Talk:Skerries Lifeboat Station

Capitalization of "honorary secretary"

@Ojsyork: This title should be in lower case per MOS:JOBTITLE. Despite your claim, it is not directly juxtaposed with the person's name. In order to qualify for capitals, a title must be all of the following: 1) unmodified 2) formal 3) title for a specific entity; in this case there are many, many organizations that have that same position, so it is not the title for a specific entity. If you do a Google search on site:irishtimes.com "as honorary secretary" you will see that it is generally not capitalized. Chris the speller ^yack 18:10, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

@Chris the speller

All seems a bit ridiculous that we're haggling over the minutia details of this pages, but I have to stand my ground, as my unchanging view is that Chris the speller is completely wrong.

I can find no rule that states "In order to qualify for capitals, a title must be all of the following: 1) unmodified 2) formal 3) title for a specific entity", although I do think the entry qualifies for this too.

I can find "Directly juxtaposed with the person's name, such words begin with a capital letter. Standard or commonly used names of an office are treated as proper names (David Cameron was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom;" and that therefore "Henry Alex Hamilton appointed as Honorary Secretary" should be perfectly acceptable. I'm not quite sure how you can say this is not juxtaposed.

Being appointed Honorary Secretary (now Lifeboat Operations Manager) is a significant appointment at every lifeboat station, and should be treated as such. Its not just the clerk sending a few emails, its the main person in charge at each station.

I would add that nearly every official RNLI reference uses capitals for this role, never mind using IrishTimes??

If anyone else wishes to contribute to this, please do. I am happy to back down if others think I'm wrong - but I'm not convinced yet.

Martin Ojsyork (talk) 20:19, 14 November 2024 ::(UTC)

@Ojsyork: Where you found "Directly juxtaposed with the person's name ..." (in MOS:CAPS), the next line says "For fuller details, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies § Titles of people." There it says to capitalize only "When a formal title for a specific entity (or conventional translation thereof) is addressed as a title or position in and of itself, is not plural, is not preceded by a modifier (including a definite or indefinite article), and is not a reworded description". A specific entity could be "Prime Minister of Australia", but not "honorary secretary", which is just a title used by countless organizations. Also, we should not prefer the style of capitalization that is found in RNLI references to newspapers or Wikipedia's MoS; see WP:SSF. Chris the speller ^yack 22:11, 15 November 2024 (UTC)