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Talk:Chief mechanical engineer/Archive 2

< Talk:Chief mechanical engineer
Latest comment: 12 years ago by Dicklyon in topic Inconsistent
Archive 1Archive 2

Capitals all over the place in the article now

Latest comment: 12 years ago26 comments8 people in discussion

Good that someone's expanding it: I'm still not clear about where the theme will end up though—it's like watching a short story in the writing, when the writer has no idea of the story arc and works it out on the run.

  • We have "civil engineers, surveyors, architects or contractors", all correctly downcased. So why "civil engineers" but "Chief Engineers"?
  • Then we have " Telephone and Signalling engineers" ... errr.???
  • We have "the issue of a Prospectus", hmmm, that's odd. It's English, not German: common nouns aren't uppercase.
  • "The Corps of Royal Engineers" is OK, since it's the title of an organisation. But then it's bled into "many retired Royal Engineers were employed as Railway Inspectors"—where will it stop. So "inspector" has to be uppercased, does it? I see "Locomotive Foreman", so is "Coal Shoveller" uppercased too?
  • "The Chief Engineer had his own department"—ok, why isn't "department" uppercased?
  • "The Chief Mechanical Engineer was responsible for ...". So this is a historical article, is it? They no longer exist? I'm confused, and so will be the readers.
  • This article is under development, so current usage can be added at a later date if appropriate. The historical description has been started, to address your many concerns. -- EdJogg (talk) 13:44, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
  • No mention of Australian and NZ railway companies, but they're the theme.
  • The lede needs to be adjusted to indicate that the companies were either British, British-based or followed British practices -- for example colonial railways (you haven't mentioned the African railways yet). -- EdJogg (talk) 13:44, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
  • "Prominent post holders"—visions of fence-posts being held up.
The Argentinian (name appears in the list on Steam Index) was employed by the Central Argentine Railway Company- basically a British-owned company, so his job title is probably in English (I don't have an RS for this). Any list of notable CMEs could probably be pruned down to a few individuals, mad (Webb), bad (Thompson), "mould breaking" (Bulleid), "artistically inclined" (Wainwright) and "insanely great numerologist" etc., all historical. Ning-ning (talk) 12:50, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
I have attempted to address your concerns (Tony) where I can. I have added responses above so that others can see the areas I have not attempted to tackle.
I agree with Ning-ning that the list should now be pruned down. Here is an excellent opportunity to show how specific example CMEs have fulfilled or expanded their role, or who have played a particularly significant role in the development of railway-related engineering (ie we don't need 'just a list of CMEs' here, as that should be done through a category and the (developing) list pages (see 'See also')).
Now I think this article is starting to develop in the direction that it should be taking. As such, I think your concerns can be considered 'addressed' and the article allowed to develop organically like other WP articles. Certainly there is no longer a need to pursue the idea of a page move.
EdJogg (talk) 13:44, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
I fixed the capitalization problems according to WP:Job titles - a very clear style guideline:

"Offices, positions, and job titles such as president, king, emperor, pope, bishop, abbot, executive director are common nouns and therefore start with a capital letter only when followed by a person's name..." (my emphasis)

Jojalozzo 13:48, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
The Editorial Prize of the Month to you; nice work. [But partly ascribed to the wrong person, sorry ... two of you have edited it. See my comment below.] I hope the editors above agree with your downcasing accoring to WP:Job titles—perhaps I'm biased, but it's a smoother read and the page looks nicer synoptically now. Unless there's objection by them, I believe the title now needs to be downcased too, to reflect WP:Job titles and your changes to the article text; but that move should probably wait until the theme of the article becomes clearer. Please note the sibling articles of At the moment, it seems like Chief mechanical engineer (British-related railway companies)? Or ... British-based? Tony (talk) 14:08, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
I object strongly to the recent capitalisation changes, I think it makes the article MUCH harder to understand. Isn't this a case of WP:ENGVAR? A 'royal engineer' (an engineer employed by royalty?) is very different from a 'Royal Engineer', in the same way that a Chief Mechanical Engineer is not the same as a chief mechanical engineer.
Please stop interfering with this article, and go and write that one about the '(chief) mechanical engineer' you keep mentioning. Doing THAT will much better serve the cause of WP. -- EdJogg (talk) 15:03, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
The title royal engineer is no different then prime minister or royal taster, all just common nouns, titles of people, and always lower cased in Wikipedia except when followed by a person's name. When I started helping on this project I had to make a number of adjustments in my writing style especially regarding capitalization. Such accommodations are part of the job. Jojalozzo 17:36, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
I had considered changing "royal engineers" to "members" but decided to leave that up to those closer to the topic. Would that be better?
Also please take care about ownership issues around this topic. We're all building this encyclopedia together. Jojalozzo 17:54, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
That comment about ownership equally applies above (also WP:POINT). No it would not be better. They are not "members", but they could be considered to be "officers", "Officers" would be even better. Pyrotec (talk) 20:29, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Ah, now I see that my congratulations to you, Ed, were partly misplaced. You did good work in fixing some of the issues I raised, and I was delighted to see that the problematic job-names were downcased, as required by WP's guidelines. I'm sorry, in reading quickly, I mixed up your user-names, which both have a "Jo" in them. Now, I don't know about "royal engineer" in this context, but certainly chief mechanical engineer and locomotive whatever are generic, and have no names adjacent to them, as required by WP's rules. I simply don't agree that the article is "MUCH harder to understand", let alone even slightly harder to understand. Best we bring in other editors who know about WP's house rules. I'm going to notify them at WT:MOS et al. now. Tony (talk) 15:35, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
Pyrotec, I sense from your most recent post that seniority is getting mixed up with capital letters. Neither officer nor any other job-name should be capitalised just because it is senior. Is Chief part of the problem in the debate about the title, then? Tony (talk) 02:23, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
Its probably American terminology but the people running companies nowadays tend to have titles such as CEO (Chief Executive Officer) CFO, etc, before that they were Chairman (Chairman of the Board, etc). I spent most of my working life in scientific organisations (probably similar to military organisations) where the hierarchy (rising) was Scientific Officer (SO), Higher Scientific Officer (HSO), Senior Scientific Officer (SSO), Principal Scientific Officer (PSO), Senior Principal Scientific Officer (SPSO): they were all in capitals (as written) not lower case. I find it disconcerting that you appear to more concerned with: (1) rewriting history to change job titles in capitals to job titles in lower case, when they were never lower case; (2) placing greater importance on slavish and inflexible adherence to (wikipedia) rules. Note: you appear to ignore "In the case of a compound word such as "prime minister" or "chief executive officer", either all parts begin with a capital letter or none (except at the beginning of a sentence)", which is to be found in WP:Job titles) (3) making "smart comments" such as Prominent post holders"—visions of fence-posts being held up. I was using "post" to mean "job", its one of three definitions in the Concise Oxford Dictionary (i. piece of timber, ii. letter/mail. iii. job). I'm well aware that as the article title is "CME (in full)", I can't use "Prominent CMEs (in full)" as a section title, but I think it was better than "Prominent examples". I have no strong objections to it being changed to something better (you did not change it, someone else did), but "smart comments" - I'm using "smart" in a derogatory sense just to make it clear - may well result in a "smart" response. Hence the riposte: ""Good that someone's expanding it: I'm still not clear about where the theme will end up though—it's like watching a short story in the writing, when the writer has no idea of the story arc and works it out on the run."? I do happen to know the story arc, but what I don't have is all the citations to hand. I'm not going to add uncited material to the article just to enable you to add further disparaging comments/participate in the unfolding debate (take your pick)." I can recognise the failings of the article (no proper lead), list of names but no description of what a CME does/is responsible for, etc, so we agree in that respect. I spend most of my time reviewing WP:GANs, I've done over 400 in three years, so most of my time involves "improving" articles instead of writing them: I can't say that I like your current approach to improving this article: by that its the "means" not the "objectives" that I find irritating. Pyrotec (talk) 09:56, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
My approach was to point out errors and inconsistencies, some of which are related to the insistence by some people here on retaining a title that is wrong in formatting and in scope. A dogged refusal to discuss the substantive issue, and to explain why people aren't applying to move hundreds of transport occupation article titles to caps might be off-putting to other people. And just why WP should slavishly copy the habit of some organisations and professions in pumping up things they care about by up-casing them is a matter dealt with by WP's house style and that of several major hard-copy authorities. And our own MoS is not alone in saying not to capitalise an expanded item just because its abbreviation is in caps; for example, "equal employment opportunity" has just been downcased in an article title, I see; it was no doubt capitalised because of this misconception (EEO). "Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1989", of course, should be in caps. That's the distinction here too: generic versus titular; and it's why WP and other sources say not to uppercase job titles unless they're accompanied by the incumbent's name. It was probably different 20 or 30 years ago, but things have changed. Tony (talk) 12:05, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
The reason nobody is "applying to move hundreds of transport occupation article titles to caps" is probably because reliable sources do not use upper case letters when discussing those other occupations. When reliable sources discuss the occupation of Chief Mechanical Engineer they do use capital letters. Please read WP:WAX - other articles are irrelevant to this one. Thryduulf (talk) 16:10, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
Calling people or organizations or countries differently than how they were called during their time is not rewriting history.
Even the Senior Principal Ear-Cleaning Officer of the Emperor of Japan is firstly a person like you and me.
--Nnemo (talk) 22:31, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
  • I'm afraid sources are only one isse. We have a house style. Please read the lead of the MoS. Tony (talk) 00:21, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
    • Yes, we have thank you very much. We still think that in this specific case, for the reasons outlined above several times by several people, that it would be inaccurate for this article to be at the lower case title. Surely the short horizontal line brouhaha (of which I know you are aware) and other MoS-related debates you and I have been participants should have illustrated to you that there is no community consensus for a rigid application of the manual of style without exception, and that accuracy is preferred over uniformity. Thryduulf (talk) 11:09, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Capitalization of "Chief Mechanical Engineer" and "Locomotive Superintendent"

Latest comment: 12 years ago41 comments13 people in discussion

Should the titles "chief mechanical engineer" and "locomotive superintendent" be capitalized only when they are followed by a person's name, per WP:Job titles? Jojalozzo 23:51, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

I refer you to: "In the case of a compound word such as "prime minister" or "chief executive officer", either all parts begin with a capital letter or none (except at the beginning of a sentence)." which can be found in WP:Job titles. Pyrotec (talk) 23:58, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
My interpretation of the compound word title guideline is that when applying the already-stated capitalization rules to a compound word title, you must apply them to all the words in the same way. It does not mean that there is an complete exception for compound word titles so you can capitalize as you like as long as you do it the same to all the words. While the wikilawyer in me understands your interpretation of the sentence taken out of context, I see no justification for such an exception. A better wording for that part of the guideline would be:

When applying these guidelines to a compound word such as "prime minister" or "chief executive officer", either all parts begin with a capital letter or none (except at the beginning of a sentence).

Jojalozzo 04:35, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Would depend on what the RS say. If the RS naming a person capitalizes both then we do that, if it doesn't then we don't. When speaking in our voice, we should be mindful of WP:Job titles, and not capitalize or capitalize it according to the above formula, but also to the "When used generically" part of the policy, which suggest lower-casing all when used generically.--Cerejota (talk) 00:15, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Sorry, this is inappropriate. WP's guidelines say that they should not. You've been told this above, more than once. And might I say that this UK Railways WikiProject has made a complete mess of capitalisation in its articles: all over the place. They cannot be trusted to format their items. Here's a problem: why do they use lower case here: James Holden (engineer) if there's a logic behind capitalising the current three-word item? And why "Curve" but "station" (sometimes "Station"), "Line" and "line" in titles? Tony (talk) 00:22, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Endless repetition of the same point does not make it right. It is just repetition. See also WP:COMMONSENSE. Pyrotec (talk) 09:06, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Please also see WP:OTHERSTUFF, WP:WAX and similar pages. I'm utterly baffled by the relevance of that article to this discussion as it does not include the phrase "Chief Mechanical Engineer" (in any capitalisation) at all. It has already been established several times that "Chief Mechanical Engineer" is an exception to a general rule and so the capitalisation of other titles is not relevant. It should also be noted that the article has been rated "B class", and so will not have had the detailed attention to copyediting, etc that a Good Article or higher will have had. Thryduulf (talk) 11:16, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
“It has already been established several times that "Chief Mechanical Engineer" is an exception to a general rule”
Established by who ? When ? Why on Earth ?
--Nnemo (talk) 12:25, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure I understand Tony's response, or why he want to diss the train nuts on their own territory. Is he saying not even when attached to an individual's name? I can go either way on that, but certainly not capitalized when used generically as a job title. Dicklyon (talk) 01:24, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
  • The guidelines are pretty clear that the titles should be capitalized only when they are followed by a person's name/etc. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 03:58, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Since no one has yet brought it up, note that we would capitalize "Chief Mechanical Engineer" if it were the name of an office like "King of France". My opinion is that it's not the name of an office until we add the railway name after it, e.g. "Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Great Western Railway". Chief mechanical engineer alone is just a job title like "king". Jojalozzo 04:43, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
Agree with Joja et al. And google searching is purposeless, since it won't distinguish between instances in book, article, chapter, and section titles that are upper-cased by house style, and those in normal text, both where WP would capitalise (e.g., with adjacent name) and wouldn't, such as in this generic article title. Tony (talk) 08:25, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
Looking at sources on "the king of France" and "the president of the United State", the nearest I can make out as a pattern is that it is capital King or President when referring to a particular individual, but lowercase when referring to the office or whoever might hold the office generically. So even there, the notion that we'd capitalize it for being "the name of an office" seems like too much. Dicklyon (talk) 18:31, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
Except the MoS (WP:Job titles) says quite clearly and unambiguously:

The correct formal name of an office can be treated as a proper noun, so it is correct to write "Louis XVI was the French king" or "Louis XVI was King of France".

CME is just a job title like "a French king," e.g. "a Great Western Railway chief mechanical engineer." I think a case could be made for "Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Great Western Railway" being the formal name of an office (like "the King of France") and I think one the main reasons that many editors here think CME should be capitalized is because they are confusing the job title with the formal name of the office.Jojalozzo 22:37, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Lower case - The guideline is clear, that lower case should be used when using the phrase as a job title. For example, the article Chief Executive Officer uses lower case exclusively. Uppercase is used only when the title is part of the persons name, as in President Nixon, which is not the case for engineers. In any case, it is not very good prose to write "Chief Mechanical Engineer Smith worked ..." - such a phrase should be re-written to make it read better, and the need for capital letters would then disappear. However, the acronym CME could be used in conjunction with a persons name, as in "John Smith, CME of the railroad, stated ...". --Noleander (talk) 14:51, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
  • My sense is that due to the close link between CMEs and the Corp of Royal Engineers and the military officer culture surrounding it that "Chief Mechanical Engineer Smith" was a common form of address and identity, stuffy as it sounds today. However, that's not to say that "chief mechanical engineer" should be an exception to the rule for job titles. Military rank, e.g. "major general" follows the same rule: lower case when it isn't followed by a person's name. Jojalozzo 15:47, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Er, no. In company minutes, you might get "The Chief Mechanical Engineer reported that the locomotives ..." or "Following his report, the Chief Mechanical Engineer was asked to take the following action ...". When addressed, or referred to directly, the person would be styled "Mr Gresley" or "Sir Nigel". --Redrose64 (talk) 16:30, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
Yes, in company pumped-up literature. But when a serious newspaper reports the fact, it writes "the chief mechanical engineer was asked to take".
--Nnemo (talk) 20:54, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
Utter nonsense. In the example given, Sir Nigel Gresley (19 June 1876 – 5 April 1941), his bibliography exists in print (see [1]), written in 1975. You will find "Carriage and Wagon Superintendent with the Great Northern Railway", also "Chief Mechanical Engineer of the London and North Eastern Railway Company". Pyrotec (talk) 21:16, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
It may be utter nonsense, but gresley.org.uk is not a good example of a source that is not "company pumped-up literature". I mean, yeah, it might not be produced by the railroad itself, but it doesn't do anything to disprove Nnemo's point. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 21:28, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
I'm going to have to withdraw my comment. I have now checked The Times on four dates in 1937: in an article dated 16 Jan 1937 his job title is given in lower case and in the other three articles no job title was given. One on 25 Aug 1936 also had lower case job title. I'm greatly surprised by this result; and somewhat embarrassed in respect of my comment above. Pyrotec (talk) 21:56, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
I have been misunderstood. My comment was in response to the suggestion of Noleander: "Chief Mechanical Engineer Smith". My point was that this form of address is never used: ignoring capitalisation for the moment, it is "the Chief Mechanical Engineer", or "Mr. Smith", never "Chief Mechanical Engineer Smith". And my examples above are most certainly not "company pumped-up literature". --Redrose64 (talk) 18:12, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
So CME is a job title that would never be capitalized under Wikipedia rules for job titles since it is never followed by a person's name. Perhaps the discussion is coming down to determining whether there should be a very special exception to the style rules just for British railway engineers and superintendents - an exception not accorded to kings, presidents or the pope. Jojalozzo 22:24, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
I fail to see why it shouldn't be capitalised. Earlier, you mentioned WP:Job titles. This states, among other things, In the case of a compound word such as "prime minister" or "chief executive officer", either all parts begin with a capital letter or none (except at the beginning of a sentence). I would also direct you to WP:MOSCAPS#General principles: Capital letters are sometimes a matter of regional differences. If possible, as with spelling, use rules appropriate to the cultural and linguistic context. There is therefore room for flexibility. So, we may write "chief mechanical engineer", or we may write "Chief Mechanical Engineer", and still be within the MOS. The choice of which to use depends upon the sources used: and the overwhelming majority of reliable sources use the capitalised form. I gave several examples in my first post at #Requested move above, so the existing capitalisation is verifiable, and it is not original research to use such capitalisation. Besides this, it is neutral, and the three core policies of WP:V, WP:NOR and WP:NPOV, taken together, trump everything - including WP:JOBTITLES. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:51, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

There is a move request above, this seems to be an attempt to get around its result. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:22, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Well yes there is a move request above, which is an argument about capitalisation of the article's title, there is also an argument here (the same argument, duplicated) about capitalisation or not inside the article. I want to be able to write "Royal Engineers" and "Civil Mechanical Engineer" inside the article, because quote frankly "royal engineer" looks plain wrong, as does Sir Nigel Gresley, civil mechanical engineer of the Great Western Railway. I had an ancestor who was a Company Sargent Major in the Royal Engineers, he died 99 years and 6 months ago, he was certainly not a company sargent major in the royal engineers. Pyrotec (talk) 23:18, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
Yes, this discussion could impact on the move request but it is primarily aimed at the issue of capitalization of the job titles. I suggest we keep Royal Engineers as a separate topic since Royal Engineers is not a job title nor a military rank. It's an identity based on membership in a group so I don't think the job title rules apply. I think it's also confounded by the term's usage as shorthand for the Corps as a whole. Jojalozzo 03:44, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
“he was certainly not a company sargent major in the royal engineers”
Yes, he was. Why not ? A serious newspaper would write about him so. No need to capitalize words to mean honourable jobs. Royal or not. I am engineer, not an Engineer, even if I am the most admirable one in the world.
So we write these Capital Letters ? I said hello to the Bus Driver. The Waitress brought me an ice-cream. Not in English. Although English already has many more capital letters than French. Write in German and you will be in your paradise.
--Nnemo (talk) 12:25, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps that is your problem: I am a Chartered Engineer. I don't claim to be the "most admirable one in the world", nor in England. Making a comment such as that, i.e. "... I am the most admirable one in the world" (there is no question mark at the end of the sentence, its a full stop, so its a statement), seems to suggest that you are obviously deluded and lack adequate objectivity. The London Gazette is a serious publication, it uses capitals, here's one for a Driver [2](he's dead, but was formerly in The Royal Field Artillery). The Times does not appear to use caps, so its not "black and white". Pyrotec (talk) 09:56, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
"I agree entirely about the capitalisation, which is like a cancer…" "p.s. [this talk page] right now." You were canvassed by Tony. Ning-ning (talk) 20:39, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
How dare you make that accusation, when I specifically went to Nnemo for advice, and raised the canvassing policy. How DARE you. If you persist, we'll deal with it at ANI. I treat this as a personal attack. Tony (talk) 04:27, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
No mention of the canvassing policy by you on Nnemo's page. Full text of your response to Nnemo's reply "I agree entirely about the capitalisation, which is like a cancer; but so does WP:MOS and its subpages, and so do several authoritative style guides, such as Oxford's New Hart's Rules. I was expecting you to say that en.WP's style guide is ten times the size of the French one—perhaps it is. Tony (talk) 12:11, 8 September 2011 (UTC) PS Talk:Chief Mechanical Engineer right now. Tony (talk) 12:13, 8 September 2011 (UTC)" Ning-ning (talk) 05:40, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
Don't be ridiculous. Read WP:CANVASS. 06:03, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
Whatever Tony says, I am tall enough to think with my own neurones.
Since way before I had heard about Tony, I have been editing the English Wikipedia to quieten The Excessive Capitalization. Sometimes I lowercase manually, sometimes thanks to my Mac's nice Transformations feature, sometimes I put the Template:Capitalization.
--Nnemo (talk) 09:50, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

(od)"The audience must not be selected on the basis of their opinions". Three messages posted, one soliciting an opinion on the conception of centralised style guidance, one agreeing with the editor's stance on capitalisation, one directing the editor's attention to this page. And you capitalised "ps"… Ning-ning (talk) 06:22, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Initialisms and acronyms are normally capitalised. Your evidence is pathetic, so I won't bother responding, nor counter-accusing RedRose64. This seems to be a smokescreen to avoid resolving the substantive issues; please don't waste time like this—I'm not posting again on it. Tony (talk) 06:35, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
The substantive issue: "chief mechanical engineer" (no caps) is a banal instance of "mechanical engineer", and doesn't need its own article. "Chief Mechanical Engineer" (caps) is a title that was used by various railway companies to denote a position, within the hierarchy of railway officials, holding the ultimate responsibility to the board of directors for the supply of locomotives and rolling stock. That's a simplification, and the historical trajectory of the office is complex, and hasn't been covered in this article. I doubt if it can be covered yet, as I suspect the secondary literature is defective- it's within the purview of the Eliasian school of sociology (the professionalisation of occupations) but I doubt if any of them have written on the subject. Otherwise it's difficult to construct an article without synthesis about a disparate group of individuals like Francis Webb (cranky and obsessive) or Edward Thompson (pompous and humourless). Ning-ning (talk) 07:09, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
Well in respect of developing this article, I was going to try and cover it from a British-perspective, which might lead to further series of rows on the basis that its not international enough. I was going to start with the Locomotive Superintendents section stub, but this is not going to happen until October at the earliest; then move onto CMEs followed by "boys toys" (e.g. testing); and then work out where the CME finishes. Redrose64 has already provided summarised information about BR where the role of CME was split into three posts. Perhaps (from a UK perspective) the place to stop is the "end of steam", diesel & especially electric traction seems to signal (no pun intended) the rise of the sparky over the mechanical. There are LSs & CMEs that are "famous" from an engineering perspective and those famous for "personality clashes" with their peers/bosses. There are individual biographies, and detailed articles in magazines such as BackTrack & Hammilton Ellis did a book on twenty CMEs. I would like to get it to GA-level (well I'd need some help). Pyrotec (talk) 10:00, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
I think that's a good framework- the social (engineering societies) and financial (patents and teaching apprentices) aspects should be included. I hope covering it from a British perspective won't bring a plague of frogs down on you. Ning-ning (talk) 10:14, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
PS is an abbreviation, in capital letters because they are the initials of "post-scriptum".
--Nnemo (talk) 09:50, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Make an exception to the MoS capitalization guidelines for the job titles: Chief Mechanical Engineer and Locomotive Superintendent

Latest comment: 12 years ago68 comments17 people in discussion

A) Do we agree that "chief mechanical engineer" and "locomotive superintendent" are job titles used by British railway companies?
B) Do we agree that according to MoS guidelines, job titles like this are capitalized only when followed by a person's name?
C) If so, do we agree to make an exception to the MoS guidelines whereby these two job titles are always capitalized: "Chief Mechanical Engineer" and "Locomotive Superintendent"? Jojalozzo 23:05, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I have attempted to define the issues in these RfCs to help focus and contain the discussion and provide a basis for decisions rather than venting. I disagree that this violates WP:MULTI since that covers discussions in multiple forums and rather than fragmenting discussion I am attempting to narrow it. Anyone who thinks this issue is unimportant may ignore it. Jojalozzo 01:05, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
I would echo the comments of User:Redrose64. Consensus has been reached above and this subject should now be closed. Lamberhurst (talk) 08:51, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
@Jojalozzo: I did not state that the seven threads were all on this page. As previously noted, since this WP:RM was filed, there have been postings presenting just one side of the case at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#When is something a proper noun?, Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Advice on job-title capitalisation?, Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (capitalization)#Discussion about the capitalization of wind farms' names and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Advice on job-title capitalisation?. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:54, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
  • YES/YES/NO – I agree that this is a clear statement of the de-facto condition among the rail guys, and a topic worth deciding. But deciding each such thing in its own territory seems like it will not be productive. We should first converge on what are the basic rules for deciding when something is to be treated as a proper noun, and under what conditions we think exceptions may be arranged; then we can see if such conditions prevail here. Otherwise, you'll just get the rail guys perpetuating their own style, much as we've seen in other enclaves. If we decide that's normal and OK, we can leave it be, and if we decide there's good support for central style guidance on capitalization, we can push on fixing it to conform; or we decide on an exception. Dicklyon (talk) 01:27, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
Agree with Dicklyon: style should not be dictated by an enclave: it needs to be discussed in relation to the whole project, particularly decisions WRT "exceptions" to the house style. Tony (talk) 04:25, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
That's very interesting. Tony1 agrees with Dicklyon. The latter votes YES/YES/NO and raises a discussion of a proper noun. However, Jojalozzo specifically states "B) Do we agree that according to MoS guidelines, job titles like this are capitalized only when followed by a person's name?" which is not an accurate summary of MoS guidelines, since it both ignores proper nouns and the examples given in the MOS. So Tony1 and Dicklyon seem to have miss-voted and possibly Jojalozzo does not understand the guidelines. Somewhat a revaluation, as that guideline states: "The correct formal name of an office can be treated as a proper noun, so it is correct to write "Louis XVI was the French king" or "Louis XVI was King of France"."; and King (or king) was preceded by Louis XVI (not followed by Louis XVI). Their answers really aught to be YES/NO/NO. Pyrotec (talk) 12:26, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
True, the point B was not particularly complete and accurate. But the quideline you quote is also too vague to be useful, since it didn't give any clue what titles should be treated as "proper nouns"; and it says there are exceptions, but doesn't say exceptions to what, or how they would be determined (see where that clause initially came from). In the present instance, I see no reason to interpret the job title under discussion as a proper noun, so I wasn't considering that other small paragraph. Dicklyon (talk) 17:26, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
Well to amplify my comment above, its not clear precisely what the vote is about. There is a proposal to move the article from Chief Mechanical Engineer to Chief mechanical engineer and there is a separate one about caps inside the article so presumably as specified above in the three questions every occurrence inside the article of Chief Mechanical Engineer gets changed to chief mechanical engineer, every Locomotive Superintendent changes to locomotive superintendent and every Royal Engineer becomes royal engineer. These are separate issues, but they are arguments over "job titles", and inside the article some of them might be considered proper nouns and some not dependant on whether they are generic or specific. The MOS guide lines seem to suggest that I can write "Daniel Gooch Locomotive Superintendent of the Great Western Railway" as shown, but I need to write "Initially, where a railway company choose to build its own rolling stock in house, the mechanical engineering aspect was regarded as a subsidiary function to that of the chief engineer and this was reflected in various job titles, such as chief of locomotive department, locomotive foreman and locomotive superintendent". A YES/YES/NO vote to the questions as stated above could take out all the caps (well, in English I could use one at the start of a sentence). I might be willing to have some lower case generic job titles inside the article if I can have caps in the proper noun case (i.e. "Louis XVI was King of France"), but that is a difference battle to the name of the article; and I will object to corps of royal engineers/royal engineer(s). Pyrotec (talk) 17:54, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
I don't think it's a vote; he's trying to get comments on where we agree and where don't, I think. Maybe not phrased as well as could be to draw out the information, so feel free to respond any way you like. Dicklyon (talk) 18:07, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
OK, then: YES / an inaccurate summary of MOS, so NO / YES, when they are used as proper nouns they can be caps as per MOS; an exception to be made for the name of the article. Pyrotec (talk) 18:20, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
What exception for article title are you seeking? To capitalize it even though it's not referring to a specific person? Seems odd if so. Dicklyon (talk) 18:30, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
Part of the problem with the MOS section on capitalization in titles is its complicated history that never got much review. In particuar this edit introduced capitalization of "the correct formal name of an office" and "King of France", but left it as if that was from the cited source, Chicago Manual of Style, 14th ed. But it's not; the CMOS 14 would likely downcase king there, at least if it had "the" in front of it, as it does with "the queen of England". As for names of offices, CMOS does not capitalize except when it's combined with a person's name, as in Mayor Dinkins, or in certain formal lists and acknowledgements, like "... C. R. Dodwell, Fellow and Librarian, Trinity College" where normally the same would be "fellow and library of Trinity College". Fortunately, the ENGVAR rant that accompanied that edit was toned down over time, but we're still left with the vagueness of the "King of France" example and the disconnected bit about "exceptions" that now seems to be about exception to the exceptions, assuming the "King of France" thing was intended as an exception to the usual. Better work on that...but I see no read to treat a CME as a deity, above the queen of England. Dicklyon (talk) 19:02, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
That is part of the controversy. When abbreviations are being used in the UK, we would use CME. The Times does, I checked, use "Joe Bloggs was chief mechanical engineer of the A to B Railway company", as do some text books; however some use caps as if chief mechanical engineer was a proper or compound noun. There is inconsistency in British-English sources and its not date-related. The problem is that "queen of England" looks wrong to me, I would correct it to "Queen of England" (so I'm likely to do the same to a famous/infamous Chief Mechanical Engineer of some particular railway company. Being British I tend to look on this downcasing as American pollution of British-English, so I'm likely to shout ENGVAR and resit loudly. Pyrotec (talk) 19:47, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
@Pyrotec: This RfC is to help us decide A) whether CME is a job title or something else, B) just what the MoS says about job titles, and C) if it's a job title whether we want a special exception to the capitalization rules. In the title-change discussion I was reading that some think CME is not a job title so I wanted to provide a place to address that question. I was also reading that some thought it was a job title but should be allowed an exception and I wanted to address that question. IMO, there has not been much clarity or focus in the arguments against downcasing CME and LR. This RfC is an attempt to address a couple of specific issues that were raised without the distractions of tangential issues.
In my down-casing pass over the article, I made a mistake with Royal Engineers by not replacing it as you did with "officer of the Corps" but I think we agree that the RE usage was problematic. I thought I had made that clear on your talk page and wonder why we're revisiting the issue here. Jojalozzo 15:51, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
@Jojalozzo. Thanks for clarifying both points. I was not aware that I was revisiting Royal Engineers, I have no wish to dwell on an unintentional error. We all make them at the most inconvenient times. There is so much going on on this page: proposed change of article's title to lower case and discussions regarding generic job titles versus specific posts within the article and it was not initially clear to me what context we were discussing in this section. I have no wish to write in full "CME of the XYZ Railway co", sometimes I write Chief Mechanical Engineer in a specific context where it is implied that I am referring to a specific post. WP:COMMON seems to have gone out of the window. It seems that someone sees Chief Mechanical Engineer decides that it is a job title and complains about caps. I don't see why every proper post needs to be written out in full when from the context it is clear that a specific post holder is being referred to, even when not specifically named. Pyrotec (talk) 17:50, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
The first sentence of WP:Job titles clearly states that a job title is a common noun - nothing about treating a job title as a proper name. The only mention of proper nouns is for the formal name of an office which the MoS does not consider to be a job title. If I am misreading it please explain. Jojalozzo 00:02, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
What then is the difference between job title and formal name of an office? Is the (current, to avoid ambiguity) "Queen of England" or "queen of England" merely a job title or is she the current holder of an office which has defined responsibilities and powers. Also, the same question can apply to Chief Mechanical Engineer, each railway company may had one, or used a comparable job title, so (arguably) the article is about a group of job holders, and you may have a point about lower case. At any given time a particular Chief Mechanical Engineer is the formal name of an office, that office has defined responsibilities (responsible to the board of the railway company (named company) for ...) and there is only one post holder. Collectively CME is a job title but it can also refer to all the post holders of a specific post in a specific company, so when used as such lower case is (probably) appropriate, but when specific office holders are being discussed its a proper name. Unfortunately, the article was quite poor: little more than a list of post holders and no proper lead, so for the "down case"-ers it was a good article to select. I certainly intend to expand it to GA-class. The original request was a change of article title (to the lower case variant), that then developed into almost a line by line review of the article where individual job titles were down cased and in some cases formal office holders down cased as well, followed up with a request for comment on job titles. I'm not sure even what your vote is about, is it for example about the title of the article, the job titles and names of offices within the article, or all of these? Pyrotec (talk) 06:49, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
It's an interesting issue, Pyro, and one that I recently discussed with User:Noetica, who doesn't have an immediate answer; but I asked him to think about it and get back when his timeframe is freer (I hope soon). BTW, would one say "three queens of England ..."? "All European queens are wealthy ..."? Tony (talk) 06:54, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
I'm British, I would say three Queens of England ... "All European Queens are wealthy ..." because that looks right to me, however I know that other people from Britain will disagree; and I suspect in American-English "three queens of England ..."? "All European queens are wealthy ..." could be considered more correct. I say "consider" since I've never learned American-English but I have reviewed American-English as well as Canadian-English and Australian-English articles at GAN and I have to strongly resist "correcting" grammar/spellings. Pyrotec (talk) 07:02, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
I'm English, I would say "All European queens are wealthy, but some American queens are poor." On the other hand "Her Majesty the Queen". Referring to Mel Gibson's film as "The Passion of the Christ" is correct, but the event should be properly titled "The passion of the christ" according to the arguments posited on this page. In British English in the area I live in, the correct phrase would be he Passion of Jesus (PBOH)""- pretty sure the PBOH is capitalised. Ning-ning (talk) 08:05, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for that contribution. I did not understand the PBOH bit (lack of knowledge on my part) so I googled "The Passion of Jesus (PBOH)" and came up with PBUH - I don't wish to argue over PBOH/PBUH is just might be a typo. What is interesting is the inconsistency in the name - I've seen .... Christ (PBUH), ... Jesus (PBUH), .... Isa (Jesus) (PBUH), all with "C" or "J" not lower case. If those are the proper titles I don't think that wikipeida should be lower casing it just because of the MOS guidelines - they are guide lines not rules. Pyrotec (talk) 08:40, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
Apologies- I got it wrong- PBUH is the one. Ning-ning (talk) 08:57, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
Since "The Christ" is not a job title I don't think this argument has much bearing here. However it does highlight the religious thread in the discussion. Jojalozzo 14:56, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
@Pyrotec: "Queen of England" is the correct formal name of the office, "England's queen" is an example of job title usage, and "Queen Elizabeth" is job title usage followed by a person's name. According to the MoS we say "three queens of England" since this is talking about three people who filled the role of queen (there is only one office of the Queen of England). Jojalozzo 16:03, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

In answer to Jojalozzo's questions: (A) Yes and No. While "chief mechanical engineer" is a generic job title or, job function, "Chief Mechanical Engineer" is the correct formal name of an office. (B) No. You are only repeating the part of WP:Job titles that suits your argument. The difficulty in the question is in 'job titles like this'. In the peculiar case of this article we are discussing a bunch of people, for all of whom, the formal name of their individual office is "Chief Mechanical Engineer" or "Locomotive Superintendent". (C) No, there should be no ground for an exception to MoS. However WP:Job titles is not as clear as it might be, and if we are going to be stuck with Jojalozzo's mistaken interpretation of what it says, then perhaps we should reluctantly invoke the bit of it that says 'Exceptions may apply for specific offices.' We have been told what the Chicago Manual of Style says, but this is a British English article. Unfortunately Globbet's library appears to contain two copies of "The King's English" but not "Modern English Usage". Could someone help with Fowler's take on this, if he has one? I understand Tony's concern about run-away capitalization and "Garbage Collector" (overlooking the implicit snobbery of that choice), but I think in practice there will be few instances of source for 'formal names of office' at junior levels. Globbet (talk) 10:11, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Allowing that the lower case form, "chief mechanical engineer," is a job title is progress in my opinion but given that we have this job title, shouldn't we use it in the article since we are not talking about a formal office but about the office holder's job?
"Chief Mechanical Engineer" is not the formal name of an office. It is a job title that is (often/sometimes) capitalized in the industry. "President of France" is the correct formal name of an office and "Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Great Western Railway Company" is the correct formal name of an office. I think this confusion of office with job title is at the root of this dispute and I would ask those who think that "chief mechanical engineer" should be capitalized to consider and explain why that should be when the MoS says "president", "king", and "pope" are never capitalized unless followed by a person's name or used in a the formal name of an office (e.g. President of the French Republic, King of France, Bishop of Rome). Jojalozzo 14:43, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
Interesting that the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, in its website's potted biographies of Past Presidents downcases all instances of job title, including "chief mechanical engineer of the ... Railway", except for President and Past President. Ning-ning (talk) 15:14, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
Yes, they are obvious more relaxed about it than the downcasers in MOS. Or alternatively perhaps they got them from wikipedia and the downcasers got there first. Pyrotec (talk) 15:35, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
It's simple: (i) the MOS is wrong: (ii) an attempt is being made to implement it too rigidly, (iii) it is based almost solely on American English, (iv) selective quoting of only parts of the MOS. See comment above about the Chicago Manual of Style and WP:ENGVAR. However, I tend to agree with that "Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Great Western Railway Company" is the correct formal name of an office but if a section is entirely about the Great Western Railway and I write "Chief Mechanical Engineer" it can be inferred that I am referring to the "Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Great Western Railway Company". To emphasis the point, in such a section if I wish to refer to the "Chief Mechanical Engineer of the London and North Western Railway Company" and make comparisons against the "Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Great Western Railway Company" I'm going to use the full names, or at least the full name of the former I might just use "Chief Mechanical Engineer" for the latter. I fully agree with you about the religious bit. I suggest that you "down case-ers" consider WP:COMMON. The amount of editors' time that has been squandered on these discussions about the naming of and the use of titles/nouns within this article, which was/is quite a poor article, brings no credit on those who initiated these ill-consider actions. Pyrotec (talk) 15:35, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
I think we can write "the Chief Mechanical Engineer" as shorthand in a section on the office of CME of a specific railway company but when we talk about all the CMEs for all the railways as this article does in its introduction then we should use lower case because we are then talking about a generic job not the office held by a CME in a company. Jojalozzo 16:31, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
The reason I was initially drawn into this discussion is that this article jumps out in lists of articles as one where the MoS is not being followed. Once here I discovered that editors appear to think the rules are wrong or the article should be exempted. I don't think the quality of the article is a valid excuse for not incorporating the MoS but I do think it may indicate editing at cross purposes to the project. (Yes, I am losing faith as this discussion drags on.) 16:43, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
I don't have a problem with the selective use of the lower case and the upper case variants within the article. However, I'm not certain what is meant by as this article does in its introduction - there is no Introduction. "Chief Mechanical Engineer" appears once inside the article, bolded in the WP:Lead since the article's title is (still) Chief Mechanical Engineer. The phrase chief mechanical engineer appears three times: once each in the Lead, Locomotive Superintendent and Functions sections. Perhaps you mean Locomotive Superintendent - most are upper case? Pyrotec (talk) 17:02, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
I fully sympathise. We are on the receiving end of all of this. Some of it is rebellion. It seems that every occurrence of "Chief Mechanical Engineer" was being down cased so every occurrence of Locomotive Superintendent gets upper cased. If CME can be used both as a job title and as a specific post depending on its context then I will make the necessary alterations. I'd much rather spend my time on productive work. Just compare the size of this talk page it is all about caps/lower case and the number of contributing editors against the size of the article and the contributions. Pyrotec (talk) 17:56, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
  • There is not a shred of a case that some exception should be made so that railway positions can be pumped up by capitalisation. As I've asked: does British Rail employ Toilet Cleaners? Why don't you go through the whole category and request moves to upcase every job-name? Tony (talk) 02:14, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
Really, this article could be named "The king of Siam's left tit" for all the difference it'ld make to the content, which will be decided by the use of reliable secondary sources, available in UK&NI libraries.Ning-ning (talk) 05:43, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
While I agree that little/no justification has been offered for an exception to the capitalization rules, I think the toilet cleaner counter-argument is unnecessary and distracting. Jojalozzo 16:19, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Firstly, the comment immediately above contains a modicum of common sense - i.e. "... which will be decided by the use of reliable secondary sources, available in UK&NI libraries". However, none of the citations in the article, which are reliable secondary sources, provide any verification that the topic of the article is even vaguely related to "The king of Siam's left tit". The argument equal applies to the right one as well as the King himself. Secondly, this talkpage is concerned with Chief Mechanical Engineers it is not about British Rail Toilet Cleaners - presumably American English allows British Rail to have caps? - and as yet British Rail has not been mentioned in the article (the "branding" British Rail only dates from the 1960s), so I see no point in discussing Toilet Cleaners, upper case or lower here, they have no relevance. More importantly, I think that the time could be more productively spent rewriting MOS to remove the festering bias to US-English, to bring it into line with WP:ENGVAR, i.e. it recognises "the English Wikipedia prefers no major national variety of the language over any other". Once the MOS has been rewritten to accurately reflect British-English, Canadian-English, Australian-English, to name just three variants, as well as the "Chicago Manual", and as editors chill out and allow WP:COMMON to prevail, much of this frenzy will die down. Obvious for some it will not, but you know that anyway. 78.150.80.211 (talk) 08:22, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
  • ENGVAR and COMMON are red herrings - as useful in this discussion as WP:OTHERSTUFF and WP:OUTSIDE. There's nothing regional about capitalization of job titles. English employs caps to denote importance and caps are used everywhere to puff up positions, roles, products, ideas, etc. Restricting the use of caps to produce a consistent style is commonsense. Jojalozzo 16:11, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Yet, in my few searches, I found that American sources about American companies tended to downcase CME, while British sources about British companies tended to uppercase it. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:06, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
I'm not finding it downcased much anywhere. In US web sites & pdfs I'm seeing it capitalized (in text not titles) though I doubt that's what you mean by sources. Jojalozzo 18:59, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Lower case As a Brit I do not see any reason for capitalisation and I agree ENGVAR is a red herring in this case. As has been said already, many organisations in the UK and US try to puff up their job titles by capitalising them but our style is not to. Martin Hogbin (talk) 16:44, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
It is not the organisations "puffing up their job titles", but reliable sources (see my list from up near the top) writing them that way. The term Chief Mechanical Engineer is verifiable. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:49, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
There is nothing to show that 'chief mechanical engineer' is capitalised more than any other job title. It is to some degree a matter of style. Things are often capitalised that need not be. Our style is not to do so and we should stick to it. Martin Hogbin (talk) 20:27, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
Other job titles have much lower percentages of capitalization in ngrams: chief executive officer, project manager or chief mechanical officer. (In chief marketing officer you can see the 60s frenzy for marketing techniques.) I only looked at a few ones Category:Management_occupations, try finding a job that is so consistently capitalized in sources along several decades, and let's see if there are also historical reasons for it. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:09, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
The n-gram doesn't distinguish between when CME is used as an individual's title (e.g. Chief Mechanical Engineer Jason Smithe) and when it's used as a job title. Jojalozzo 22:02, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
It doesn't distinguish either when CEO is used as an individual title or as a job title. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:19, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
My point is you can't tell whether the differences between two capitalizations of the same style or between the same capitalizations with two personal/job titles is due to different uses of the term or the same uses with different styles. There's no basis for assuming that the distribution of uses is the same for CME and CEO. It's a flawed tool for looking at differences in styles for different uses. Jojalozzo 00:43, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Lower case - Many job titles are capitalized in the sources, that is no reason to violate the WP style guideline. The whole point of the guideline is to provide a uniform, comfortable experience for readers within the encyclopedia articles: upper case is distracting and annoying, lower case is easier on the eyes. The "exception" proposed here could be likewise proposed for hundred of job titles within WP, but then why even have the style guideline in the first place? I agree with "puffing" issue raised by M. Hogbin above: persons with these jobs enjoy seeing the title capitalized, but that is no reason to push capital letters into reader's faces. Finally, it is unseemly to start a second RfC so soon after the first one: the prior RfC was initiated on 8 Sept, and this second RfC on 10 Sept. RfCs are supposed to have a duration of 30 days. Re-trying because the first one did not have the desired outcome is not acceptable. --Noleander (talk) 17:02, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
My apologies if I jumped the gun with this second RfC. I didn't start this one because the previous one was unsuccessful, but because I thought this one was better framed to stay on track. Jojalozzo 19:20, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Yes/Yes/No—I think the guidelines are pretty clear that it should be lowercase, and the usage in the sources is not overwhelmingly capitalized, certainly not enough to justify the break with our style. I think it is important for style to be consistent so that Wikipedia doesn't look amateurish. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 21:11, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
    • I intend to create an article on the generic topic of "chief mechanical engineer"—which would match countless other articles on occupations. Thus, this article title will need to be made more specific to make "room" for the generic one. Can someone advise me what the correct procedure is for this? Tony (talk) 12:35, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
      • I suggest you excise the 'generic' content from this article, go here and paste it in, whilst removing the redirect. You would probably be then left with two stubs to work on; they will develop independent of each other. You can then put {{about}} dablinks on the top of each linking to the other. This current article should perhaps then be moved to 'Chief Mechanical Engineer (railways)' or something suitably descriptive. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 13:26, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Looking at Category:Occupations by type (I can't make a link for that), the house style appears to be "Chief mechanical engineer". Lightmouse (talk) 12:51, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Additional third opinion: YES/NO/(YES). WP:Job titles says the correct formal name of an office can be treated as a proper noun. Since we largely agree the answer to question (A) is "YES", it's fine to capitalise these two job titles across an article where the relevant railway company's official publications (ie. reliable sources) treat them as proper nouns. I don't think the guidelines dictate either way, and I wouldn't call for a Wikipedia-wide (or topic-wide) standardisation of capitalisation. As long as capitalisation is consistent within an article, it's fine. Deryck C. 08:14, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. Clearly all job titles are viewed as common names in Wikipedia no matter how they are handled in a particular area of commerce. Treating CME differently requires making an exception. The guideline for formal names of offices applies only to office names not to job titles - they are not the same thing. Jojalozzo 16:55, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
This article is about an office. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:43, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
If it were the formal name of an office it would be about the CME for a specific railway company, a proper noun/name, upper case. When the topic is any CME's at any railway company as in this article it's a job title, a common noun/name, lower case. Jojalozzo 21:25, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
This article is not about mechanical engineers that happen to be chiefs of their department. We don't even have an article on the job title of mechanical engineer. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:24, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
I don't get your point. Capitalizing the job title doesn't mean it's not referring to a mechanical engineer who is head of the department. I don't see how details of the job and the capitalization of the job title are related. Do you think that CMEs that work for railway companies should have their job titles capitalized to distinguish them from CMEs who work in other industries? Jojalozzo 22:36, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I do not think the arguments for treating CMEs and LRs like all other job titles have been very well countered. As I understand it, those who desire an exception to the MoS take the position that it is the style in this industry to capitalize these two job titles and, because of that, the general MOSCAPS "common sense" loophole applies. I agree that the style in this industry is special but don't see how common sense has anything to do with embracing whatever new style is employed by the subject of an article. Common sense tells me to maintain a consistent style among all the articles, independent of the styles of the subjects. An inconsistent style confuses the reader who is justified in thinking that variations in style are attempts to communicate variations in meaning. Thinking of the project as whole, it's clear to me that a case by case approach to style is not common sense. Jojalozzo 03:10, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Sometimes it will come down to whether there's inconsistency with some of the external sources or inconsistency within WP's usage. There has to be a very good reason to introduce internal inconsistency, so I agree with Jojalozzol. Tony (talk) 05:16, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
  • YES/YES/NO. Late to this debate too, but I might as well chime in since the discussion hasn't been marked closed. As I've said above, upper-casing job titles here is an obvious case of the WP:Specialist style fallacy, and its particular variant the "reliable sources style fallacy" is demonstrated in spades in the earlier RM debate. The WP:MOS has a clear, site-wide consensus against capitalizing job titles for a reason. There's nothing magically special about British rail workers and their job titles. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 17:22, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
"The specialist literature on some topic is [usually] the most reliable source of detailed facts about this specialty". Well yeah- if I want a reliable source of detailed facts about homeopathy the last place I'd look would be in a book written by a homeopath. Otherwise, all you're saying is that Wikipedia articles have to be written in Wikipedia style. You'd maybe like to take the "specialist style" out of Structuration for a bit of practice. Ning-ning (talk) 01:25, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
I see no specialist style there, much less any that would conflict with general English usage (for example "structure, modality, and interaction" are not Capitalized Just to "Bignote" Them as Important, or any other bullshitty weirdness. Was there something at that article in particular I was supposed to take note of? And of coruse cases like homeopathy were precisely why I put in "[usually]". >;-) The essay's point is surely "use Wikipedia style, not your pet style, on Wikipedia"; the purpose of writing it (as opposed to the point it conveys) is to specifically deconstruct the fallacious and sometimes intentionally disruptive nonsense arguments that are used to push pet style. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 05:52, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
I see we're using "style" in two different ways; your essay refers to styling the name of a subject whereas I see the "structuration" article as being written in the style of a sociology specialist, as the novels of Marie Corelli are written in the style of a Ouida. I'm not aware offhand of any group of specialists other than theologians or Muslims who maintain a pet style of punctuation (in the form of caps or PBUH). American editors tend to insert commas where British editors don't- but English newspapers of the 1930s have a plethora of commas, and English newspapers of the 1780s capitalise everything. There's not usually a kerfuffle about shuffling commas, or about de-capitalisation except in this case... So, "style" may be the wrong term to use if we're merely talking about punctuation/hyphenation/capitalisation. Ning-ning (talk) 17:15, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Inconsistent

Latest comment: 12 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion

I wonder why there was such shrill insistence on the caps for the title/subject of this article, when the text contains prominent reference to other job titles:

Locomotive superintendent

Initially, where a railway company choose to build its own rolling stock in house, the mechanical engineering aspect was regarded as a subsidiary function to that of the chief engineer and this was reflected in various job titles, such as chief of locomotive department, locomotive foreman and locomotive superintendent.

Tony (talk) 13:31, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Because that was what they were called, Chief Engineer and Locomotive Superintendent. Read this page. Pyrotec (talk) 12:03, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
I think you're missing Tony's point. Nobody objected when locomotive superintendent was made lowercase last Sept. Per book sources, that's the way it should be styled on WP. The chief mechanical engineer title is also not consistently capitalized in sources, so should also be downcased, but that got fought. Apparently some job titles get capitalized, but the rationale remains vague. Dicklyon (talk) 22:02, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

A proposed resolution: do like The Railway Magazine, London, 1906, and capitalize the job title when it comes right after a name, or prefixed to a name, but not when it comes after "the" or is otherwise describing the job or the office, not the person/title (they appear to deviate from their pattern a bit on p.505, but that's nothing compared to the usual mix of caps across British railroading sources). Dicklyon (talk) 22:23, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I see we had that discussion a few quarters ago; seems like it got decent support, while the idea of making an exception to MOS:CAPS didn't. So why haven't we done another RM on this, to fix it thus? Dicklyon (talk) 22:30, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

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