Talk:Nocturnal after John Dowland

Move back

The article was moved from Nocturnal after John Dowland. Please move it back to that name, supported by the article and the title page of the music. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:38, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

• I've raised an objection on the talk page of the user who made this undiscussed move (User_talk:Koavf#Nocturnal_after_John_Dowland). Unless there's a quick positive response, we ahould involve an admin to reverse the change. Colonies Chris (talk) 11:48, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Title As you can see at my talk, I've added several citations from our style manual about trademarks, musical works, and general guidelines to capitalization which are consistent about saying that the present capitalization is correct. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:31, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I went to the talk of the relevant MOS. If it tells us to create nonsense we need to think about it. Imagine the image of the printed book appeared on the page, contradicting our article title, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:47, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

• I've asked the admins to reverse this change to allow discussion. Colonies Chris (talk) 17:01, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Not moved; there is clear consensus against the proposed move. bd2412 T 17:06, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Nocturnal after John Dowland → Nocturnal After John Dowland – Several manual of style guidelines, all of which are consistent about capitalizing "After": In general, each word in English titles of books, films, and other works takes an initial capital, except for articles ("a", "an", "the"), the word "to" as part of an infinitive, prepositions and coordinating conjunctions shorter than five letters (e.g., "on", "from", "and", "with"), unless they begin or end a title or subtitle. Cf. the specific style on music Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Music#Capitalization. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:49, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose - As pointed out above I see no reason to deviate from the title as it appears in print. We have English and American English articles, why not tolerate this minor difference from a MOS that seems (too?) rigid in this matter? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:33, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose per wikipedia MOS and what is more definitive, the worldcat listing. However, not a moral issue in either direction. Montanabw^(talk) 18:53, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose - The title of the work uses the lowercase and we shouldn't differ from that. The vast majority of reliable sources also use the lowercase, so in accordance with WP:TITLE that is what should be used for the article title - "Generally, article titles are based on what the subject is called in reliable sources." WP:TITLE is of course a policy and should be considered before WP:Naming conventions (capitalization) and WP:MOS which are guidelines. Sarahj2107 (talk) 19:00, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm afraid you're mistaken. The article title is independent from the way it is formatted. WP:TITLEFORMAT is also policy, and that deals with capitalisation rules. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:19, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

• Support per MOS:CT. I really don't see why this is so difficult. --BDD (talk) 19:41, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
• Montanabw and others: WorldCat records reflect the prescriptions of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, which were used from 1967 to earlier this year for English-language cataloging. It prescribes sentence-case capitalization for just about everything but names of places and persons. This is really a different issue from stylistic choices in writing; AACR was built to work with MARC standards, i.e., to be read primarily by machines. If other reliable sources use the lowercase form, that's one thing, but as a librarian and cataloger, I can attest that using WorldCat records for capitalization is misguided at best, and would give us titles like Lord of the flies, Breath of fire, or I'd do anything for love (but I won't do that). And for what it's worth, AACR's successor Resource Description and Access essentially leaves it up to catalogers whether to continue this capitalization scheme or to transcribe it exactly as it appears on the item. --BDD (talk) 19:41, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

LOL, BDD, you just described wikipedia's capitalization MOS! I'd say that is you want to make that case (which is an argument that is not frivolous...) then it's a way bigger issue than here. Montanabw^(talk) 19:46, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Not at all, or those examples I gave would be the titles we use for articles. The important distinction, expressed in pages like MOS:CT, is that we capitalize the names of works (e.g. books, films, musical compositions), as do almost all English-language sources. We don't refer to wikipedia, dance of the sugar plum fairy, or star wars. "Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization," but we don't count titles of works in that, just like virtually all journalistic or encyclopedic sources. This has not been the practice in library cataloging thus far simply because everything we catalog, by definition, will have a work title. --BDD (talk) 20:02, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, I have usually been guilty of overcapitalization, so this is a switch for me. But it IS how even the work's authors capitalize it, it is a subtitle (admittedly after is 5 letters) and so that's basically where I'm at. Like I say, not a moral issue, I shall let others spat this out. Montanabw^(talk) 21:36, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Oppose: The title as given on the sheet music itself has the lower-case 'a' - this is the name the composer and publisher chose for it. WP's capitalisation policies must be secondary to that. Colonies Chris (talk) 23:23, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

In the First Folio, Measure for Measure is styled "MEASVRE, For Meaſure". As this is the name the writer and publisher chose for it, should that article be moved? No. This is the same logic. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:37, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose - MOS:CT is written to standardize pop mp3s where there are poor sources. This is a classical piece and the small "after" is a deliberate choice by Britten, reflected in hardback print books. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:43, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Where on earth did you get that idea? MOS:CT is not "written to standardize pop mp3s", as you claim, but covers any composition title, whether it's Shakespeare or Shakespears Sister. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:19, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

• Support. We don't follow external styling, we have a house MOS which should be followed, as "formality and an adherence to conventions widely used in the genre are critically important to credibility". WP:TITLEFORMAT, which is policy, defers us to WP:NCCAPS, which states "English titles of books, films, and other works takes an initial capital, except for articles ("a", "an", "the"), the word "to" as part of an infinitive, prepositions and coordinating conjunctions shorter than five letters (e.g., "on", "from", "and", "with"), unless they begin or end a title or subtitle." This then goes on to defer us to MOS:CT, which is very clear on the issue. Basically, not capitalising "after" goes against policy. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:23, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
• Comment Almost all of the opposes refer to irrelevant style guides (e.g. WorldCat) or the title of the sheet music, which is explicitly why we have our own style guide. Can someone who is !voting oppose show me a policy or guideline on this publication that would indicate that we should have a lower case "after" in a title? I've shown you several that contradict this... —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 11:29, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I can't help you. I stand by my oppose which is not based on any style guide, not ours, not others, but wishes to reproduce the title which the author wanted, if at all possible. If a group has a name with all lowercase, that is what we use. Why not "after", then, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:14, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

If, for example, the title on the sheet music were all in caps, then we would be justified in reducing it to mixed case with capitalisation as in our style guide. However, this title is in normal English, with normal capitalisation. We have no justification for overriding that for the sake of an arbitrary rule about capitalising prepositions of more than a certain length. Colonies Chris (talk) 17:28, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Other than the fact that the publisher was following their arbitrary capitalisation rules, as we follow ours. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:31, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, and in particular, when an odd spelling is part of the author's probable intent, then all the more reason to keep it. We'd do the same for a person's name with odd capitalization, or a book title. Montanabw^(talk) 22:23, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

"Probable intent"? You're making a big assumption that this is an intentional stylistic decision, rather than the publisher's in-house "arbitrary rule about capitalising". Without evidence of this intention, we need to revert to policy and follow our own capitalisation rules. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:31, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

But the title page doesn't have 'odd capitalisation' 'or 'styling'. If it had, we would have to consider whether or not the styling was an intrinsic part of the title. But it's just conventional English capitalisation. We should leave it alone. Colonies Chris (talk) 10:11, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

If it is "just conventional English capitalisation", then you there is no question that we should be following our in-house style, in the same way the publishers followed theirs. --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:59, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

• Support—Clearly a simple matter of style. We have our style, other publications have different styles, each should follow their own so they don't appear amateurish. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 09:04, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

You vote for placing the style of the project higher that the style of the author, - that looks amateurish to me. A rule requesting that should be questioned. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:24, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Well sure, any project should follow its own style guide. I think that's pretty standard practice in publishing. See the intro at style guide. For example Amazon seems to consistently capitalize titles even when the author/publisher doesn't. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:43, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. In this title, "after" is an unimportant word and unimportant words shouldn't be capitalized, and most don't, including as seen in primary sources. MOSCT overreached concensus in attempting to mandate a weird formula on prepositions. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:51, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose I know there's a style guide suggesting capitalising prepositions of five or more letters (or is it four?) Personally I disagree with that guideline; I don't think we should capitalise any preposition, however long. Whilst I have to bite my tongue and not support or make moves that go against the guideline, neither do I have to go out of my way to encourage it against common usage for a particular case or pre-existing article titles. This meets both those.  — Amakuru (talk) 19:17, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
• Comment. The above two arguments are on the basis that although the editors in question acknowlege the guidelines, they reject and don't like them. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:43, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

• There is substance in the arguments, so WP:IDONTLIKEIT doesn't apply. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 20:40, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.