goal. Gawaon (talk) 17:51, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. This is too vague and over-broad, and predicated on a falsehood. Nothing at all in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Titles of works#Capital letters (or elsewhere in MOS:TITLES) suggests to use lower-case for the first letter of a subtitle, and even says 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)[reply]

    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)[reply]

    I don't agree with the last sentence. I find this is an attempt to preserve normal capitalization over the few who want under-capitalization. But I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:22, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Nah, see canvassing note below.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:00, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    To preserve normal capitalization over the few who want under-capitalization Yep. 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)[reply]
    Half of this !vote makes no sense, and it seems like you're not getting my point.
    • I never suggested that MOS:TITLECAPS says to use lowercase for the first letter of a subtitle; my point is that we are giving subtitles of works an exception to the all-lowercase rule of WP:NCCAPS, so why not this? The colon or dash is being used in a title/heading/list the same way as a colon or dash in a subtitle of a work.
    • The en dash in "Swimming at the 2020 Summer Olympics – Women's 100 metre backstroke" is not being used for disambiguation purposes. "Swimming at the 2020 Summer Olympics" is not a type of "Women's 100 metre backstroke".
    • The Luke Skywalker example is a bullet point from a list of cast members, not a "title of a published work". According to MOS:COLON, we're supposed to use lowercase since the character description is an incomplete sentence ... but nobody, even FAs, follow this rule because it's stupid.
    • 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.
    • The glossaries example is in reference to the fact that the first letter after a line break is capitalized, even if it is a sentence fragment and not a complete sentence. For example, at Wikipedia:Glossary#3RR, the "A" in 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.
    And finally, this is not just about sports (an area on Wikipedia I have never touched nor cared for), and it is not just about the previous RfC. There has always been confusion over whether policy permits the first word after a colon or dash to be capitalized in titles, headings, and lists; it's just that until the prior RfC, we have largely turned a blind eye to articles that technically breach the MoS. Now, editors have dug up this trivial matter and threatened to take action. InfiniteNexus (talk) 04:13, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    What I frequently find in articles like "Swimming at the 2020 Summer Olympics – Women's 100 metre backstroke" is that "women's" is then titled in the lead and elsewhere, likely because some well-intentioned editor presumed it's a proper name for the sport, because why else would it be capitalized in the title? ~TPW 13:54, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    That's a complete misrepresentation. The S in women's would be upper case for the same reason as the S in swimming is upper case-because it's the start of a title or subtitle. Nobody thinks it's a proper name.  — Amakuru (talk) 20:39, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    and yet, I find it in the lead of sports articles. I haven't been compiling a list, but if you would like then I'll do my best. ~TPW 13:57, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Here one: Weightlifting at the 2002 Commonwealth Games – Women's 58 kg; the lead has "women's" capitalized, when it's in no way a subtitle in that context. It's been that way since the beginning, from which I gather the creating editor followed what was done in a similar article to make that decision. ~TPW 16:22, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose—per SMcCandlish. Tony (talk) 23:17, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: See blatant "call to arms" WP:CANVASSING at sports wikiprojects, e.g. here. This WP:GANG + WP:BATTLEGROUND behavior.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:00, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Absolute baloney and you should know better. I told people that the sports projects involved should be notified, and I did so. It can affect so many. What was ridiculous was trying to change things with no mention to the project's involved. So many sports articles could be forced to change, if a bot goes through the articles and auto-changes them, that it is quite important no matter what side you come down on. At least everyone will be aware as long as they subscribe to the projects involved. Fyunck(click) (talk) 01:32, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Take it to ANI if it's that inappropriate to notify relevant projects of an RfC that affects a multitude of their articles. ― "Ghost of Dan Gurney" (talk)  04:35, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    He's done this before to me so I'm getting used to it. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:09, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The notice posted at the various sports wikiprojects is a campaign speech; it isn't a neutral notification – as such, it is canvassing. wjematherplease leave a message... 12:20, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    It looks to me as if a handful of editors are trying to force a much larger group (sports Wikiprojects) to accede to their will, frankly. Considering this, the message was fine. ― "Ghost of Dan Gurney" (talk)  14:30, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Nothing Ghost did was WP:CANVASSING. Implying they did feels contrived. It also goes against good faith to assume an editor reaching out to the several parties affected might have done so for "support" !votes. So, please consider good faith. Conyo14 (talk) 18:14, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Repeat: "The notice posted at the various sports wikiprojects is a campaign speech; it isn't a neutral notification – as such, it is canvassing." Having an open discussion is not "forcing" anyone to do anything, and you're engaging in the fallacies that a) everyone participating in a wikiproject is part of a hive mind that agrees about everything, and b) that wikiprojects are a tail that wags the entire dog of Wikipedia, and get to make up their own rules to apply to categories of content they "claim". This is directly against WP:CONLEVEL policy, and such behavior by wikiprojects is the entire reason we have that policy, and the entire reason for several ArbCom cases that all came down with the result that wikiprojects do not dictate a damned thing about any topic, ever, and cannot be used as canvassing farms to thwart site-wide consensuses like policies and guidelines.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:54, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Be careful... your hammering of everything that WikiProjects do is showing through. I let the projects know as is normal. Was it more emphasized so they'd notice... perhaps a bit. But then again the last sneaky RFC that attempted to wipe out all the capital letters in dozens of WikiProjects gave no notice at all to those projects of what was about to happen. That is a disgrace to Wikipedia. And a bot was about to be formed that wiped them out en masse to boot. Stop the high-almighty routine and move on. While I'm getting used to these attacks on my character from you, it does take up space and time here. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:12, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Horseshit. I'm in dozens of wikiprojects and most of what I do on this site is within the scope and work of one or another of them. That doesn't mean that everything imaginable that pertains to a wikiproject is proper and good. Abusing them as canvassing farms is a good example of something that is not good but is connected to wikiprojects.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:01, 8 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I think it's also fair to say that en masse changes across all of Wikipedia ought to have en masse notifications. Especially considering this is the site of English usage in editing on Wikipedia, it probably should not be decided one group of people, but rather several groups of people. Conyo14 (talk) 22:11, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    SMcCandlish, Fyunck(click), Conyo14, GhostOfDanGurney, in the future it may be helpful to use the standardized {{please see}} template for notifications to avoid disagreements 🙂 (Commenting as an uninvolved third party)— Frostly (talk) 05:01, 8 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Can also use {{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)[reply]
  • Oppose per SMcCandlish. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:36, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per SMcCandlish. Star Garnet (talk) 01:01, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - I genuinely don't understand this persistent crusade against what seems to be specifically sports articles, but regardless, all of the "capitalized" examples look more proper. I also disagree with SMcCandlish's Women's 100m backstroke example; it does seem like an independent subtitle to me, which is being used as WP:NATURAL disambiguation. ― "Ghost of Dan Gurney" (talk)  02:23, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I think the reason it appears that sports articles are being targeted is because sports articles are the only ones for which this local style is being applied. I haven't seen anything similar outside of sports, but Wikipedia is vast and others might be able to link to examples.
    As for the idea that capitalization makes the wording "look more proper," that sounds like a preference. Do you have any sources that back up that assertion? ~TPW 13:59, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    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)[reply]
    Thanks. I was actually looking for sources supporting the "look more proper" assertion, in particular. It helps me wrap my mind around a discussion when I can separate what's sourced and what's preference. ~TPW 15:12, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, mostly – The crux as I mentioned in a discussion above is in WP:AT#Subsidiary articles: "Do not create subsidiary articles. If we really do mean to allow subsidiary articles, then maybe this kind of subtitle format will make sense, so let's discuss that first. At the other end of spectrum, however, the suggestion for "list items" seems very broken. The example given is more like typical use of colons in sentences than like subtitles, and there's no reason to capitalize there. For headings, in the middle of these, I don't see a clear case; the colon after dates is not clearly a title:subtitle kind of relationship, so lowercase seems fine. If there's a clear case of wanting subtitles in headings, let's look at that. Dicklyon (talk) 05:01, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Alternative proposal I have thought some more about the comments above regarding the triviality of this issue, so how about this: instead of mandating one capitalization style over another, let's make this a MOS:RETAIN issue and make both ways acceptable (while keeping in mind WP:CONSISTENT). InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:55, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    See now that's the way it should be. Simply retain what we already have and not force 10s of thousands of articles into some rigid format. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:02, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I also concur with retaining the existing style because it's trivial nonsense to mass move thousands of articles to conform to a style decided in a single discussion on an obscure guideline talk page where the participants are the same half dozen editors every time. The tail does not wag the dog, and guidelines need to be changed to reflect actual practice in articles, not the other way around. oknazevad (talk) 08:28, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    That's asking every editor to know what special rules apply to different subjects. That's not the sort of consistency I think would serve the project. ~TPW 13:48, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    If you want all of our articles to be consistent without needing to re-educate editors on capitalization rules, then you should change your !vote to Support. As I have stated several times, capitalizing after a colon or dash is the de facto norm, despite the fact that MoS tells us not to do so. This RfC is not an attempt to change the way we capitalize, it's to legitimize what the vast majority of editors are already doing (and extinguish calls for mass-changing articles to lowercase by a vocal minority). InfiniteNexus (talk) 20:22, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    While I'm not sure how we should weigh "what the vast majority of editors are already doing," it's probably worth asking: do you have statistics to back up that claim?
    Also, I do not vote, even with an exclamation point. ~TPW 14:01, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the bike shed should be painted pink, but other than that I agree with SMcCandlish. older ≠ wiser 12:30, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose on procedural grounds. In addition to the concerns raised over the broad scope of this request and the possibility of canvassing, a request for comment should be worded neutrally. The phrasing "because common sense tells us that this does not make sense" is not neutral.~TPW 13:51, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Hi TPW. No comment on the rest of your points, but the neutrality requirement for RFCs applies to the question itself, which is just "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?" Neutral enough, I think. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 13:57, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks, I'll take another look. ~TPW 15:14, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support where appropriate. It is standard English usage.  — Amakuru (talk) 20:35, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Except it certainly is not. It's one of multiple common styles. But I won't repeat myself; see previous comment: [33].  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:00, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support And any feelings of neutrality should be considered !support, IMO. Because there is no good reason to change, as demonstrated through article status quo and external sources, and so we shouldn't. No good will come either way, there's probably no bad to come either way, so why make an unnecessary change to countless articles. And if there is an effect, it'll be that inconsistency is introduced if the changes are made. So just don't. Kingsif (talk) 21:56, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Let's not bring the English-language Wikipedia in conflict with the English language itself. This is standard linguistic practice and should stay that way, regardless of what a handful of editors here may think. I also find InfiniteNexus' alternative proposal above an adequate option. The Kip 00:21, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as unnecessary (SMcCandlish has it covered pretty well); the sole purpose of the proposal appears to be to protect existing bad over-capitalisation (mostly sports event article titles), which is obviously a terrible reason for changing guidelines. wjematherplease leave a message... 09:41, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Bringing guidelines in line with actual practice both on and off Wikipedia is the best reason to change a guideline. Guidelines describe what is, the do not dictate what a handful of busybodies think should be. oknazevad (talk) 13:24, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    That isn't what is being proposed here, and hurling insults about probably isn't the best way to convince anyone otherwise. wjematherplease leave a message... 13:48, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support It took me some time to think about this, since honestly I don't care what happens to the sports pages, but the other main thing that bugged me was what would happen on other projects (i.e. the articles above unrelated to the sports). So, I wanted to do some research and I got some:
1) From What do you mean when you say to use "title case" for proposal/project titles? via The University of Arizona, "In title case, capitalize the following words in a title or heading: the first word after a colon, em dash, or end punctuation in a heading"
2) From When to Capitalize after a Colon via The Chicago Manual of Style: "In headlines or chapter titles or other display type, it’s normal to cap after a colon, even if the title or heading is in sentence case (see CMOS 8.158) and whether or not the part after the colon is a grammatically complete sentence."
3) From Punctuation and capitalization via Royal Roads University: "When using a colon to join two clauses, capitalize the first word of the clause after the colon if it is a complete sentence"
4) From Title Capitalization Rules various different styles of writing which secondary, reliable, and independent journalists, book writers, etc. will use.

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)[reply]

  • Oppose capitalisation after a dash in article titles when that which follows a dash would not otherwise be intrinsically capitalised. The noms premise is that the advise of WP:P&G not to capitalise in this situation is consistently ignored and that WP:P&G should be amended to reflect the common practice. The evidence offered for this is a reference to two lists here and here. The assertion drawn from this evidence fails to consider the history of these article titles. The listed titles are all sports related. They do not represent a common practice across WP but in a specific area of WP. Fyunck (at #Executing on the above RFC) has referred to three discussions that occurred at about the start of 2022. Prior to these, these dash-constructed titles in the form meet-event typically used title case which is clearly contrary to WP:P&G. The meet part of these titles are of such a form that there is no apparent distinction between the application of sentence case v title case. However, the event part clearly used title case (eg Women's Singles). The close of this RfC would state: ... 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)[reply]
    We all agree that article and section titles are in sentence case, but what 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, as various people have pointed out and Conyo14 has shown with several links. Gawaon (talk) 06:13, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Please note that my comment at this time is to one particular aspect of the proposal. [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:
    • 1 applies to title case, not sentence case, and is therefore irrelevant.
    • 2 is actually a CMOS discussion page. CMOS doesn't cap after a colon generally in sentence case but does in some specific instances that are perhaps too "subtle", including in headings and titles. It is an interesting article that considers that there are different styles that exist in respect to colons but certainly does not support the almost always everywhere premise. It would conclude by saying: 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.
    • 3 would capitalise after a colon if it is a complete sentence (or in a reference).
    • 4: 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.
    To, ... as various people have pointed out ...: I consider the comments of those that have supported the proposal so far in order.
    • The noms statement can be broadly characterised as a faulty generalisation in respect to assertions and evidence. It provides examples that only support the premise, rather than an unbiased survey (cherry picking (fallacy)). It makes an appeal to common sense (an argument from incredulity). Doesn't really fly for me.
    • To summarise: don't change sports titles. Lacks substantive reasoning.
    • I think this makes sense. Lacks substantive reasoning.
    • Yourself: 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.
    If the premise is that capitalisation after a colon in sentence case is a consistent universal practice, then let us look at more sources:
    • The APA would cap after a colon in sentence case headings and titles. More generally, only a complete sentence after a colon is capitalised (see here).
    • The AGSM uses sentence case for headings and makes no exception after a colon generally when in a heading or title. It would only cap after a colon for a complete sentence (see here).
    • Online Grammar (an Australian site) states: only the first word and proper nouns have initial capitals. It makes no exception for a colon.
    • The University of Maine Uses sentence case for certain headings. In sentence case only the first word of the sentence and all proper nouns are capitalized.
    • The London School of Economics uses sentence case for titles and list items. 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]
    • Grammarly states: If the colon is used to introduce an independent clause, capitalization is optional.
    • Monash University states: 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.
    • ANU states: ... only the first letter of the heading or title is capitalised, along with any proper nouns.
    • ABC (Australia)for headlines states: Capitalise the first letter of the first word and proper nouns only: Lorde talks about headlining Splendour. No exception for colons.
    I don't think that I "ignored" anything. My view was that I: 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)[reply]
    Note that "headings and titles" is what this RfC is all about, so calling these "specific instances that are perhaps too 'subtle'" wholly misses the point. For the rest of your style-guide research, while interesting, I'd wonder how many of them actually cover this specific case – sentence style for titles and section headings – rather than talking about capitalization rules in general. If they only cover running text, then what they have to say is irrelevant. Of course different rules apply to running text – nobody suggests that you should capitalize each word after a dash or colon in running text. Only if they have rules for sentence-style headings, that's where it gets interesting. And as I point out in my newly added Comment on style guides above (written after your comment), two of the most influential style guides (CMOS and APA) are in agreement with this RfC. (Personally, I haven't found any counterexamples of style guides yet, but it's possible that they exists.) Gawaon (talk) 18:41, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Where I have stated, ... 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)[reply]
    1. [34]applies to title case, not sentence case, and is therefore irrelevant. Is title case not what this RfC is about??
    Conyo14 (talk) 23:59, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Conyo14, no. WP uses sentence case for headings and titles. This RfC is about a specific issue of capitalisation when using sentence case in headings, titles and lists. It has nothing whatsoever to do with titlecase. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:41, 24 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment SMcCandlish would observe, 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)[reply]
    Well, more precisely, one can blanket-oppose this because it's a proposal for a major change based on the flawed reasoning you outline. That is, blanket support has no clear rationale, while blanket opposite actually does: we should not be making questionable changes to guidelines at all. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:58, 24 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    We are not dealing with "six different discrete situations", we are dealing with one: the use of a punctuation mark as a separator in a non-prose context. InfiniteNexus (talk) 23:04, 24 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    We are not dealing with the use any punctuation mark as a separator but two specific punctuation marks. It is not just any non-prose context or 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)[reply]
    Why three different contexts? I'd suppose "article title" and "section heading", but that's only two. So what's the third? Gawaon (talk) 06:25, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Gawaon, ... 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)[reply]
    Thanks, I do indeed not see why one would use caps in the middle of list items. Maybe anyone has good examples of where that's usual and makes sense? Until such show up, I will adapt my vote above accordingly. Gawaon (talk) 10:21, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    One example I can think of off the top of my head is film cast lists, such as the one I cited in the opening statement (The Empire Strikes Back#Cast). More examples: John Wick (film)#Cast, The Shawshank Redemption#Cast, Avengers: Endgame#Cast, Seven (1995 film)#Cast, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl#Cast, Saving Private Ryan#Cast, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (film)#Cast, Tropic Thunder#Cast, etc. These are all featured or good articles, selected randomly from WP:FA and WP:GA. InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:37, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Hmm, interesting. I'm not wholly convinced, I think something like "Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, a pilot..." would work as well if not better. And for the cases where one or more full sentences follow, capitalization after the colon is already allowed per the current rules. But considering that it seems common enough at least for cast lists also in other cases I guess I'll change my vote to neutral regarding list items (neither wholly convinced, nor strictly against). Gawaon (talk) 18:07, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    More evidence I randomly chose some ten movies in a row (The Wizard of Oz (1939 film), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Hunt for Red October (film), To Kill a Mockingbird (film), Battle of Britain (film), Zulu (1964 film), Blazing Saddles, Some Like It Hot, Breakfast at Tiffany's (film) and The Odd Angry Shot) and none of these evidenced the use of a colon let alone capitalisation after a colon. Of the movies listed by InfiniteNexus, Avengers: Endgame and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (film) use a mixed style - where there is a long description of the character, the actor as role: appears as a heading, followed by a line-break.
    As the movies listed by InfiniteNexus are reported to be GA and FA articles, I took a random sample (every fifth article) from this list of 187 FA articles in the Film project. The initial 21 samples was reduced to 11 samples where samples did not use the a description that might be preceded by a colon (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Manhunter (film), Pather Panchali, Rob-B-Hood, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Thing (1982 film), Bad Times at the El Royale, Prometheus (2012 film), Star Trek: First Contact, The Dark Knight and Trading Places). Of these only Rob-B-Hood and The Dark Knight would capitalise after a colon in a line of text. Prometheus (2012 film) uses the actor as role: as a heading, followed by a line-break for all roles. It is arguably a different case to that being considered. Trading Places uses lowercase following the colon. In most other cases, what precedes a description of the role is a comma. This supports the observation made by Gawaon that it would work as well if not better using 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)[reply]
    This is not an omnibus bill. Even if you insist that we are dealing with three/six different situations, you must recognize that they are connected and similar to each other. Also, have you given any thought to the alternative proposal I suggested above? InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:42, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose capitalisation after a colon in article titles and capitalisation after a dash in section headings. 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. 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)[reply]
  • Oppose capitalisation after a colon or dash in list items. The only evidence presented relates to casting in films where there may be instances of capitalisation after a colon in cast lists. This is a very specific case that does not evidence a widespread practice of generally capitalising after a colon in list. There is no evidence offered at all, of capitalisation after a dash in list items. 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. 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)[reply]
    You've already !voted. Conyo14 (talk) 00:00, 13 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose capitalisation after a colon in section headings. The only evidence offered in respect to this case is where that which occurs after the colon is the first letter in the heading (eg 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)[reply]
    Comment for closer - This is the second oppose by the same editor regardless if the two opposes aren't entirely the same thing... they touch on the same thing. They should have been done in the same Oppose section. I've never seen the "opposes" separated like this and I want to make sure the closer, who might not realize it's the same person, realizes it's doubled up. If this get's merged into the same oppose section you can remove my post here. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:07, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    With any luck, the closer will be evaluating the strength of the arguments, rather than their number; that should render this concern moot. If the closer does a count instead, I'd support a review. ~TPW 14:07, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think that will help in the least as compared to what Wikipedians actually want. Just because some want to write a Tolstoy-length speech here (and do it over and over) doesn't make their argument any better. What other guides may do doesn't necessarily mean anything to Wikipedia. Look at diacritics. 99.9% of all sources don't use them for people in English. It isn't even a contest. But Wikipedians decided to go against the overwhelming majority of sources and use them here at Wikipedia. The rfc for that was pretty much a larger show of hands and is now a done deal.
    With the Dash there was a status quo. All was fine. No one wanted to change anything in MOS since it was vague on the issue of dashes. Editors did their own thing fighting vandalism, adding much need content, and straightening up charts and such. Most editors don't look at MOS discussions. There's a niche that loves that aspect but most could care less. Probably vice-versa too where the MOS editor may not deal with the day to day upkeep of something like Olympic sports.... especially in an Olympic year. It's pretty tough. Then a few folks here tried to change things that have stood for 15-20 years a couple weeks ago, quietly, without letting anyone know about it. Some of them knew what would happen if more folks were informed about it per a discussion on your talk page. Then there was talk about creating a bot that would changes 40,000+ articles. Not even counting all the peripheral articles that link to the articles that potentially could change. The links might be redirected but there is also lots of actual wording that would need to change. It would be a LOT more than 40,000+ articles that need tweaking. That's when the dam burst and why we are here today. That's also what a good closer will look at. Fyunck(click) (talk) 22:25, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Cinderella157, what are you doing? You have now opposed this RfC four times. Yes, we all know you're against it, but surely saying it once is sufficient? Gawaon (talk) 12:50, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Gawaon, I have not opposed this RfC four times. There are six different permutations to this RfC. I have made four comments to oppose specific permutations of this RfC. I have also previously explained from early on why I was addressing the RfC in this way. Cinderella157 (talk) 13:09, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, let's just hope that the closer won't get confused by your arguably confusing behaviour. Gawaon (talk) 14:54, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    You are creating the illusion that there is more opposition to the proposal than there actually is. InfiniteNexus (talk) 22:11, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • More style guides These guides specifically refer to headings/headlines and titles, and do not cap after the colon.
The Guardian When a colon is used in a headline, the next word is usually lowercase, eg Osborne: there is no plan B.
University of Cambridge Use sentence case for headings and headlines (and also remember to use lower case after a colon)
University of Oxford 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’
Imperial College London 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’
Cinderella157 (talk) 08:55, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The Guardian style guide goes on to say, 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)[reply]
Yes, we would cap a quotation introduced by a colon but that is not in question here. The Guardian would cap after a colon "in web furniture where the colon comes after the title of a series" but not for titles and headings outside this context. However, the premise of this RfC is that this type of capitalisation is a consistent universal practice, when the evidence is clearly showing that it is not. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:57, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per InfiniteNexus. RegalZ8790 (talk) 03:32, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Fyunck(click). Bgsu98 (Talk) 13:09, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Fyunck(click) and others. Kante4 (talk) 07:16, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Several users have questioned the claim that the MoS is near-universally ignored when it comes to titles, headings, and lists. For article titles, the use of a colon or dash is rare (not counting titles of works) and mostly pertains to articles about sporting events. The lists compiled by Dicklyon illustrate that. For section headings, "Year: Description" is the most common use case. Wracking has already conducted a random sample survey above, but you can do one yourself too! If you go to a random BLP, and it has "Year: Description" section headings, chances are the description bit will be capitalized. For list items, it would not be possible to comb through millions of articles to find those with bulleted lists using colons or dashes – yes, I have tried, but my regex searches have all timed out, but perhaps someone else with more advanced regex skills will have better luck. InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:19, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support There are cases where it makes sense, so the Manual ought to say that it is allowed. XOR'easter (talk) 19:57, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support allowing both. Capitalization and non-capitalization are both well-represented in the wild, as evidenced above, and natural for content writers to write and readers to read. Generally, there's no need for imposing global consistency on this matter which is something of an edge case. In the article title context, editors can consider consistency with similar articles, among the WP:CRITERIA, WP:TITLECHANGES, etc. Adumbrativus (talk) 02:51, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per nom and Fyunck(click). Capitalizing the first letter after a colon or dash is a widespread standard among English-language publications and should not be an issue at all on Wikipedia.--Wolbo (talk) 16:49, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support capitalization of the first word of a subtitle following a colon. my understanding is that this RFC would allow editorial discretion in cases where our current MOS has been interpreted as requiring subtitles to start with lower case. lowercasing the initial word of a subtitle is contrary to many other style guides. perhaps the lowercase-enthusiasts would also support lowercasing the initial word of a sentence that does not start a paragraph. perhaps that would even be a consistent style. but it would be a nonstandard style and despite its elegance we should not use it. for the same reason we should not insist on starting subtitles lowercased. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:32, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Due to the rather broad wording of this request for comment, it's possible that you didn't realize that this is about dashes and colons, not just colons, and not dashes or colons. ~TPW 18:02, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    due to the length of my response, it's possible that you didn't read the part about how this would restore editorial discretion in all of these cases rather than a forced nonstandard lowercasing by the lowercase-enthusiasts. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:26, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Your response was not overly long, but it did lack any reference to "dash," and specifically expressed support in reference to "colon." I was checking out of concern that you may have had more to say, because I wouldn't want any editor's thoughtful and constructive comments to be silenced. Thank you clarifying that your brief response should be broadly construed. ~TPW 14:06, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per XOR'easter, Adumbrativus, David Eppstein, etc. I see no reason (policy-based or otherwise) to centrally regulate this rather than allow discretion. It logically leads to (manual) mass-edits and bikeshedding in articles that, I assume, are far from FA-class. Too much time has been spent on this, and will continue to be spent on this unless the proposal passes. Follow WP:RETAIN, and focus on scrutinizing the substance of our articles, not the style. DFlhb (talk) 02:51, 29 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per SMcCandlish and Cinderella157. An additional consideration is readability: a string of material written in lower case forms a readable sentence whereas a capital letter is a visual interruption, justified to flag things like proper names but otherwise carrying no utilty. The previous sentence being a good example; why capitalise the 'a' after the colon? Hence the logic behind the style guidelines cited by Cinderella above. Further, language and its usage perpetually evolve, and in the internet age the direction of travel is toward reduced capitalisation. I don't see the benefit to readers of changing our guidelines to make a step in the opposite direction? MapReader (talk) 08:33, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Nevertheless, the specific example you give should (in article space) already be capitalized per MOS:COLON: "When what follows the colon is also a complete sentence, start it with a capital letter". Generally I'd say it's a question of striking the proper balance: ALL UPPER-CASE TEXT, as the Ancient Romans did it, is not great for readability, but neither is all lower-case text. An upper-case letter here and there is not going to hurt, and indeed makes things easier and more agreeable for the reader. Gawaon (talk) 09:35, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, but personally I would adopt something like the authoritative style guidelines cited by Cinderella above. Thinking we have gone too far with the capitals already is a legitimate reason for opposing the original change as proposed. MapReader (talk) 13:06, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support This is a common sense proposal that will help avoid a "one fits all" approach that's better applied to math than the English language. Nemov (talk) 20:00, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose the only reason to have a subtitle as part of an article title would be if creating a subsidiary article, which should not exist per WP:AT#Subsidiary articles. (t · c) buidhe 20:47, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Keep in mind, however, that the proposal is not just about article titles, but also about section headers (and even list items). Gawaon (talk) 21:47, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    However the rfc was created because of page moves of decade+ article title consensus, not section headers. If those articles weren't being moved we wouldn't be here. And it's not just about a change in MOS which doesn't really address the subject of ndash. It's also about the issue of moving 40,000+ consensus article titles and the peripheral 10s of thousands of articles that get affected by those moves. That's what happens with an oppose. Support is actually the status quo of what we have now. Fyunck(click) (talk) 22:34, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Fair enough, and I agree. But the article titles you mention are in any case not in violation of WP:AT#Subsidiary articles, so it seems the above Oppose is neither complete nor particularly well-founded. Gawaon (talk) 06:19, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Agreed. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:24, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    That is not the only reason. It would also be reasonable to have a subtitle in the name of an article whose subject has a subtitle in its name. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:38, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, but if it is a title (of a work), it would come under MOS:TITLECAPS and is also outside the scope of this RfC. Cinderella157 (talk) 22:55, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support – This does not seem to merit a site-wide style mandate, and bots should not be mass-changing capitalization in this type of situation. Leave it to local editorial discretion, and if inconsistency becomes a noteworthy problem at some future time more specific cases can be reconsidered then. –jacobolus (t) 17:39, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - It is a trivial issue, but on the basis of Olympic sports and their various events, it simply makes no sense to have them be in lowercase. - Mjquinn_id (talk) 18:16, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Eh? MapReader (talk) 20:02, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Is this person confused on what support and oppose means in the context of the RfC? Conyo14 (talk) 20:09, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I was thinking the same thing. Maybe @MapReader: doesn't. Support means a couple things here. 10s of thousands of decade-long consensus articles would not change with support and they would with oppose. And MOS, which is vague on what happens with an Ndash, would be flexible on the situation with support, and rigidly outlaw capitals after ndash/colon if opposed. Support is the status quo in articles, with the assumption that MOS could be tweaked to make it clear that flexibility is allowed in situations.... especially every Olympic article. Oppose makes us change 40,000+ articles and fix 10s of thousands more peripheral articles, with the assumption that MOS could be tweaked to make it clear that no capitals are ever allowed after ndashes or colons in article titles (barring a proper noun). So the "eh? response is quite strange. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:37, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The debate is about capitalisation, or not, after a colon. I struggle to see how Olympic events are relevant in any way? Proper names due to be capitalised in all positions with text would remain in capitals, regardless of the punctuation preceding. Names that aren’t due to be capitalised within articles would follow whatever guideline is agreed when they follow a colon. This really isn’t a debate about the nature of the word that might follow the punctuation. MapReader (talk) 20:49, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Sporting events are extremely relevant. Not only do we see things done a certain way in the real world, many of us feel Wikipedia needs a little flexibility in the face of decades-long consensus views. It shouldn't just be decided by those who happen to enjoy working on MOS topics. Topics that are directly affected should also have a say since WikiMOS is made up of all our views. We stray a lot from Chicago MOS or AP MOS because editors decided ours would be different. That's cool. But sometimes through the years you blink and realize something got changed by 10 or 20 editors. Usually it's a good change, but not always. Some of us feel that this potential limitation would not be a good change, so we support the status quo and do not wish to change 10s of thousands of articles. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:10, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    After a colon or a dash. See the first example: Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics – Men's individual road race. Support means to leave that as it, oppose means changing it to Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics – men's individual road race. Gawaon (talk) 21:02, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Now I think all y'all are confused. MapReader, Gawaon, and Fyunck understand the RfC, the person who doesn't is User:Mjquinn_id. Conyo14 (talk) 21:07, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Mjquinn_id and I seem to understand it the same way, so that doesn't make much sense. Gawaon (talk) 21:14, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh, yeah, apologies, I think it's everyone else. Conyo14 (talk) 22:01, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support for the capitalisation after dash as it is followed everywhere. The small caps thing is wholly unnecessary. Also I think this rfc should have it's own page because the discussion has gotten too long. zoglophie•talk• 17:10, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose the actual advice for colons says, "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," which suggests to me that "another reason" can be almost anything you want. which means that if you think the next letter needs to be, or should be, a capital, then do that. but if you don't, then don't. the rule as currently written permits intelligent choice. the proposal, as written, says, "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," and you can currently do that. the current guidelines actually permit that. and there is therefore no need to change anything. unless, what I think the proposer is actually suggesting is that instead of being permitted to do this, it should be mandatory. and that I think is a ridiculous suggestion, which I would oppose. Cottonshirtτ 07:06, 14 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    No, the sentence continues: "needed for another reason, such as for a proper name" (emphasis added). You can't just capitalized because you think that's a good idea, the "other reason" simply means that there is another reason why the next words needs a capital letter – it's a proper name, part of a title ("The Simpson"), or something like that. Gawaon (talk) 07:14, 14 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Which also means: If you want the right to use a capital letter there, you need to Support rather than Oppose this RfC. Gawaon (talk) 07:15, 14 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    You are correct. @Cottonshirt: should realize that a bogus rfc just before this had agreed to remove all capitals after the colon/dash. They were about to create a bot to remove all traces of those capitals because of the bogus rfc. That's why this rfc was created. Perhaps what Cottonshirt means is a double !vote. He opposes changing the actual wording in MOS because MOS currently allows (though vaguely) capitals after a dash/colon, but he supports quashing the recent bogus rfc so that we can continue to allow capitals after a dash/colon, just has been done for decades. I think that's what he meant. Sort of a support/oppose. Is that about right Cottonshirt? If so your post should indicate as much. Cheers. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:31, 14 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
can we at least agree that none of the policies, guidelines, or other documents in Wikipedia's myriad of confusing and often contradictory aids to editors are actually mandatory hard and fast rules. they are just guides, to help editors, and to provide a framework of assistance. they are, I think, deliberately written to provide editors with the flexibility to handle situations the policy writers had not thought of. so, just because MS:Colon says you can do x does not mean you have to, always, invariably, without exception, do x. it just means that if you do x this is not demonstrably wrong. at least that is how I read them, and I think they are called "Guidelines," and "Policies" rather than "Rules" for that very reason. which is, for the most part, a good thing.
this proposal, as written, asks: "Should [list of stuff] 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?" and my answer is that [list of stuff] are already written to permit that, and that there is no need to amend anything. my understanding is that I am therefore opposed to the proposal to amend them. they should be left as they are.
then Gawaon said: "No, the sentence continues: "needed for another reason, such as for a proper name (emphasis added)." and I reply that "such as for a proper name" is not a complete and exhaustive list of other reasons. it is an example, to help editors understand what another reason might look like. you are free to have reasons that are not proper names. that is exactly what, "such as," means. then Gawaon said: "You can't just capitalized because you think that's a good idea." and I reply, but that is exactly what MS:Colon actually says. if you think you have a reason, go ahead. you might end up in some edit war with an editor who disagrees with you, but neither side will be able to use MS:Colon as justification for their position. Cottonshirtτ 11:06, 14 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, let's say that your reading of MOS:COLON is somewhat unorthodox. The Wikipedia:Manual of Style intro says: "It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply." – "Occasional exceptions may apply" does not mean: "Do what you want, whenever you feel like it". But if that's your reading of it, I guess that can't be helped. Gawaon (talk) 11:19, 14 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
as for Fyunck(click), I can't reply to an RFC I have not seen and I don't understand the term "bogus RFC." although I am prepared to admit that I might be confused about something because I have never actually participated in an RFC before. my purpose is to vote for leaving the wording of the [list of stuff] as it currently is. thank you both for engaging. Cottonshirtτ 11:06, 14 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think if you want the control and judgment to go back to the editors, it's support. If you want the succeeding word after a colon or dash, provided it's not an obvious proper noun, to be lowercased no matter what, then you oppose. Conyo14 (talk) 00:28, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What editors? Everyone here is an editor. You mean for control and judgment to be confined to a special class of people in a wikiproject claiming scope over the article category, and that is directly against WP:CONLEVEL policy (in fact, it's precisely the kind of "walled garden" wikiproject stake-claiming that that policy was enacted to put a stop to).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:07, 17 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Literally any editor, not just spelled out in a terrible format by a specific group of trustees that determine the manual of style for all of Wikipedia without telling anyone. It's like "we discussed it internally, you should've been there." Just saying. Conyo14 (talk) 07:07, 17 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And yes, my comment goes for any project on Wikipedia. Conyo14 (talk) 17:26, 17 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'll repeat something I said somewhere in one or another of these discussions: This entire squabble is a silly waste of time, because if WP:AT policy (specifically WP:COMMADIS, and note there is no "WP:DASHDIS" or "WP:COLONDIS") were being followed, there would be no dash or colon in any of these page titles, but a comma, and obviously no capital letter would follow the comma. They should all be mass-WP:RMed to use commas instead of dashes, per the title policy, then this entire silly "debate" just instantly goes away.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:07, 17 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Next steps

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)[reply]

The closer also said we needed to discuss wording "including which specific pages and sections to update, and how to do so, including how to incorporate ideas from WP:RETAIN and WP:CONSISTENT." Now, must we tweak the wording? It certainly can be left as ambiguous as I think consensus was more of leave things as they are in our articles and we don't care as much for major changes to MOS. But it would help in avoiding future arguments to at least acknowledge somewhere in MOS that rules are not being broken in using a capital after dashes and colons. Probably a single sentence, not as much an exception, but as a clarification. Fyunck(click) (talk) 04:03, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The current wording is not ambiguous because it specifically says not to capitalize for incomplete sentences — which is what article titles, section headings, and list items often are. The following should be added to MOS:COLON: 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)[reply]
It is ambiguous. Many are not incomplete sentences, and if you went by that the very start would also be incomplete. It is ambiguous as to how to handle the first word after a colon/dash and always has been. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:46, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
MOS:ENDASH would then need to be changed in a similar manner, right? I wonder whether it's not simpler and more appropriate to change WP:NCCAPS, MOS:SECTIONCAPS, and MOS:LISTCAPS, since they are more specialized for the usage situations where capital letters are now allowed. For example, I would suggest adding a new sentence to (or right after) the first paragraph of MOS:SECTIONCAPS: "However, after a colon or dash, editors may choose whether to capitalize what follows, taking into consideration the existing practice (especially in other section headers in the same article)." And then give an example in two "green" variants, showing that both lower-case and capital are correct. WP:NCCAPS and MOS:LISTCAPS should then be adapted in a similar way. Gawaon (talk) 17:59, 2 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That was the original proposal, to add wording to the different MoS guidelines where applicable, but since the closer has determined that there is no consensus for 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)[reply]
Well, your original proposal was to change five places – I don't think that's necessary, but changing either two (MOS:COLON and MOS:ENDASH) or three (WP:NCCAPS, MOS:SECTIONCAPS, and MOS:LISTCAPS) of them seems necessary to document the consensual outcome of the RfC, otherwise parts of it would inevitably and silently dropped. Just talking about colons and hoping that editors will implicitly realize that this advice might also apply to dashes will surely not work. It's necessary to document the relaxed rule after dashes too, otherwise editors would soon argue again that no capital letters are allowed in such cases. So if you prefer changing MOS:COLON, sure – but I'd still suggest changing MOS:ENDASH in a similar way, and I don't think anything the closer said goes against that. Gawaon (talk) 19:09, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:48, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WP:MOS takes precedence over all other MoS pages. We can't have the main page say not to capitalize and the subpages say the opposite. I will try to adjust MOS:COLON and MOS:ENDASH. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:32, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Because of how the § Dashes section is structured, I couldn't find a way of incorporating the new wording without doing so twice. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:40, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Men's Double Sculls

... is just one example of an event name that's over-capitalized in hundreds of articles. "Women's 100m Breaststroke" is another (not to mention that it needs a space between the number and the m). There are dozens more such events. They're mostly the same set of articles, e.g. East Germany at the 1980 Summer Olympics, across various countries and years, and some non-Olympic articles, too. Sorry I'm not able to work on those for now. Dicklyon (talk) 06:16, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like routine MOS:SPORTCAPS and MOS:NUM cleanup to me.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:28, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but who will work on it? I can't, without JWB. Dicklyon (talk) 04:13, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Demonyms

Is there any place in the guidelines that says demonyms (e.g., Hoosier, Carioca, New Yorker) should be capitalized? I see that demonyms are included in a list of examples of capitalized terms in MOS:HYPHENCAPS, but that does not seem sufficient so me, since it is not a direct statement saying they should be capitalized. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 19:24, 9 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That's universal English usage, isn't it? As such, I don't think we have to repeat it. Gawaon (talk) 19:46, 9 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that could perhaps be said for proper names too, I guess, but we still say it explicitly. And apparently whoever wrote the Carioca article didn't know it. I suggest to put into the list that's at the beginning of MOS:PEOPLANG, a section I hadn't noticed before making that comment. It would only take one added word to include it there. Perhaps it's already covered by "nationalities, ethnic and religious groups, and the like". I was hoping to find the word "demonym". How about adding a shortcut called MOS:DEMONYM that links to that and including it in the {{Shortcut}} at the top of that section? That's currently a red link. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 20:15, 9 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Carioca is probably somewhat of a special case – the article frequently puts in it italics and lowercase, treating it as a Portuguese rather than English word. As such, it is of course not capitalized – though, once considered as loaned into English, it is.
Generally, I'm certainly not opposed to adding "demonyms" to the section you mention, though I don't think an extra shortcut is needed for it. Gawaon (talk) 20:30, 9 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I would think Portuguese would also capitalize this when it's used as a noun; that language lower-cases demonymic, national, etc. derivatives that are used adjectivally. Same with Spanish and many other languages: he is an Americano but your accent is americano.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:10, 17 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Are you confusing that with French, maybe? I'm pretty that sure that both Portuguese and Spanish lower-case demonyms both as adjectives and as nouns, and their Wiktionaries agree (pt:americano, es:americano). Many languages do so, see the translations listed for wikt:American#Noun. Gawaon (talk) 21:05, 20 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Possibly. Not what I was taught in Spanish class (which was to just lower-case the adjectival usage), but that was a lifetime ago, and specific to a particular form of Spanish anyway.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:28, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

International incidents and affairs

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)[reply]

They do sound like generics, so would generally be lowercase, unless for particular ones they are consistently capitalized in sources. Some of those incidents have been increasingly capitalized over time, but are still not consistently so. The Petrov Affair is consistently capped in books, as far as I can tell, but the Gaspee is a mostly-lowercase affair. Dicklyon (talk) 04:18, 17 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I fixed the Gaspee affair. Dicklyon (talk) 05:43, 18 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Remsensel, I agree. They should be downcased unless there are compelling reasons for capping. Tony (talk) 09:50, 18 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

ALL-CAPS for "keywords for lexical sets"?

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics#ALL-CAPS for "keywords for lexical sets"?. Involves MOS:ALLCAPS.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:52, 20 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Provinces of Italy

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)[reply]

DEFAULTSORT capitalization conventions?

I notice an awful lot of DEFAULTSORT keys are capitalized like title case, as opposed to sentence case. Is there a guideline some place that would suggest one way or the other? Dicklyon (talk) 21:04, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I took a look and see it is a convention going back a long time to capitalize every word in defaultsort and sortkey. I can see it discussed in the moving forward section in this archive. I didn't really read very much to figure out as to why it has always been done that way. Maybe ask an expert in the categorization area? Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:01, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sortkeys used to be case sensitive, so it was decided to capitalize every word. Case sensitivity ceased quite some time ago, but there's no reason to change existing keys. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:10, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Michael Bednarek: Sounds reasonable if it's not hurting anything. Is it usually used with new keys too, 50/50, or more sentence case with any sorts newly created? Fyunck(click) (talk) 01:28, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
OK, if sort keys are not case sensitive, it's a non-issue. So in doing case fixes, it's not important whether they hit the sort key or not. Dicklyon (talk) 19:17, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Might as well remove such sort keys in cases in which they are not actually necessary, and fix the title-casing of necessary ones so that the case matches the article name, since it's just confusing code bloat. Since it doesn't affect output for the reader or fix genuine technical breakage, I guess that would be subject to WP:MEATBOT, i.e. something that should be done in the course of an edit that also makes at least one substantive improvement.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:26, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I've taken to deleting irrelevant default sort keys when I notice them, and not worrying about their capitalization in any case. Dicklyon (talk) 04:16, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Over-capitalization of "ayurveda"

Resolved

I notice at Ayurveda that every or nearly every occurrence of the word (and the ayurvedic adjectival form) is capitalized, but it does not seem to be a proper noun, any more than chiropractic, homeopathy, traditional Chinese medicine, etc. This seems to be a clear-cut MOS:SIGCAPS and MOS:DOCTCAPS case, of boosters of the topic capitalizing it to make it seem more important. But I guess it's worth discussing before I go on a lower-casing spree. And I think it's better discussed here than at a page that tends to be beset with ayurveda proponents, though I'll drop a notice there.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:32, 2 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I came here from that talk page notification. I'm neutral as to whether or not it should be capitalized. But I figured I should point out that there are several of us who are definitely not boosters, who watch the page for the exact reason that we don't want boosters to POV it. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:08, 2 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I can't imagine telling one of the boldest to be bold, but be bold SMcCandlish. You are right and you and I know it. SchreiberBike | ⌨  00:30, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I honestly have less stomach for doing this stuff than some others like Dicklyon (who knows tools like AWB/JWB a lot better than I do, anyway). I'm willing to make fairly forceful arguments against willy-nilly changing MoS, or misrepresenting/ignoring it at WP:RM, but my stress-response doesn't deal well with angry pushback about the content of particular articles that tend to be dominated by insular wikiprojects of single-minded persons with an overcapitalization addiction. The last time I waded deep into such waters I was hounded for months by a pair of such people and ended up mostly resigning from editing for about a year. (The content in question eventually ended up the way I said it should, after some RfCs and mass-RMs, but getting it there was the worst experience of my entire wiki-life.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:42, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
SchreiberBike fixed this shortly after you brought it up here in November. No pushback. Dicklyon (talk) 17:58, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Huzzah. Thanks, SchreiberBike.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:23, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Capitalisation of "native" in King Philip's War

The word native is consistently capped in the article as a shortened form of Native Americans which might reasonably be capped per guidance but I don't think the shortened form should be? Cinderella157 (talk) 02:27, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That came in here, by a one-hit IP, changing "Indian" to "Native". Seems wrong to me; perhaps "native" is an OK fix; or may "Indian" is better? Dicklyon (talk) 03:57, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Indian or native, not Native (the meaning of the cap would be unclear). There's also First Nations man/woman—I guess Americans cap the F and N? In Australia Indigenous is always capped by convention. Tony (talk) 07:08, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
First Nation is a Canada thing. The US never uses that for the native/indian population. Dicklyon (talk) 15:51, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The first thing I noticed is the word "Indigenous" is not but should be capitalized when speaking about the people, whether a group or individuals, much like Native American should be. Second, the word "Indian" is not offensive to many but is to others. The normal MOS practice is that if it used in an article, leave it. Since that was not adhered to and the changes were made I say leave "Native" in the article but most definitely capitalize in this case because you are still talking about specific group of Natives rather than the fact they are native to the land. --ARoseWolf 16:40, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, absolutely what User:ARoseWolf says. Indgineous and Native are capitalized when discussing people, but not, for example, plant species. And Indian is widely used, especially when discussing historical topics. Spelling out American Indian and Native American might be preferable to just Indian and Native to avoid any confusion. In this article, when people in Canada are discussed, then Indigenous or First Nations would be preferable. Yuchitown (talk) 17:22, 7 November 2023 (UTC)Yuchitown[reply]
"Indigenous" should not be capitalized except for a specific population who have adopted it as how they prefer to be referred to. Same goes for "native" and any other such term. It's "the indigenous peoples of Siberia" not the "the Indigenous peoples of Siberia" much less "the Indigenous Peoples of Siberia". It does appear that over the last generation or so, "Indigenous" has become a catch-all for, roughly, "Native American, Canadian First Nations, and Alaska Native". But this does not translate to every population on earth, not even every population in the Western Hemisphere. "Native American" has become a proper name, and should not be written "native American"; but don't confusingly and confusedly write "the Native people of Nauru". "Aboriginal" is taken as a proper name in the Australian context, but "the Aboriginal people of Okinawa" would be misapplying this to people outside the context in which the capitalization has become near-universally conventional. Wording like "Unlike many Indigenous groups in South America, the Lokono population is growing" that I just found in an article is an error; this use of "indigenous" is not capitalized in reliable sources except by mostly activistic and very recent ones. This is yet another area where we have to be clear that WP is not a soapbox for promotion of language-change advocacy or activism. And it really doesn't matter that some newspapers have adopting an over-capitalizing style with regard to all such words, in a desperate attempt to appease everyone all the time; WP is not written in news style as a matter of policy. Not even all the topic-focused sources on use of "Indigenous" in the North American context are on board with capitalizing it at every occurrence: 'The term "indigenous" is a common synonym for the term "American Indian and Alaska Native" and "Native American." But "indigenous" doesn't need to be capitalized unless it's used in context as a proper noun.' (Editorial Guide, US Bureau of Indian Affairs [35]). I.e., they apparently would not capitalize adjectival use, which is most use, and they definitely mean to exclude capitalization when the term is not used as a proper name for the specific groupings they identified as applicable to that specialized capital-I meaning. Whether one personally prefers this take or not is irrelevant; it demonstrates that there is not a real-world consensus on even that specific term among those centrally involved in the subject. And WP does not adopt language changes unless and until there is such a real-world consensus on the usage shift (thus our very slow uptake of singular-they, etc.).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:06, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

PS: The vast majority of our content appears to be using these words properly lower-cased when appropriate, including "indigenous" in reference to the Americas a whole or south of the North American populations for whom it has become conventional to use "Indigenous". But any given article somtimes has scattered exceptions in it from drive-by "corrections" (e.g. one section of Arawak had "Indigenous" capitalization inserted by a single person who also capitalized a bunch of other stuff in MOS:SIGCAPS-unaware fashion, like "International Indigenous Rights Activist" and "a Pan-Tribal & Multi-Racial Indigenous NGO"), and at least one article needs to move back to lower-case (Genetic history of Indigenous peoples of the Americas).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:26, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, Native American or American Indian is preferred to the Indian or Native. I believe First Nation is preferred in Canada as pointed out by Dicklyon but I'm not an expert on that. --ARoseWolf 17:42, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Yuchitown and ARoseWolf, Indigenous, Native, Indian, First Nations, etc. should all be capitalized in this context. PersusjCP (talk) 17:57, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I have not seen a MOS saying to leave "Indian" when its used in an article. It's an outdated term, also confusing on an international website like Wikipedia, even if it's not offensive to some people.  oncamera  (talk page) 18:09, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It should be capitalized per MOS:RACECAPS.  oncamera  (talk page) 18:08, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Context matters a lot here. If indigenous or native is merely describing people (The native people of America or The indigenous peoples of the American continent) it is lower case. In most uses of native I saw on that page, it should be capitalised (the peace agreement should include the surrender of Native guns, same as Native Americans) as a descriptor of a specific ethnic group, the same way Indian is. That’s the same reason Aboriginal and First Nations are capitalised (and why indigenous is mostly not). — HTGS (talk) 22:02, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Agri Valley" or "Agri valley"? In the "Area of production" paragraph (at the end of the paragraph) of the "Peperone di Senise" page

Hi, is it correct to write "Agri Valley" or "Agri valley"? JackkBrown (talk) 23:47, 19 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Both ways are common in sources, so MOS:CAPS would suggest we default to lowercase in Wikipedia. Dicklyon (talk) 05:20, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Commonwealth Final

Does Commonwealth Final require an RM? GoodDay (talk) 00:24, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I just moved it to Commonwealth final. So we'll see. Dicklyon (talk) 00:47, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I've page moved five-related pages, aswell. GoodDay (talk) 01:00, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What do articles related to five have to do with this, aswell? Dicklyon (talk) 04:13, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Why did you leave Speedway capped in British Nordic Speedway final and such? Dicklyon (talk) 04:18, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Wasn't certain if that word was to be lowercased. GoodDay (talk) 04:21, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If "British Nordic Speedway" was a thing, as the capitalization suggests, then it would be OK. But if you read the lead sentence, you see that's not at all what it means. Dicklyon (talk) 05:00, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Ok. GoodDay (talk) 05:06, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If the ngrams for Commonwealth Final were made into a dance step we'd have the new Lindy Hop. Randy Kryn (talk) 05:15, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Wait, are we capping dance names now? Dicklyon (talk) 06:25, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If the shoe fits dances. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:43, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see why we wouldn't capitalize "Lindy", it is derived from a proper name. The capitalization of "Hop" seems weird, though. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:06, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It should be "Lindy hop", per MOS:DANCECAPS. "Lindy" is a proper name (nickname of Charles Lindbergh), "hop" is not, and dances with multi-part names are not proper names in and of themselves (e.g. Viennese waltz not "Viennese Waltz"). Nearly all of the dance-related articles were massively over-capitalizing every term that pertained in any way to dances, including even dance steps and techniques, due to the capitalization-happy activity of a handful of editors in the 2000s. These have mostly been cleaned up since the late 2010s, but a handful of stragglers remain as to article titles, plus a lot of straggling over-capitalized text within articles, especially on more obscure dance subjects (though the present "Lindy Hop" problem is the result of the specialized-style fallacy, namely that dance magazines/websites, which are not independent of the subject, have a strong tendency toward overcapitalization of all dance names and other dance terms. Aside: Some have argued unsuccessfully in the specific case of waltz to capitalize it as a German noun, though it's actually Waltzer in German, and the word waltz is fully assimilated into English and usually uncapitalized [36] (search excludes most false positives for Waltz as a surname), nor is "Viennese waltz" a German phrase; in German it would be Wiener Walzer.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:48, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Capitalizing internet (or not)

It's been four years since the last RfC on this ended in no consensus, and seven years since the Associated Press stopped capitalizing it, prompting Wired to write an article headlined with "The AP Finally Realizes It's 2016, Will Let Us Stop Capitalizing 'Internet'". Is there appetite to try another RfC, or is this something more easily solved with a brief discussion on this page? Ed [talk] [OMT] 08:27, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • I don't cap it. Back in the day some people wanted to signify the web vs internal internets (lowercase). Redundant now. Tony (talk) 11:31, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • The fact that Wikipedia continues to capitalize is silly. It's increasingly archaic — see almost every major style guide, including those of tech giants like Microsoft, Apple and Google. So I welcome any opportunity to fix that. Popcornfud (talk) 11:55, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's time to take it down. Outside of Wikipedia I almost never see it capitalized. SchreiberBike | ⌨  22:25, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    This is not true, a lot of sources still capitalised the Intermet. 2001:8003:9100:2C01:2965:EB6E:1F6D:D428 (talk) 23:08, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would oppose any effort to force one style over the other. Many sources and style guides continue to call for a capital letter. This is the same scenario as "U.S." vs. "US" and "Black" vs. "black". There is no reason or benefit to mandate one specific style. InfiniteNexus (talk) 06:33, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Internet should continue to be capitalized on Wikipedia, at least in reference to technical articles. Multiple organizations, mostly technical organizations, continue to capitalize it. Wired and AP are wrong, anyway. Lowercase "internet" is simply bad grammar. The father of the Internet, Vint Cerf, agrees. I am however fine with this particular article clarifying that MOS:RETAIN should be controlling for this, or alternatively, that capitalization should only be required for technical articles, because with technical articles, capitalization DOES matter, since the Internet is an internet (a network of networks), but an internet is not necessarily the Internet (the global network of networks). As a practical matter, deciding that Internet should not be capitalized (or that it always should) will probably result in a lot of work to make every reference in every article consistent, so it seems like RETAIN is the best option. -- RockstoneSend me a message! 08:01, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • De-cap. Is the concept of "an internet (a network of networks)" even still used? Or do people just simply say "a network of networks" for that now. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:04, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The IETF still uses lower-case internet in that way. --RockstoneSend me a message! 22:26, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Just to clarify, Rockstone35 means IETF uses lower-case internet in the generic sense of "an intra-net, any network of networks". IEFT consistently uses "the Internet" in reference to, well, the Internet: "The IETF publishes RFCs authored by network operators, engineers, and computer scientists to document methods, behaviors, research, or innovations applicable to the Internet."; "The development of new transport technologies in the IETF provides capabilities that improve the ability of Internet applications to send data over the Internet."; "As the number and diversity of devices that make up the individual networks that comprise the Internet continue to grow," etc., etc. I can't find an instance of them using "internet" in this sense. If people here will not believe the very IETF that the Internet is the Interent, then who on earth would they believe? There literally is no more reliable source about the question. This basically comes down to "I like to read The Guarian and The New York Times and they prefer it lowercase." They also do a lot of other rediculous style things following their own internal style guides, which have nothing to do with how to write an encyclopedia.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:46, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is another thing we need to list in WP:PERENNIAL since it comes up over and over and over again and the answer is always the same: Capitalize it, because it is a proper name, by definition. The fact that various lazy news writers and editors always looking for expediency (and a much smaller minority of technical writers who should know better) have taken to treating it as if it isn't one does nothing to change the fact that it is one. It's simply an irrational house-style choice on their part (one we are in no way obligated to emulate), akin to various news publishers refusing to treat acronyms as abbreviations and pretend they are words ("Unicef", "Nasa", etc.). A lower-cased "internet" is any inter-network (what is more commonly called a wide-area network or WAN these days), using any protocols. The Internet is a singular thing, like Eurasia or the Manx language or the band Skinny Puppy. The internet is defined by the Internet protocol suite (note not "internet protcol suite"). The World Wide Web or the Web for short is also a proper name, but web in reference to the general technologies (often used for closed intranets that are not part of the public Web) is lower case: "posted it on the Web", but "their web development business". As a fused prefix, web- has become lowercase: "their official website", "on her personal webpage".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:34, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not to be a pedant, but if an acronym is treated like a non-abbreviated word enough, is pronounced like word and not an initialism, etc.—doesn't it become one in that form? I agree with you on the general style point, but I do think it's important to always acknowledge the inherent unfixed, evolutionary nature of language. "Laser" seems like an airtight example here. Remsense留 02:38, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Whether an acronym is pronounced like a word and not as an initialism has nothing to do with how often it is used (or how often it is confusingly written – that's backwards, as the confusing "Unicef" style is due to the pronunciation, not the other way around). Rather, the pronunciation is largely determined by what letters are in what order, and to some extent by the usage of the entity to which the acronym pertains and those with whom that entity interacts (e.g. "CIA" could conceivably be prounced "see-ah" but no one at CIA or any other agency or branch of government says it that way, so that pronunciation never took hold). If UNICEF changed its name in such a way that a new acronym of EUNCFI resulted, it is very unlikely that people would take to calling it something like "youn-kuh-fee", because the letter order forming awkward results does not suggest trying something that unnatural; people would letter it out, exactly as they do with AFL-CIO (but contrast SAG-AFTRA, almost always said as "sagg-afftrah", because its lettering strongly suggests this and the entity promotes it).

WP is not in a position to base its style decisions on vague notions about slow language change; we only do what the preponderance of recent reliable sources do. (This is why WP took several years to jump on the singular-they bandwagon, and was a decade behind the times in dropping commas from constructions like "John X. Smith, Jr."; we had to wait until the sourceable proof of a general shift in usage was incontrovertible.) Note here that even with "Nasa" being a human name or other word in various languages, "NASA" clearly dominates, as does "UNICEF" over "Unicef", despite multiple British and a few American news publishers preferring the "Unicef" weirdness. WP uses laser and radar and scuba and maser because these are the overwhelmingly dominant usage in sources, are written this way in almost all dictionaries, and the average person has no idea they even originated as acronyms. Assimilation of technical acronyms as non-acronym words happens fairly often, but virtually never happens with organizational names. The only almost-example I can think if is IKEA which is an acronym, but many people do not know that and fairly often write it as "Ikea" [37]. In the end, WP would be unlikely to switch to "Unicef" even if usage slid into a slight majority, until it became an overwhelming majority, because our general principle is to not make unusual stylistic exceptions unless independent sources are overwhelmingly consistent in preferring that specific exception for that specific case (see MOS:TM, etc.).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:41, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is circular reasoning. You're basically saying "it's capitalized, because it's capitalized".
You can insist all you like about what the internet is or is not, but when hardly anyone left in the world shares your definition, your definition isn't worth much. By definition.
Besides, this position flies in the face of the main principle of WP:MOSCAPS, which is that only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. And that hasn't been true of "internet" for years. Popcornfud (talk) 02:54, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Straw man. I said nothing remotely like "it's capitalized, because it's capitalized". Show me any reliable source definition of the Internet that conflicts with what I said (other than some may leave out mention of the Internet protocol suite in particular). I'll do some of the work for you, and note carefully that in every one of these cases they mean the Internet, the singular global network of networks, not "an internet", any inter-network.
  • Dictionary.com: "a global computer network providing a variety of information and communication facilities, consisting of interconnected networks using standardized communication protocols."
  • Merriam-Webster: "an electronic communications network that connects computer networks and organizational computer facilities around the world —used with the except when being used attributively; doing research on the Internet, an Internet search".
  • Cambridge Dictionary: "the large system of connected computers around the world that allows people to share information and communicate with each other".
  • Britannica.com: "Internet, a system architecture that has revolutionized mass communication, mass media, and commerce by allowing various computer networks around the world to interconnect. Sometimes referred to as a 'network of networks,' ... more than half of the world’s population, were estimated to have access to the Internet. ... DARPA established a program to investigate the interconnection of 'heterogeneous networks.' This program, called Internetting, was based on the newly introduced concept of open architecture networking, in which networks with defined standard interfaces would be interconnected by 'gateways.' ... In order for the concept to work, a new protocol had to be designed and developed; indeed, a system architecture was also required. ... [Details of the Internet protcol suite here] .... Today a loosely structured group of several thousand interested individuals known as the Internet Engineering Task Force ... [various other governance organizational details] ...." Note that Britannica mentions the original more generic meaning.
  • Collins Dictionary: "The internet is the network that allows computer users to connect with computers all over the world, and that carries email."
  • Here Oxford English Dictionary online ed. provides the definition of the common-noun term (so your pretense that this definition doesn't exist is disproved, by the world's most authoritative English-language dictionary): "internet (1974–): Originally (with lower-case initial): a computer network comprising or connecting a number of smaller networks, such as two or more local area networks connected by a shared communications protocol; an internetwork". For the Internet: "the global network comprising a loose confederation of interconnected networks using standardized communication protocols, which facilitates various information and communication systems such as the World Wide Web and email. ... Sometimes shortened to the Net."
  • Shall I go on?
Some of these publishers today prefer lower-case for both senses (including Oxford) some do not (inc. Merriam-Webster), some observe both without picking one (Cambridge). WP has no reason to make a confusing "magical exception" to the treatment of proper names in this or any other case unless normal proper-name capitalization is nearly unheard of in reliable sources for a specific case (e.g. iPhone is nearly never called "IPhone" or "Iphone", so we do not use those spellings and we stick to iPhone, despite MOS:TM preferring to avoid trademark stylizations). This near-universality in reliable source material, the basis on which we make ususual exceptions, is not found for the Internet or the internet as you would have it. Wikipedia usage is not dicated to by what has a 50.00001% majority in the sources. We only diverge from a general rule when there is overwhelming RS support for it. PS: Someone (oh, never mind, Popcornfud already did it) is apt to claim that per MOS:CAPS we should default to lower-case when usage is mixed. That is the general approach to miscellaneous text strings. But MOS:PROPERNAME is more specific and is part of the same guideline (i.e., it is not procedurally possible for capitalization by default of proper names, specifically, to not override lower-casing by default of text, in general, or MOS:PROPERNAME literally could not exist). Our guidelines and policies have to be read and understood in concert with each other, not as isolated text snippets to wave around like out-of-context Bible quotations.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:41, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I said nothing remotely like "it's capitalized, because it's capitalized".
You said: "Capitalize it, because it is a proper name, by definition."
This is circular because whether to treat "internet" as a proper noun is the entire question.
As you admit, several of your dictionary examples there don't cap it. Not even tech giants such as Apple, Google and Microsoft cap it. Are those guys confused about how computers work, too?
This is a lot work to defend this unwritten exception to MOS:CAPS, which does not demand a "nearly unheard of" abundance of proper-name capitalization, but a substantial majority, which has not existed for years now. (Edit: or, as you yourself say above, "we only do what the preponderance of recent reliable sources do").The fact that this majority no longer exists has even been written about in reliable sources. The "confusing magical exception" at this point is very much Wikipedia's. Popcornfud (talk) 04:29, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yup. And as I said at the top, they were writing about how the usage of this word had shifted seven years ago. This isn't new! Ed [talk] [OMT] 04:58, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And nothing has changed in those seven years to validate the idea that Internet should be lower-case. -- RockstoneSend me a message! 03:40, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. This is perennial and tedious rehash.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:12, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Microsoft and Google are both interested in being user-friendly and following trends. Organizations that are specifically interested in the Internet's plumbing, like the IETF and CloudFlare, capitalize it. -- RockstoneSend me a message! 03:40, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"to defend this unwritten exception to MOS:CAPS" - Popcornfud's just is not paying any attention. Repeat: MOS:PROPERNAME is an integral part of MOS:CAPS, and is a very clearly written, not "unwritten", exception to the default in the lead of MOS:CAPS. Let's go over this yet again. The MOS:CAPS default is to not apply capital letters unless sources overwhelmingly do so for the case in question. MOS:PROPERNAME is an entire section unmistakably codifying an inverse exception to this: do capitalize all proper names by default (unless, again, there is such an overwhelming case for an exception, e.g. as there is for iPhone). What part of this is can still be unclear? The only way for Popcornfud's "quote what I like out of context" misinterpetation to become valid would be for MOS:PROPERNAMES to be deleted in its entirety (and the fallout of doing that would be immense, leading to the lower-casing of at least tens of thousands of proper names).

To get to the meat of the matter: Nothing about what I have presented is at all circular, and "whether to treat 'internet' as a proper noun is the entire question" is completely incorrect. Popcornfud is sorely confusing "proper name" AKA "proper noun" with "something that starts with a capital letter", and there simply is no such one-to-one correspondence. E.g. "ATM" is capitalized, for being an acronym/intialism conventionally presented that way ("scuba" and "laser" being acronyms that are not). This does not make "ATM" or its expansion "automated teller machine" a proper name. Meanwhile, "iPhone" and "tvOS" absolutely are proper names, but do not begin with capital letters (it's pure accident that they contain any at all); danah boyd is another (with none). The following is going to be quite long, because we have a lot catch-up ground to cover (though I just remembered this is covered in more detail at WP:Proper names and proper nouns).

See the article Proper noun: "A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (Africa; Jupiter; Sarah; Tesla, Inc.) as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (continent, planet, person, corporation) and may be used when referring to instances of a specific class (a continent, another planet, these persons, our corporation). "The Internet" by definition is a proper noun; "an internet" (AKA "an inter-network", "a WAN") is by definition a common noun. If you prefer the more esoteric approach of Proper name (philosophy) (which generally has no implications for WP titles and spelling, but we might as well cover it anyway): "a proper name – examples include a name of a specific person or place – is a name which ordinarily is taken to uniquely identify its referent in the world." Further, in direct reference theory (which now dominates in the philosophy of proper names) "the only meaning of a proper name is its referent". Even under this level of abstraction, "the Internet" is by definition a proper name and "an internet" cannot be one. (If you don't like our articles, see their sources and other reliable sources on the same matters; our articles are in fact summarizing them well.) There simply is no confusion about whether "the Internet" is a proper name except among people who do not actually understand what "proper name" AKA "proper noun" actually means. And it does not intrinsically have anything to do with capitalization; proper names exist in languages with writing systems that do not have letter case. People with no background in linguistics really should not try to get into linguistic arguments. This is often why MoS disputation is so recurrent, lengthy, and tedious. Everyone feels entitled to an opinion simply on the basis of being more or less fluent in the language, but they're usually operating on entirely subjective assumption, preference, and habit.

Where capitalization comes in is that English and most other languages with a cased writing system apply capitalization to proper names (though they do this differently in various ways, e.g. English usually capitalizes adjectival forms, like "European" from the noun form "Europe", while many other languages do not). What actually matters here is that Wikipedia has a MOS:PROPERNAME rule to apply capitalization to any proper name, and an exception to this (like any exception to any MoS rule) is made only when independent reliable sources nearly always make that exception for that specific case (thus tvOS, etc.). Near-universality of an exception for "the Internet", as "the internet" (same goes for "the web"), is already proven not to be the case. The lowercase version is simply an expediency preferred by some writers/publishers's house styles (mostly in news journalism and in business/PR writing derived from it). Lower-casing as "the internet" has the reader-confusing effect of implying that "the Internet" is not a proper name and that the Internet is not a singular thing with a proper name, but is instead a class of things with a generic common-noun, non-proper name like "the domestic cat" or "the airplane/aeroplane". The only difference between the argument to lowercase "the internet" and to lowercase "the pacific ocean" is that fortunately few lazy writers are going in the latter direction (though you can be sure that as soon as they do, there'll be a bunch of people demanding to lower-case it on Wikipedia; if you don't believe me, cf. previous attempts to lower-case the Western Hemisphere just because it can occasionally be found rendered "the western hemisphere" in some sources).

PS: "Are those guys [Microsoft, etc.] confused about how computers work, too?" Nothing in this discussion is related in any way to "how computers work"; reductio ad absurdum is silly and unproductive. Corporations follow "business communication" (a.k.a. "public relations") conventions, and these are almost entirely derived from journalistic style. (For example, if you get and read any US-published manual of business/PR style – as I have, e.g. The AMA Style Guide for Business Writing and several others – you'll almost always find it explicitly deferring to the AP Stylebook on any question not specifically addressed by the book in question, never to Chicago Manual of Style or other academic-leaning style guides that our MoS is actually based on).

In short, Microsoft is obviously a reliable source for how Windows, Excel, Skype, and Xbox operate, but is not a reliable source for how to write encyclopedic English, including about Microsoft and its products. This is covered in detail at WP:SSF.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:12, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

" A lower-cased "internet" is any inter-network (what is more commonly called a wide-area network or WAN these days), using any protocols." So, you are saying that the distinction you are drawing is actually made by using other terminology these days? Seems like this is exactly the argument FOR lowercasing internet.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:36, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, it's really not. Lowercase internet is still a valid term for any wide-area internet. Internet is *the* Internet, but not the only internet. -- RockstoneSend me a message! 03:40, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. If, instead of trying to pop off with what they think is a snappy one-liner, Khajidha had actually read the discussion then they would have already seen proof that the generic meaning of "an internet" is still in documented use, including in the most reliable soures about the technology. Read first, post after (if necessary at all).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:12, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • As an aside from my own personal opinions about capitalizing Internet, I'd really like to know how we could could reasonably enforce one standard? The only workable standard I can see is to require that articles are consistent with capitalization, following MOS:RETAIN. -- RockstoneSend me a message! 03:40, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Just say to capitalize it (when used in this sense) and that is sufficient. Ultimately, there is no "enforcement" of any MoS matter, other than cleanup activity by editors who like doing cleanup. Editors who don't read MoS and just write how they feel like writing will slowly come around to writing less often in ways that require other editors to do such cleanup (because the originally non-MoS-compliant editor finally reads the applicable MoS material after seeing that their original spelling keeps getting changed by other editors). There is nothing unusual or different about this case. Given the infrequency of "an internet" (much less the string "the internet" referring to a particular instance of "an internet" rather than to "the Internet"), just AWB/JWBing this as part of regular cleanup would be fine, as long as one checks the output for rare false positives before saving. The main way to get this done is to repair Internet and any other heavily Internet-related articles (Internet meme, etc.) to use the "Internet" spelling per MOS:PROPERNAME, and just see it propagate from there. We notice regularly that when a page is WP:RMed to change case, and its text cleaned up to follow suit, that the change slowly propagates to other pages. This can be sped up with focused cleanup efforts (e.g. the team effort to resolve over-capitalization of vernacular names of species).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:12, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Change of heart: I've sat on this for some time, and (I'm sure this will irritate a couple of people above), I no longer feel comfortable making the case for the Internet. I think the fact that MOS:PN is set up as an exception to the lead principle of MOS:CAPS is a problem instead of a solution, and that it needs revision to be an explication of how that principle applies to proper names. MOS:PN as it stands now has been a source of frequent heated conflict, with people using OR and PoV subjective ideas about what "is" and "isn't" a proper name (using whichever definition of the notion suits their present purposes) to argue in "internet forum" style, sometimes for years, to try to get the result that they want in a particular topic. Outside of parochial conflicts of this sort, the project has actually had little difficulty with proper names (under several definitions) that conventionally are lower-cased in most independent sources, from personal names like k.d. lang and danah boyd to commercial trademarks like iPhone and tvOS. It's getting harder and harder to treat the internet and the web differently, when source usage has strongly shifted toward lower-case, except mostly in a few tech-sector publications. It's complicated further by the fact that "an internet" is now rather obsolescent usage, and "the web" doesn't have any other referent. Plus, both terms are usable in a generic, lower-case sense all the time anyway ("web development" and "internet technolgies" can and often do apply to intranets and such), with the result that non-expert editors would not be certain when the capitalization should apply. I have a particular revision in mind to propose for MOS:PN, but need to think hard on any secondary implications of it and redraft as needed to avoid issues.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:26, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad you're coming around on this. But also note that Internet Protocol is a proper name for one of the standard protocols used on the internet. There can be other internet protocol suites, but does the Internet Protocol have a suite? Not sure. There will still be more details to work out. And as people keep telling me, not all such things are easily figured out from n-gram statistics; this will be one of those. But emphasizing the use of "consistent capitalization in independent reliable sources" is still probably the only way to practically define PN in a way that's relevant to WP style. Dicklyon (talk) 16:00, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Happy to hear that (obviously, as the one who started this section :-) ). When you propose that revision, I'd love if you could ping me so I can chime in. Ed [talk] [OMT] 19:41, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
... This is actually annoying. Internet should always be capitalized when referring to the global network. I strongly disagree with your conclusion and still think MOS:Retain should be controlling, at the least. Otherwise I sense a formal RFC incoming, honestly. -- RockstoneSend me a message! 17:14, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think you meant to refer to MOS:VAR (not MOS:RETAIN, which applies to national varieties of English). If there's consensus here to change MOS, I don't see why VAR would block to a minor typographical change like this. Ed [talk] [OMT] 17:26, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, I meant RETAIN; we should continue to retain whatever the current typographical convention used in the article is, rather than be disruptive and require that every article change from Internet to internet. The reason I mention RETAIN is that the point of RETAIN is to limit disruption, this would be similar. I really don't want (nor do I think it's appropriate) to change every reference to Internet to internet in long established articles that use Internet.
This said, I (and I realize this isn't a negotiation so this probably doesn't mean much) would be willing (as much as I might detest it from a personal perspective) to support a proposal that Wikipedia does not prefer either typographical style and that editors should not change an article from one typographical convention to another, but should keep an article consistent with one style. Alternatively, the policy could be that the distinction between Internet and internet should only be done within technical articles; thus a random article that mentions the Internet would not have it capitalized, but an article about the Internet itself would, since the distinction there matters. And I know, of course, that this isn't a negotiation so these statements don't hold much weight, but it is a thought, because (perhaps it's my OCD or my autism), I really do care deeply about properly capitalizing the word Internet. --RockstoneSend me a message! 21:49, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To make sure this is spelled out for others: MOS:RETAIN applies only to national varieties of English. It is located under the section title "National varieties of English", and begins with "When an English variety's consistent usage has been established in an article, maintain it in the absence of consensus to the contrary." As far as I can tell, it has no direct bearing on this discussion/proposal. MOS:VAR is what applies to this, and it gives us leeway to make a change like this after a MoS discussion: "If you believe an alternative style would be more appropriate [...] seek consensus ... at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style [if it raises an issue of more general application or with the MoS itself]". Per your second sentence, Rockstone, I'm 99% sure you already understand this but wanted to say something to make sure no one else gets confused!
To your first proposal, I'd have to oppose that. It would have the practical effect of locking in all current usage of "Internet" and would therefore defeat the purpose of the original proposal. I'd be open to your second proposal, as given my limited understanding there I can imagine that there would be specific cases where internet should be capitalized. I'd love to see a few examples of where that would be in practice! Ed [talk] [OMT] 22:07, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I think I'm being unclear, trying to follow the spirit of RETAIN, basically saying that the reason RETAIN exists is to minimize disruption, which is also the idea behind MOS:VAR. Per my second proposal, the article on Internet gives a particularly good example. For example, here it says They used the term internet as a shorthand for internetwork in RFC 675. Another good example is in the History of the Internet article, here, where it says In general, an internet was a collection of networks linked by a common protocol. In the time period when the ARPANET was connected to the newly formed NSFNET project in the late 1980s, the term was used as the name of the network, Internet, being the large and global TCP/IP network..
I'd propose that the rule could be: "In technical articles where the distinction between an internet and the global public Internet might otherwise be subject to confusion, Wikipedia prefers capitalizing the term Internet in the interest of clarity. Non-technical articles should rely on the language used in the sources the article cites. Note that many non-technical style guides do not recommend capitalizing internet."... or something like that. --RockstoneSend me a message! 23:55, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Should Palauan chief titles be capitalised when not used before a person's name?

I tried to create a RfC at Talk:Traditional chiefs of Palau#RfC about the capitalisation of Palauan chief titles, but that didn't work. Basically the titles are always capitalised in the main newspaper of Palau (Island Times) as well as on French Wikipedia (Ibedul [fr]). In Palauan dictionaries they are considered proper nouns (see the wiktionary article Ibedul). I am not sure if you would capitalise them on Wikipedia e.g. "ibedul of Koror" as you wouldn't capitalise similar words such as king if it was not before a person's name e.g. king of France. Sahaib (talk) 14:17, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A title as such is never capitalized, like you say. So I'd tend to capitalize them only if a person name (bearer of the title) follows. Gawaon (talk) 16:32, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yep. There's no principle for exception just because the origin language of the title isn't English. This already came up many times and was resolved long ago with regard to European and Asian nobility and military.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:02, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Siege of capitalisation

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)[reply]

See MOS:MILTERMS. Basically, we follow the general advice of MOS:CAPS for "siege of", "battle of" etc. Unless there is evidence that the name of such an event is consistently capped in sources, then we don't cap it. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:52, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One reason we have to examine source usage is to determine whether “siege” is used merely as a description of the type of battle (lower case) or used as part of a proper name for the battle. Lots of battles include sieges, but not all are routinely NAMED the “Siege of X”. Blueboar (talk) 14:00, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I can tell 'Siege of' is consistently capitalised in sources but because the word 'siege' is included in the section about lowercase then editors are changing any reference to 'siege' to lowercase. A good example is Siege of Saint-Omer where editors have changed the opening sentence to include 'siege of' My feeling is that 'Siege of' should be written with a capital, whereas any mention of 'the siege', 'laid siege', etc should be lowercase. Ecrm87 (talk) 12:20, 4 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

@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)[reply]

  • I watch Yorktown campaign and noticed a direct link to Siege of Yorktown that was capitalised in prose, where I was aware that siege was not capitalised in that article in prose. It is a common error to just copy and paste an article name when making a link, without actually considering the appropriate capitalisation of the first word. Yorktown campaign makes piped links to several other siege of X articles, which I looked more closely at because of this discussion. In each case, ngram evidence did not support the capitalisation of siege in prose for siege of X, nor did those articles do so. While there may be instances where it might be appropriate for us to capitalise siege of X in accordance with MOS:CAPS and consistent usage in sources, this does not appear to be particularly common. Even if it were common, we would still defer to the guidance at MOS:CAPS in each specific instance per MOS:MILTERMS. Cinderella157 (talk) 11:24, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I read and edit in things like Scottish and Irish history pretty often, and have no interest in down-casing military-conflict terms that have demonstrably become accepted as near-universally-capitalized proper names in English RS usage, but I do think we need to avoid falsely treating every descriptive turn of phrase for such a conflict as if it were a proper name.

    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 [38]. 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" [39] (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)[reply]

NFL Draft RFC at Village Pump

You may be interested in a proposal on whether to capitalize the "Draft" in National Football League Draft, taking place at the village pump. (this is a copy of the duplicated notification posted to the project page Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League. Dicklyon (talk) 22:16, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That would be an RM not a Village pump (policy) decision. But NFL Draft is already at its proper capitalization, so an RM might be a time-sink. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:40, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Any time some process like RM is failing to come to a consensus, or is subject to WP:FALSECONSENSUS / WP:CONLEVEL problems such as canvassing or nearly no input except from a particular WP:FACTION with a non-neutral interest in the question, the solution is an RfC at a broader venue. WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY, and we have many times resolved questions about an entire class of article titles with RfCs (at VPPOL or otherwise). See also WP:CONSENSUS: it can form anywhere, at any time, by any process.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:06, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Moving what is presently MOS:ACROTITLE into a naming-conventions guideline

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#"Acronyms in page titles" is mis-placed in an MoS page. In short, the material needs to move to a naming-conventions guideline, but which page?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:19, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Capitalising a plural generic term before or after two or more proper names.

In a recent discussion on capitalising forts in battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, Deor observed: Most of the (U.S.) style guides I'm familiar with recommend lowercasing a plural generic term when it follows two or more proper names—thus, "the Mississippi and Missouri rivers", even though "river" is capped in "Mississippi River" and "Missouri River"—but capitalizing a generic term when it precedes proper names, as in "Mounts Whitney and Rainier". If this is a consistent norm in English (ie not just the US), is it worth noting this in the MOS? Cinderella157 (talk) 03:27, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know the guides, but I see overwhelmingly capped Forts in Forts Jackson and St. Philip, and overwhelmingly capped Presidents in Presidents Bush and Obama, Generals in Generals MacArthur and Eisenhower. Probably that's not enough to generalize from, but it's suggestive. Dicklyon (talk) 04:46, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Alternatively, just rewrite as “…Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip… ”. You don’t need the plural form when there are only two or three mentioned. Blueboar (talk) Blueboar (talk) 01:12, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Founding Fathers of the United States

Just seeking a quick litmus check, but “Founding Fathers” and “Framers” should not be capitalized as often as they are, right? — HTGS (talk) 00:42, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree. Personally, I might also sometimes put "founding fathers" in quotes when introducing the term, since that is merely what some people are sometimes called – it is neither a neutral description nor a well-defined category of people. I find it egregious that Founding Fathers redirects to Founding Fathers of the United States, while Founding fathers redirects to List of national founders – as if the United States has a special claim to the capital letter, although that was apparently the conclusion of Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 December 17#Founding Fathers. I agree with Allreet who said "Regarding the capitalization of founding father, IMO this is an artifice without any particular meaning" in the discussions at Talk:Founding Fathers of the United States. That article even capitalizes "Founders" in many places when it is not accompanied by "Fathers". This seems like pure capitalization-to-indicate-importance and promotion of the American perspective, which Wikipedia claims not to do. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 01:04, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, that jives roughly with how I would see it.
Ping @Randy Kryn, just hold up before you start changing any more (I swear I’m not following you, but I saw your recent change on Letter and spirit of the law) — HTGS (talk) 04:11, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Uppercasing, it's literally the name of the article. The proper name of the group as a whole and individually. "Framers" is also a proper name with a specific meaning (the drafters and signers of the United States Constitution). HTGS, I did not see this discussion before you pinged, so I'm glad you noticed my edit and made me aware of it. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:21, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Founding Fathers" is a historical title, so it should be capitalized per MOS:PEOPLETITLES. "Founding fathers", in lowercase, refers to the generic term. See United States Declaration of Independence vs. Declaration of independence, and American Civil War vs. Civil war. Arguing "Founding Fathers" is not a proper name is like arguing the Declaration of Independence and Civil War should not be capitalized. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:01, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that "Founding Father(s)" as the historical title must be capitalized, but I don't think that there's such a thing as a "founding father" as a generic term. That would rather just be a "founder". The "fatherhood" is metaphorical in this title, not real. Gawaon (talk) 06:24, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
...I don't think that there's such a thing as a "founding father" as a generic term: Perhaps all the more reason to capitalize it—if the term is to be used at all—as it differs from the plain English, lowercase term, or the lowercase English makes no sense at all. —Bagumba (talk) 07:11, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There most certainly is such a generic term. See the example given for the second definition here: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/founding-father I have come across many such uses for various individuals who established something. Heck, we cite an article (from The Guardian, no less) with such a usage in our own article on Gary Gygax. See reference 22 on that page: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/mar/07/games?gusrc=rss&feed=technology --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:25, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OK, but I'd still say the term should be consistently capitalized when referring to the Founding Fathers of the US (from where the generic usage stems, I'd suspect). Gawaon (talk) 13:56, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, founding father is in Merriam-Webster (partially striking my comment above); moreover, it says about the prper noun:

often capitalized both Fs : a leading figure in the founding of the U.S.
specifically : a member of the American Constitutional Convention of 1787[40]

—Bagumba (talk) 15:33, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
According to the lead section of the article on the subject, Founding Fathers of the United States does not refer just to "the drafters and signers of the United States Constitution". It also refers to "others". Maybe it's also the signers of the Declaration of Independence, or maybe it's just seven people. There is no single well-accepted definition. Maybe it's also signers of the Articles of Confederation. Maybe Paul Revere belongs in there too. Maybe John Paul Jones ... Everyone can choose their own definition. It's not a formal title. According to the discussion of the history of the term, the term didn't even exist until the 1900s. Even if it was a well-defined category of people, that wouldn't mean we should capitalize it. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 16:30, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Founding Fathers are not only the drafters and signers of the Constitution (who are separately also called 'Framers') but certainly the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation and specific others (such as a major participant in the early founding, John Jay, who did not sign any of the founding documents). The lead, and the list of founders, has been worked out over many years and many discussions. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:40, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That reinforces my point. Obviously, there is no one correct list of "Founding Fathers". Different people use the term to refer to different people. It's subjective. Wikipedia consensus does not establish a definitive list, as Wikipedia is not a reliable source and Wikipedia consensus can change. Off-Wikipedia, different people say different things, and typically use the term rather loosely. It's a classification, and classifications – especially loosely defined ones – are common nouns, not proper nouns. Proper nouns are very rarely plural. The term is not consistently capitalized in sources, per NGram results. It is often capitalized, but not consistently capitalized. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:30, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The list is up-to-date, accurate, and sourced. The signers of the Declaration, the Articles, and the Constitution are accepted as founders, as are John Jay and many others who didn't sign the documents (some actually voted for them but didn't sign for various reasons). There is agreement on the who and what, and nothing is loosely defined. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:16, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"often expanded to include ... Some scholars regard ... some historians include ... Beyond this, the criteria for inclusion vary. Historians with an expanded view of the list of Founding Fathers include ...." That doesn't sound like agreement, to me. In fact, that is almost a perfect description of "loosely defined".--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 22:01, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, it's poor wording with a tad of SYNTH. Better would have been to find a couple sources who address the divide over candidates and paraphrase their views. Yes, the title is "loosely defined" or perhaps not at all. That said, the "claim to the throne", as far as we're concerned, depends on sources, many, many of whom recognize the 100-plus delegates associated with the Declaration and Constitution. Beyond that is where concurrence parts. But I think we pretty much all agree on two things—that it is a title and it does mean something fairly well (if not perfectly) understood by those familiar with U.S. history. Allreet (talk) 10:50, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@BarrelProof: Thanks for alerting me. I agree with what I said two years ago—that the capitalization of Founding Fathers is an artifice. So is the term itself, though I don't mean that pejoratively as such. Where I disagree (with myself) is that I now consider the coinage and its stylization useful in referring to those who contributed to the Revolution's success and the Constitution's framing, especially in print. As for conceits, nobody is making a "special claim" to the capitalization other than the scholars who have embraced it. While a few do go out of their way to avoid the term entirely, it has become part of the vernacular with the caps a step or so behind. Meanwhile, the only substantial disagreement I see is over the numbers, which is also not for us to decide. Allreet (talk) 00:51, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • As with things like “President”, I tend to see this as: “Sure, it is overly capitalized… but downcasing upsets a lot of editors, and causes so many endless arguments that it isn’t worth the effort to correct.” Sometimes it’s better to let the wookie win. Blueboar (talk) 20:37, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Founding fathers is not inherently a proper name|noun but a descriptive term applied in the US context for those that "fathered" (founded) the new nation. They are not a group "indivisible". There are differences of opinion as to who should be so considered, although the core of the group is generally agreed. Ngrams do not indicate the term is consistently capitalised in sources, even when confined to American sources here. While founding fathers may be used in other contexts, a search of google books here would show that the term is used predominantly in the context of founding the US. Context is also confirmed here and here. Descriptive terms are often capitalised for emphasis, importance or distinction to indicate a particular meaning in context (ie a term of art). Per MOS:SIGNIFCAPS, we do not capitalise for this reason. A common name (appellative) is made specific by use of the definite article (the) while "generic" uses are indicated by an indefinite article. While terms like United States Declaration of Independence (see here), the American Civil War (here) or the Battle of the Bulge (see here) are descriptive noun phrases, they are capitalised with near universal consistency in sources. The specific v generic argument is one of capitalisation for significance or importance falling to MOS:SIGNIFCAPS. Per MOS:CAPS (through WP:AT and WP:NCCAPS, we would only capitalise such a case if it were consistently capitalised in sources. The evidence presented, including the Merriam-Webster definition cited above, shows that this is not consistently capped in sources and therefore, should not be capped here. Cinderella157 (talk) 13:16, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The dictionary sources uppercase as common alternate. The uppercased proper name is the common name for the Founding Fathers, and has been used for well over a century in books, speeches, honors, and related circumstance. This is almost ridiculous to have to argue, and on top of everything else if you and others use the excuse of "total-consistency-or-bust" then the policy WP:IAR takes precedence. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:57, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Randy Kryn, often would mean frequently [41] as opposed to more often than not, which would mean a majority but does convey a sense of the magnitude of the majority. Often does not mean a substantial majority (per MOS:CAPS. The evidence would indicate that founding fathers is capitalised about half the time (more or less) in this context. That is not a substantial majority. I referred to the near universal consistency in sources in reference to what we see in cases like United States Declaration of Independence, the American Civil War and Battle of the Bulge because an argument by analogy was made in reference to the first two terms. My rebuttal is that the examples are not analogous because the near universal consistency of capitalisation in sources for these terms is nowhere close to the very mixed capitalisation we see for founding fathers in this US context. I would say that the guidance given by MOS:CAPS would require a very high degree of capitalisation approaching what we see in these other examples before we consider that capitalisation is necessary (per MOS:CAPS) but to say my comment argues "total-consistency-or-bust" would be a misrepresentation and consequently uncivil - as is the use of pejorative terms (excuse), when based on a misrepresentation. It is one thing to substantiate and then declare an argument nonsense. It is quite another to ridicule an argument without substantiation or on the basis of a misrepresentation. To say The uppercased proper name is the common name for the Founding Fathers, and has been used for well over a century in books, speeches, honors, and related circumstance. is an assertion made contrary to the evidence presented and a fallacious argumentum ad antiquitatem. If this is a strongly held tradition, it would be reflected in sources by consistent capitalisation. It is not. You invoked WP:IAR in a similar discussion here and, from the closers comments, that argument swam like a rock. Invoking WP:IAR again here in the same way would then appear to be a disingenuous abuse of the policy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cinderella157 (talk • contribs) 02:34, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also, total consistency exists nowhere, and if that was the requirement, Wikipedia wouldn't use any capital letters. So let's capitalize "Founding Fathers (of the US)", as most sources do. In other contexts, lowercase "founding fathers" (e.g. of the EU) is probably adequate. Gawaon (talk) 14:00, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Asserting that I or others would argue for total consistency is reductio ad absurdum. If most sources was a substantial majority of sources then there would be a case for capitalising the term per MOS:CAPS. However, the evidence presented is that the capitalisation in this context is very mixed. Also, the ngram for founding fathers of the US shows that contemporary usage has near equal capitalisation. There is no good case for its capitalisation base on the preavailing WP:P&G and the evidence. Cinderella157 (talk) 03:08, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Very similar statistics for "founding fathers of the United". —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 05:59, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Fine, we might lower-case it then. I don't care much one way or the other, as long as our own usage is consistent. Gawaon (talk) 06:10, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Instead of looking at "sources", which follow different style guides, how about we look at different dictionaries instead? Merriam-Webster: capital F's. Oxford, Cambridge: capital F's. Collins, American Heritage, Oxford Learner's, Longman, New Oxford American Dictionary, The Free Dictionary, Britannica, Dictionary.com, Wiktionary: capital F's. The U.S. government's style guide specifically says to use capital letters. Numbers and ngrams don't tell us everything... InfiniteNexus (talk) 06:38, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think capitalized Founding Fathers is appropriate to distinguish those credited with founding the US and its constitution from generic founding fathers. However, a full discriptive term like founding fathers of the United States is not ambiguous with "of the United States", so capitalization is not essential to distinguish its context. —Bagumba (talk) 07:01, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that's what the dictionaries say. Cambridge and The Free Dictionary specifically use Founding Fathers of the United States as an example sentence; Collins specifically labels it as a proper noun. Alternatively, we could invoke WP:DIFFCAPS and move Founding Fathers of the United States to Founding Fathers (which already redirects there), but I doubt an RM would be uncontroversial. InfiniteNexus (talk) 19:33, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My only point was that readers will identify the same topic with either founding fathers of the United States or Founding Fathers of the United States. Capitalization is not essential for comprehension in this case. So it's more an issue of style than understanding, so defer to MOS:CAPS and whether it is "consistently capitalized". —Bagumba (talk) 11:31, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
BarrelProof and Cinderella157, et al: Disagree with suggestions to go for lower case. The statistical graphs prove nothing in terms of quality. What's relevant is the significance of the authors and their works. Here's a partial list of leading scholars from the late 1940s through the 2020s who favor Founding Fathers. In parentheses are the institutions where they teach or taught, followed by years of publication. I haven't researched or dated every book by these academics, just enough to be sure of their preferences, as well as the regard for their writings.
Douglass Adair (Princeton/William & Mary) 70s; Akhil Reed Amar (Yale) 90s-20s; Raoul Berger (Berkeley/Harvard Law) 70s-80s; Richard B. Bernstein (NY Law School/City College) 90s-00s; Richard J. Bernstein (Haverford/New School) 80s-90s; John E. Ferling (U of West Georgia); Richard Hofstadter (Columbia) 40s-70s; Jonathan Israel (Princeton/University College London) 10s; Michael J. Klarman (Harvard) 10s; Franklin T. Lambert (Purdue) 00s; Richard B. Morris (Columbia/City College) 60s-70s; Saul K. Padover (New School) 50s; David Sehat (Georgia State/Oxford) 10s; Gordon S. Wood (Brown) 90s-00s. By contrast, so far I've found just a handful of notable academics/authors who either use lower case or avoid the two-word term entirely. All of which confirms what I said above, though I realize more such analysis would be needed to satisfy others.
In response to critiques of the FF article's content: Most of the information is rock solid and well-sourced. I'm not as happy with how some things are expressed (particularly the section on slavery), but please, let's stick with the subject. Allreet (talk) 15:13, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Another round. I'm actually not running into many ff's among leading academics/historians. In fact, Walter Isaacson is the only one today. So I'm stopping at L in a separate bibliography I've kept: Bruce Ackerman (Yale) 90s-10s; Stephen Ambrose (U of Chicago) 60s-90s; Bernard Bailyn (Harvard) 50s-10s; Richard Beeman (U of Pa) 70s; Daniel Boorstin (National Archivist) 40s-90s; I. Bernard Cohen (Harvard) 50s-90s; John Patrick Diggins (U of Calf-Irvine/Princeton) 70s-10s; Joseph J. Ellis (Mount Holyoke) 70s-20s; William M. Fowler (Northeastern) 70s-10s; David Lefer (NYU) 00s-10s.
To this I'd add: Founders Online, the National Archives site for the papers of Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, etc. Encyclopædia Britannica. InfiniteNexus's marvelous find of the United States Government Publishing Office Style Manual. And a non-historian, NPR's Cokie Roberts who wrote Founding Mothers, which abounds with Founding Fathers. Allreet (talk) 05:33, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
More: Ira Berlin (U of Md) 70s-10s; Edward Countryman (Yale/Cambridge) 80s-10s; David Brion Davis (Yale) 50s-10s; Seymour Drescher (U of Pittsburgh) 70s-00s; Paul Finkelman (8 law schools, 50 books) 80s-10s; William W. Freehling (Berkeley/Harvard) 90s-10s; Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Harvard) 80s-20s; Eugene Genovese (Rutgers/U of Rochester) 60s-10s; Annette Gordon-Reed (Harvard) 90s-20s; Woody Holton (U of S Carolina) 90s-20s; Peter Kolchin (U of Del) 70s-90s; James Oakes (CUNY) 80s-20s; Nell Irvin Painter (Princeton) 70s-10s; Sean Wilentz (Princeton) 80s-10s
The 40 or so I've posted represent a decent sampling of leading American scholars. The ratio of FFs versus ffs was 5:1. Of course, my survey was not "scientific", just haphazardly random, except it was confined to three bibliographies (Founders, Slavery, Constitution) and to authors with wikilinks. It was also done without prejudice. Allreet (talk) 16:18, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
MOS:CAPS would tell us to capitalise when consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources [generally]. Also, because English is an evolving language, we are interested in contemporary usage, not how things were done fifty or on hundred years ago. This is a question of style not content. MOS:CAPS does not favour specialist sources. The only stipulation is that they are independent and reliable (ie there is evidence of editorial oversight). The criteria posed by MOS:CAPS is essentially a statistical question and any sample must be a representative sample of usage in general. Relying on specialist sources is subject to WP:SSF, a documented phenomenon, and is not a representative sample of general usage. Some of the samples are also not representative of contemporary usage. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:22, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"MOS caps would tell us...", it's not a religious text for Wales' sake. Allreet has done a yeoman's job of researching the major texts and historians pertinent to this subject, and his studied and professional research is the best thing to come from this discussion. Maybe an applause template instead of a legalese approach. Randy Kryn (talk) 10:31, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Further evidence. I have already mentioned ngram evidence for founding fathers and that a search of google books confirms that the seach term primarily refers to the US context. Ngram searches can be contexturalised to some extent within the five word search phrase limit of ngrams. This search for founding fathers of the US, this search for fathers of the United States and this search for founding fathers of the United confirm context and that the term is not consistently capitalised. This ngram would confirm that the results for founding fathers predominantly refer to the US context. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:42, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I just skimmed over this wall of text, but the issue seems to have split into two parts -- Whether the term Founding Fathers should be capitalized, and as to whom should be included in a list of founders. While the inclusion list can vary a bit, depending on the sources and so forth, the term Founding Fathers is a proper and definitive term and as such should be capitalized, at it is not some whimsical loose term, but primarily refers to the signers, representatives of the various colony/states, of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Unless there is some pressing reason for the change in question, and I see none here, we should leave this long standing title as it is. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 16:38, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Re: The argument that the term Founding Fathers is not "consistently capitalized" in the sources. This is very misleading, because the fact is, nearly all the reliable sources have this term, both words, capitalized. A quick perusal at archive.org and google, not to mention the sources used in the article in question, readily demonstrate this, so I'm compelled to ask, what was the motive for starting this conference?. I ask, because on the user page of the editor who started this discussion, it says "Follow the sources. For 99% of disputes about what an article should say or how it should say it, the answer is to say what reliable sources say." -- Gwillhickers (talk) 22:49, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just out of curiosity, would anyone else get behind a move to Founding Fathers, which already redirects there, per WP:CONCISE and WP:DIFFCAPS? I anticipate there to be at least some opposition on the grounds of WP:PRECISE though. InfiniteNexus (talk) 07:15, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Apart from the fundamental question being addressed here, which is whether founding fathers should be capitalised in this context, [[Founding fathers is a redirect to List of national founders. I would observe that while disambiguation based on capitalisation is permitted, this is rarely a good distinction. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:10, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Downcase it, please. Tony (talk) 11:02, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lowercase per WP:MOSCAPS — this term is not consistently capitalized by sources. Popcornfud (talk) 13:23, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The idea of not being "consistently capitalized" has already been addressed. Nearly all reliable sources have this term capitalized, and for reasons that have been well articulated. Can anyone cite one prominent scholar who doesn't capitalize? It seems that all we're seeing here is the typical WP:IDHT. Please review Wikipedia:Reliable sources#Scholarship. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 16:10, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why do we only need to count "prominent scholars"? A quick google reviews lots of lowercase examples from CNN, BBC, Guardian, etc. These are reliable secondary sources commonly used on Wikipedia. Popcornfud (talk) 16:36, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When it comes to history, scholarship are the best sources to be used. News articles are more suited for current events and so forth. Anytime a news source talks about history it's usually an editorial or some opinion piece, which are not reliable for statements of fact. Please review: WP:NEWSORG As already explained, most google sources use capitals, including National Archives, History.com, Encyclopedia Britannica, WorldAtlas, etc, and nearly all historical works found at archive.org used capitals. Again, all the sources used in the article use capitals. Also, please review Reliable sources: Prefer secondary sources and Reliable sources:Reliable scholarship. We can't ignore all this scholarship because a few news sources use the term in lower case. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 17:17, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not seeing anything in MOS:CAPS, or the policies you cite there, that tells us we should discount some types of reliable sources when deciding whether to capitalize.
To me this sounds like the specialized style fallacy:
The faulty reasoning behind the fallacy of specialized style is this: because the specialized literature on a topic is (usually) the most reliable source of detailed facts about the specialty, such as we might cite in a topical article, it must also be the most reliable source for deciding how Wikipedia should title or style articles about the topic and things within its scope. Popcornfud (talk) 17:29, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You quoted an opinion essay, not WP policy. Several cases were cited where scholarship is preferred over news, and the attempt to hold news articles above the scholarship, which is how the article is sourced, not to mention all history articles, presents its own fallacy. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 17:36, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't hold any source over any other when trying to determine if we should capitalize — as long as it's a reliable secondary source then it's fair game. And if the term isn't capped in substantial majority of those sources, then we don't cap. That seems to be what MOS:CAPS says. Popcornfud (talk) 17:48, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

THEBAND

In MOS:THEBAND it says lowercase the in things like "member of the Chicks". But what about if the name is used more like a title, "member of the band The Chicks"? Does it make sense to cap in that context? It doesn't say. Dicklyon (talk) 23:13, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely lowercase. Popcornfud (talk) 23:17, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's what I've been doing, but I got some pushback, so worth checking. Maybe make it explicit. Dicklyon (talk) 23:33, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Personally I don't think there's anything extra here to be spelled out. I'm not sure what you mean by "using the name like a title" here — I don't see the example you give as distinct from any other construction... so-and-so is a member of the Chicks; so-and-so listens to the Chicks; so-and-so bought an album by the Chicks; etc. Popcornfud (talk) 23:44, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yep! Lowercase the. Some people really feel attached to The, so they keep coming up with new twists, but the present rules are clear enough. SchreiberBike | ⌨  00:19, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Per others. Writing about the Chicks is not different from writing about the Beatles. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:59, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Lowercase. InfiniteNexus (talk) 01:52, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Lowercase" - Good enough for the Beatles? good enough the Chicks. GoodDay (talk) 03:32, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Using the name like a title" is addressed in the example about the Beatles' so-called White Album, in which case "The Beatles", in italics without quotes, is correct whether at the beginning or in the middle of a sentence. But "the band the Beatles" is correct in using their name, which is not a title any more than your own name is. Allreet (talk) 07:56, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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