Talk:Registered Professional Accountant

Requested move, April 2014

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. 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.

The result of the proposal was no consensus. --BDD (talk) 18:53, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Registered professional accountant → Registered Professional Accountant – Article is about the formal professional designation, therefore all words in the title should be capitalized, per WP:TITLE and MOS:CAPS. See also Certified General Accountant, Chartered Professional Accountant, and so on. Relisted. BDD (talk) 23:51, 21 April 2014 (UTC) Ivanvector (talk) 22:08, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

• Comment: Can you quote specific words in those guidelines that support the suggested capitalization (versus, e.g., Chief executive officer or Chief operating officer)? —BarrelProof (talk) 03:39, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

The one I'm going on is from WP:TITLEFORMAT: 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. In my experience, professional and academic designations are normally capitalized in running text (Doctor of Philosophy, Master of Engineering, etc.) and accounting and finance designations generally follow that pattern (Chartered Accountant, Certified Financial Planner) while other professions generally don't (licensed practical nurse, for example), but I don't know for sure what the distinction is between accountants and other professions with designations governed by regulatory bodies. However in all cases (as the guideline states) a person's occupation (doctor, accountant, nurse) would never normally be capitalized. I'm not sure if this answers your question. Ivanvector (talk) 15:29, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

I suppose the key phrase here is "unless they would be so in running text". That's hardly a command to capitalize or a description of very explicit circumstances; it seems more like just a permission for some vaguely defined allowable exceptions to the general rule of not capitalizing. Anyhow, I suppose "Registered Professional Accountant" probably would usually be capitalized in running text (but so would Chief executive officer, Chief operating officer, and Chief financial officer, which only have capitalization of the first word in their Wikipedia article titles). I'm not expressing an opinion here – just trying to figure out what is generally considered preferable on Wikipedia. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:31, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that's the key phrase I meant to highlight. Regarding CEO/COO/CFO, the WP:JOBTITLE guideline suggests that those are not to be capitalized, unless referring to a specific individual. They have capitals on the first word in article titles by virtue of being at the beginning of a sentence only. The difference (in my opinion, perhaps) is that "chief executive officer" is a job title, while "Registered Professional Accountant" is a recognized professional credential. I can see that the distinction is murky, but other articles on accounting designations use the style I've suggested, FWIW. Ivanvector (talk) 18:15, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

As one point of comparison, none of the professional/business titles mentioned above are generally capitalized in most leading newspapers. For example, "chief executive officer" or "certified public accountant" are generally not capitalized in article text in The NY Times (ceo and cpa), The LA Times (ceo and cpa), The Washington Post (ceo and cpa), Canada's Toronto Star (ceo and cpa), Australia's Herald Sun (ceo and cpa), or Britain's The Guardian (ceo and cpa), and they're about evenly split in The Wall Street Journal (ceo and cpa) . Educational titles are more mixed, but those are further afield from this question. While none of these sources have mentioned a "registered professional accountant" (a redflag of a possible notability issue), if both the article title and the running text issues are open to suggestions, I'd tend to follow the trend of these publications using lowercase in the running text [see below], and therefore title the article "Registered professional accountant". However, if the capitalization in the article's text is not open for discussion, the guidelines seem to suggest that the title should follow the running text, which currently uses "Registered Professional Accountant". Agyle (talk) 22:53, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

I have started a discussion of the general question of article title capitalization for job titles, certification titles and degree names at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (capitalization)#Formal job titles, formal certification titles, and degree names. (But so far, no one has responded.) —BarrelProof (talk) 00:36, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm tentatively retracting my above suggestion. I realize now that a distinction is made when referring to an exam, school program, or the certification itself (generally upper case) versus when referring to a person (generally lower case, unless it's used as a title just before their name). I'll look into a bit more post an update later on, including in the Naming conventions discussion. Agyle (talk) 00:48, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Agyle, your last comment is my interpretation as well, but for certifications there doesn't seem to be any consistency between different professions (the nursing example I gave above). As far as I know, generally, people aren't employed as a company's certified public accountant, they would be employed as an accountant or a chief financial officer, for example, and holding a Certified Public Accountant certification would be a requirement of the position. Similarly, a chief executive officer would hold an MBA degree, or other specific qualification. As for notability, I'm an accountant in Canada and wasn't familiar with RPA myself until just recently, but they are nonetheless an established and recognized credential. BarrelProof, thanks for opening that discussion, I'll go take a look. Ivanvector (talk) 14:40, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Your lowercase usage of "certified public accountant" does sound awkward, but lowercase usage is in sentences like "he worked as a certified public accountant" or "he's a certified public accountant at XYZ". Lowercase usage of that term seems widely consistent in how mainstream publications when referring to people. Capitalization when referring to the certification or exam is not consistent between (or even within) publications. (I added a more detailed comment in the naming convenetions discussion). This article, except for one sentence, is about the certification, rather than people, so those outside examples don't really shed any light here. Wikipedia guidelines are ambiguous, so unless/until they're changed, it's just an arbitrary matter of opinion. I prefer uppercase for the designation, and I could rattle off some reasons, but essentially it's just a personal preference. Agyle (talk) 21:58, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. 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.