Following a brief discussion (here), there is a need for a consensus on naming conventions at the Olympics. The issue arose in relation to the tennis articles at this year's Olympics and how their titles should be formatted.
The original following conflicts arose:
- Tennis at the 2016 Summer Olympics – Men's Singles vs. Tennis at the 2016 Summer Olympics – Men's singles
- Tennis at the 2016 Summer Olympics – Women's Singles vs. Tennis at the 2016 Summer Olympics – Women's singles
- Tennis at the 2016 Summer Olympics – Men's Doubles vs. Tennis at the 2016 Summer Olympics – Men's doubles
- Tennis at the 2016 Summer Olympics – Women's Doubles vs. Tennis at the 2016 Summer Olympics – Women's doubles
- Tennis at the 2016 Summer Olympics – Mixed Doubles vs. Tennis at the 2016 Summer Olympics – Mixed doubles
The issue is in relation to whether both words after the hyphen should be capitalized, whether just the first should be, or whether neither should be. From an internal Wikipedia point of view, the majority of tennis articles outside of the Olympics follow the first option, with both words capitalized, for example
- 2016 Wimbledon Championships – Women's Doubles
- 2014 BNP Paribas Open – Men's Singles
- 2009 China Open – Women's Singles
Looking outside of Wikipedia, the official websites of all four Grand Slam tournaments often follow the 'double capitalization rule':
But they are also inconsistent in whether both terms are a true proper name, as with "men's doubles crown" and "mixed doubles crown." Plus these sites often use upper case on every letter or every word. ESPN uses both lower case [http://www.espn.com/olympics/summer/tennis/story/_/id/17295106/venus-williams-rajeev-rav-advance-mixed-doubles-gold-medal-match right here but every letter capitalized here.
The Official ITF Olympic Tennis website even capitalizes both words as does the 2016 Olympic website. However the NBC Olympic site treats neither as a proper noun, using lower case on both Somebody made the point that since they are just nouns and not proper nouns, that the second word after the hyphen should not be capitalized. However, after a bit of my own research I found this:
Here are directions for implementing APA’s title case:
Capitalize the first word of the title/heading and of any subtitle/subheading; Capitalize all “major” words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns) in the title/heading, including the second part of hyphenated major words (e.g., Self-Report not Self-report); and
Capitalize all words of four letters or more. [1]
So by this logic the title should read: Tennis at the 2016 Summer Olympics – Men's Singles.
Whatever decision is come to, some consistency needs to be introduced across all Olympic tennis articles, dating back to 1896. Even though the same issue is prevalent across other Olympic events, if it can be sorted for the tennis articles, it would be a start.
For discussion, when it's in a title but not at the start of a sentence, is it better to use the term "Mixed Doubles", "Mixed doubles" or "mixed doubles"?
- ^ "Title Case and Sentence Case Capitalization in APA Style". Retrieved 27 August 2016.