Talk:Old Tom gin

Typo?

"Since then a number of other companies have followed suit, such as: Both's;"

Should that be Booth's? Booth's gin (the standard kind, not the 'High and Dry' London type) was Tom gin, though I haven't seen it for years. JimInRoses (talk) 19:21, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Requested move 15 August 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved DrStrauss talk 19:16, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

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Old Tom Gin → Old Tom gin – The alcoholic beverage term "gin" is not ordinarily capitalized, and "Old Tom Gin" seems like merely a generic name for a type of gin, not the proper name of a specific product. —BarrelProof (talk) 00:48, 15 August 2017 (UTC) --Relisting. Steel1943 (talk) 01:19, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose 'Old Tom Gin', all three words, is used as a proper noun phrase.

Patrick Dillon (2013). Gin: The Much Lamented Death of Madam Geneva. ISBN 978-1909609952. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:05, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

• Yes, perhaps some sources do capitalize all three words, but it appears that most do not. In a situation like this one, my impression is that when the sources are inconsistent, Wikipedia would tend to use lowercase. As MOS:CAPS says in its opening sentence, "Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization." Among the citations in the article, all but one of them (five of the six) use lowercase for "gin" – CocktailDB, Imbibe, Oh Gosh, and the two 19th-century books (while Summer Fruit Cup uses uppercase – and it is a relatively low quality WordPress.com blog site). Even if it wasn't a majority, I believe we would tend toward lowercase on Wikipedia when the sources are mixed. —BarrelProof (talk) 16:50, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

• So are you planning to rename the article to Old Tom? If and when the three words are used together, as a title, then that makes it a proper noun phrase. That's the way in which WP is using it here. A sentence like, "Either Plymouth, London or Old Tom gin may be used." would be valid, but when it's Plymouth Gin, London Dry Gin (both broad types, not brands) or Old Tom Gin in isolation, they should be treated as a phrase in one, and all capitalised. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:02, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

• Note that London Dry Gin is just a redirect to Gin (and the Gin article also contains the phrase "London dry gin"). Plymouth Gin is an article, and I tried to examine its sources – three of them are dead links, some others don't use the phrase at all or refer only to a specific brand name rather than a generic type name, and one uses lowercase in the phrase "Plymouth gin". There is only one brand on the market today, and its brand name seems to be "Plymouth Gin" and its distillery is known as the "Plymouth Gin Distillery", so it's very tough to distinguish between the brand name and the type name. Note that we also have Damson gin and Sloe gin, which are type names and use lowercase (and non-gin examples like Bordeaux wine and Scotch whisky). Of course that's all just WP:OTHERSTUFF. I find no evidence that there has been any explicit discussion of whether the titles of any of those articles should use uppercase or lowercase for "gin", "whisky" or "wine". —BarrelProof (talk) 17:26, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

• Plymouth Gin is a PDO, so I don't know how much more established a source you could want! Andy Dingley (talk) 17:53, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

• Scotch whisky, Irish whiskey, etc., are also PDOs that are capitalized phrases in some sources such as this one, but Wikipedia doesn't look to any one single source for its styling guidelines (and prefers tertiary sources rather than primary sources such as government regulations). —BarrelProof (talk) 18:05, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support. While I concede that many sources do use title-case "Gin", there are also many that do not (and yet many others use just "Old Tom" within proper context), and we should thus defer to MOS here. As BarrelProof points out, we also have certain WP:CONSISTENCY within similar titles. As a matter of fact, ngram even gives some 2:1 ratio for "Old Tom gin" in modern usage, so that should settle the matter. No such user (talk) 07:18, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support per MOS:CAPS. This is not (or is not clearly) a proper noun phrase (Old Tom is). It's a descriptive disambiguation. Since sources are not consistent on "Old Tom Gin" versus "Old Tom gin" and many also just use "Old Tom", default to lower case as always. This is standard operating procedure at WP.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:52, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

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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 or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.