Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters/Archive 36

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Capitalization of The Gambia

While there is agreement to use the definite article for The Gambia, there is no agreement on Wikipedia or in reliable sources whether it should be capitalized. A sample Ngrams comparison for "of the/The Gambia" similar ones for several other prepositions is inconclusive; I have not checked if external style guides discuss the capitalization of this country.

The most recent discussion on this topic is Talk:The_Gambia/Archive_2#Is_it_"The_Gambia"_or_"the_Gambia"_in_the_middle_of_a_sentence from 2017.

Unfortunately, the format of MOS:THECAPS makes it impossible to explain this concisely. Proposed addition to THECAPS:

Extended content
Acceptable (exception): a town in The Gambia Acceptable: a town in the Gambia References References

–LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 15:42, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Except it should clearly be the Gambia, lowercase, because sources are mixed and our default is MOS:THECAPS, which is to say in nearly all cases (The Hague being the exception that proves the rule), we lowercase the unless it's at the beginning of a sentence. —Joeyconnick (talk) 18:29, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

I concur. As the evidence marshalled in this discussion shows, even official usage is mixed, so Wikipedia should stick with normal MOS:CAPS practice (only words "...consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources" should use caps here). —  AjaxSmack  16:12, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Since your opinions are more one-sided than the majority opinion in the 2017 discussion, should I initiate a new RfC? It seems that voters who favored the capital The cite guidelines which favor official usage, while the lowercase the was mostly favored by those who preferred consistency with other countries. And since the African Union uses a different capitalization of the full name than the Gambian government does, the lead of the Gambia article may need, at minimum, an explanatory note. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 02:19, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

The basis for deciding would be Wikipedia's Manual of Style, which says "only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia". It's not a choice between the usage of the government of the Gambia and the African Union; it's a question of whether it is "consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources". Look at "independent, reliable sources". Easy places to look are Google Books, Google Scholar and other search engines. See if it is "consistently capitalized in a substantial majority" of those sources. Last time I looked it was not a majority, let alone a substantial majority. If there's an RfC, I'll look again, but I doubt it's changed. SchreiberBike | ⌨  03:18, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

I would consider the United Nations and the CIA World Factbook to be more creditable sources than the African Union though (they even inserted capitalized "Member States" in the middle of a sentence, that's just broken English).

Links:

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/member-states#gotoG

https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/gambia-the/ Vic Park (talk) 10:29, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

References

I'll start an RfC anyway because it is still necessary if you want to overturn the existing consensus. I found Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Capital_letters/Archive_34#Capitalization_of_The in our archives, but only the Bahamas was addressed. There is well-established consensus against moving The Gambia main article to Gambia, but some articles (e.g. Gambia–Senegal border) still use Gambia with no definite article. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 05:03, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

I have distanced myself from this conversation by starting at a highly visible page where the preference cannot be discerned: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Africa#RfC: Name of the small country nestled within Senegal. The formulation of this RfC is based on a recent, somewhat similar RfC about the Solar System, where the disputed term is mentioned only in options and relevant background info, although I opted to place the summary of the dispute after the list of options, and using the name in article titles was unavoidable. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 05:37, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

If "there is no agreement ... in reliable sources whether it should be capitalized" then use lowercase on Wikipedia. See first paragraph of MOS:CAPS.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:15, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Capitalization of equator and prime meridian

In this edit Vic Park (talk · contribs) has capitalized "Equator" when referring to Earth's equator, mentioning Wiktionary in an edit summary. The editor contends it should be capitalized as a proper noun. I contend that since reliable sources such as the online dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster dictionary entries are not capitalized, and there is no mention of capitalizing even when referring to Earth, the word should not be capitalized. Another place, the Prime Meridian, or prime meridian, was also mentioned in edit summaries. The Wikipedia article name for the latter is "Prime meridian" and I believe the first letter is only capitalized because it is the first word of an article. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:38, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

This has been discussed long time ago. Some people prefer to use the lower case word, some people prefer to treat Earth's equator as a proper noun and capitalize the word (just like the earth vs. Earth debate). I was actually one of those people who used the lower case words until someone reverted my edits and showed me the consensus. Apparently, the consensus reached in Wikipedia is that we should treat Earth's poles, hemispheres, and equator etc. as proper nouns and capitalize these terms (e.g. South Pole, Northern Hemisphere, Tropic of Cancer, Arctic Circle etc.).

If you do a bit of research, you would also find a lot of sources that treat Earth's equator as a proper noun and capitalized the word:

Encyclopædia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/place/Equator

National Geographic: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/equator Vic Park (talk) 23:14, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Could you show us where that consensus was reached? Thanks — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 23:50, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

That was long time ago, but I remember this quite clearly because I was someone who used the lower case words for equator, earth, and moon etc. before I was reverted by multiple other editors. I am sure that there are other similar discussions, I just need time to find them. Vic Park (talk) 23:56, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

I searched the archives of talk:equator and talk:prime meridian and found discussion but no consensus about this issue. --Lasunncty (talk) 21:37, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

I found a similar discussion for Earth's hemispheres (which could serve as a precedent for this one):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Southern_Hemisphere#Second_Requested_move Vic Park (talk) 00:05, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

The confusing part is that we only have one article for equator, it is mainly about Earth's equator rather than for general usage, so we might see both lower case equator and capitalized Equator throughout the article, but for prime meridian, we do have two separate articles, one for general usage (prime meridian), the other one for Earth's prime meridian (IERS Reference Meridian, aka the Prime Meridian). Vic Park (talk) 23:38, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

The problem with "Prime Meridian" is it is a redirect, and a valid reason for a redirect is to redirect from an incorrect to a correct version of an article title. Jc3s5h (talk) 01:36, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

I noticed that one as well. I think it is because the article prime meridian itself was moved from Prime Meridian. When people search "Prime Meridian", it really should be redirected to the IERS Reference Meridian instead. N. Mortimer (talk) 03:17, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Comment Earth's equator is definitely a proper noun and it should be capitalised. I think we can create a new article called Earth's equator and use the capitalised "Equator" in that article. The current article equator can be converted into a general article about the term, not just Earth's equator. I mean, we already have articles like Earth's mantle and Earth's orbit, why not creating one for the Equator? N. Mortimer (talk) 03:27, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

The current Equator article is not long enough to require splitting between equators in general and Earth's equator. As for the articles about mantles, Mantle (geology) is rather short and the need for separate articles is debatable. Jc3s5h (talk) 04:25, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Per this ngram, equator is clearly in the lowercase per MOS:CAPS, unless someone can show that Earth's equator is not the major usage. We have this ngram which gives a similar result for prime meridian. The Tropic of Capricorn[1] and Tropic of Cancer[2] give the opposite result. Cinderella157 (talk) 06:26, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Diseases, illnesses, and disorders?

How should the names of such be capitalized (or not capitalized)? ¿V0!d? {Have a great day!} 00:33, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

@VastV0idInSpace0: Generally lower case unless there's a proper noun in the name. For example, the common cold, multiple sclerosis, but Ebola virus disease (named after the Ebola River) and Kaposi's sarcoma (first described by Moritz Kaposi). Hope that helps. SchreiberBike | ⌨  00:53, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you! ¿V0!d? {Have a great day!} 00:57, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it's lowercase by default. Just see any of our good articles on medical conditions.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:59, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints#Requested move 18 December 2022

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints#Requested move 18 December 2022 that may be of interest to members of the Manual of Style WikiProject. ––FormalDude (talk) 01:03, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Result "not moved". And this was about the leading "The", not about capitalization.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:01, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Acts and scenes

Is it correct to capitalize "act" and "scene" in descriptions of dramatic works. ≪"To be or not to be", Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1.≫ Or: "… the transition from Scene 1 to Scene 2 in Act 1 …". -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:44, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

(Bump) I would be grateful for any thoughts in this matter. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 23:20, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm surprised that no one has responded by now; the style geeks here are usually eager to express an opinion. For what its worth, the Chicago Manual of Style recommends lowercase: "Words denoting parts of long poems or acts and scenes of plays are usually lowercased, neither italicized nor enclosed in quotation marks ... act 3, scene 2." Likewise the MLA Handbook: "Terms designating the divisions of a work, such as act, chapter, and introduction, are not capitalized, italicized, or enclosed in quotation marks", with the example "In act 3, scene 1 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream ..." Of course, those are both U.S. guides (and, personally, I'd include a comma after "scene 1" in the MLA's example). Deor (talk) 00:02, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, use lower-case. MoS is based primarily on Chicago and the academic style guides like MLA, so this is the advice we would import if we were to add a rule about it to MoS. Which we probably should not because it's not an issue subject to long-term editwarring.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:03, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Cap "Did not advance" and such in table entries?

I've downcased many thousands of "Did not advance", "Did not start", "Did not finish", "Did not qualify", "Qualified", "Disqualified", etc. in tables of sports results (mostly in the last day or so, but also for many months or years), and had a couple of enquiries as to whether that's the right thing to be doing per the MOS, and a couple of reverts (e.g. [3], [4]; even "Did not Advance"). My interpretation is that caps are not necessary there, and that table entries (not headings) are not like list items (which can have line-leading caps, if consistent). Any opinions/guidance on this? Dicklyon (talk) 09:28, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

A couple of reverts were for where "Did not advance to free skating" and such were used in tables on lines of their own, serving as headings. I agree and have just reverted back a bunch of those "headings", which are functionally distinct from "did not advance" as an entry in a cell or group of cells. Similary for "Did not bat:". I thanked the reverters. Dicklyon (talk) 10:15, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Relevant discussion starts on the topic can be found at these three user talk pages: User talk:Dicklyon#Case fixes and User talk:Oknazevad#Capitalizing first letter of fragments in table entries. and User talk:DragonFury#Why cap this table entry?. Dicklyon (talk) 10:51, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

@Pelmeen10, Why? I Ask, Oknazevad, Anbans 586, DragonFury, Harrias, and Bgsu98: – editors involved in discussions and/or reverts mentioned above. Dicklyon (talk) 10:58, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

@Sahaib: who thanked me for at least one of these edits. Dicklyon (talk) 12:16, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

I had a browse through some of your edits and in my opinion it isn't clear cut. There doesn't appear to be any direct guidance in MOS:CAPS for table items, but the closest relevant section would be MOS:LISTCAPS. I appreciate your point above that there are differences, but I think this sentence applies for general cases "If the list items are sentence fragments, then capitalization should be consistent." In many tables, all cells are capitalised, and in those cases I think it would be odd and inconsistent for the cells featuring the above phrases not to be capitalised. Harrias ^{(he/him) • talk} 11:29, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Can you give an example of tables with all entries capitalized? Dicklyon (talk) 12:18, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

The fragments at Pat Riley#Head coaching record are all capitalized. I'd say if a page was already consistently using either upper or lowercase for fragments, leave as is, unless there was a WikiProject preference.—Bagumba (talk) 13:13, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

That one, with one over-capped column, clearly needs work besides the initial caps. There's no way "Lost in First Round" can be justified the way you're indicating. How about one I changed where the lowercase "did not xxx" conflicts with a style of otherwise using sentence case for fragments? Dicklyon (talk) 20:31, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

WP:HEADERS seems pretty clear about the issue for table headers (and presumably footers too). As to other rows, it seems to be pretty common to use a capital when it's a single word, like Won, Runner-up, Nominated (see the hidden tables at MOS:TABLES#Appropriate use) but lower case is also used sometimes. When it's a longer phrase (perhaps covering multiple columns) then Sentence case seems most widely used, e.g. "Not held due to COVID-19" or "No tournament because of World War II". Nigej (talk) 12:29, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

I think Nigej states it pretty spot-on. oknazevad (talk) 15:02, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

The question is not so much whether it's widely done, but whether it's appropriate in our style. I spent about 200,000 edits last year fixing over-capitalization patterns that were often done but clearly were not appropriate, and I had clear consensus on those when they came up for discussion, which is why I was able to enlist bot help for bulk moves and such. In these entries, wouldn't those fragments look better as "not held due to COVID-19" and "no tournament because of World War II". Dicklyon (talk) 20:31, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Beginning table entries with lowercase letters is just awful. It looks ugly and unrefined, as if someone had copied over a database readout without bothering to clean it up for presentation. The use of a lowercase "did not quality" or "not held due to X" makes articles look worse and unprofessional. SounderBruce 23:43, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, it looks pretty ugly; especially when you didn't decapitalize the other stuff leading to a mix of both sentence case and full lowercase. Appreciate the good faith edit, but you really shouldn't have made such wide spread changes to several dozens of sports pages without prior consensus that full lowercase is the way to go with tables. Why? I Ask (talk) 01:51, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

No they wouldn't look better at all. They'd look like crap. oknazevad (talk) 15:29, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

WP:HEADERS probably comes closest to addressing the question. In general, when we use sentence fragments in captions, headings and like, we are explicitly guided to use sentence case. Consequently, I would see this as the prevailing style to be used in all such cases. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cinderella157 (talk • contribs)

On headings and captions, and such "start of line" things, sentence case is not in dispute. Don't you think fragments in table entries are different (e.g. entries like to be determined or did not participate that just explain why the otherwise expected content is not there)? Nothing in that section about "Table captions and column and row headers" suggests applying it to cell contents. Dicklyon (talk) 02:55, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

This is a mixed bag. Table cells can be populated variously: numbers, single words (eg won/lost), short phrases (eg an event name), sentence fragments and sentences. I acknowledge that row and column headings are a little different and that inherent capitalisation (sentence case) adds emphasis. On further thought, I don't think there is a binary answer and perhaps we should consider the problem differently. I preface my comments by saying they do not apply to words/phrases that are inherently and indisputably proper names. Single words should not be capped and it would be difficult to justify two words. Ten words would clearly be a sentence fragment to use sentence case. Arbitrarily we might set the threshold for sentence case at five words (± ?). There is then a matter of context. If the table entries are largely numbers, abbreviations (initialisms) or, one or two words, then the threshold to cap would be higher. Conversely, if the entries tend more to sentence fragments, the threshold would be lower. We can argue discuss where the threshold is. There is also devil in the whether a particular table is more fish than fowl - but few things in life are perfect. Cinderella157 (talk) 13:44, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

No reason a single word or two can't be considered a sentence fragment, just as single words can be entire sentences. It's all dependent on context. Which would require engaging with the page and its material in more than mere rote , robotic edits.

And lowercase as SounderBruce puts it simple, looks terrible. oknazevad (talk) 15:28, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't believe these changes should be made, but in any case if they are made, they should be done competently, not leaving some stuff capitalized and some stuff lowercased, which makes the whole look a lot more amateuristic and poorly written. I reverted a few of these[5][6] before I noticed this discussion, would support wholesale reversion and a trout for Dicklyon for is umpteenth ill-thought out and poorly executed decapitalization run. He was indef blocked in the past, and unblocked only on the proviso that they would "avoid large scale, potentially controversial actions" (at the time it were page moves). But again and again they start mass edit runs which turn out to be controversial, misguided, unwanted, or poorly executed. Fram (talk) 10:18, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Fram, I agree I'm imperfect, but not incompetent. On the first of those, the contrast is between "Team did not exist" and "did not enter". One of those is a complete sentence; perhaps it deserves a period at the end, or perhaps a rewrite to make them more parallel would be good. I know there are other cases where I genuinely missed downcasing some fragments. It's hard to find and fix everything at once. In the other, some of the "Did not advance" were formatted in the source in a way that my patterns missed, and that problem was under discussion on my talk page, on the list of things I was going to fix. I don't have the ultimate combination of automatic finding and zero false positives yet, but I didn't want to give up the zero false positives, and those ones would be easier to find and examine once the bulk of easier ones were done. But that process is on hold pending discussion. Perhaps if I had a higher level of competence I'd write elaborate scripts to handle all these things, rather than working within what JWB and regex can do for me. As for my unblock conditions, I think you're misrepresenting ancient history. In any case, the point of this discussion is to clarify what the MOS guidance is, or should be, on such things; no need to resort to personal attacks. Dicklyon (talk) 09:11, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

More importantly, once more a simple reversion has turned into a long discussion because Dicklyon can't accept that people disagree with him. Again. oknazevad (talk) 15:30, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Discussion is what is supposed to happen when there is a dispute.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:26, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

I in fact started this discussion here in recognition of the fact that a couple of people expressed disagreement with me, by a tiny number of reverts and a comment on my talk page. Dicklyon (talk) 09:11, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Turns out this is already in the MOS. WP:LISTCASE says use sentence case, even for a fragment. Which includes an initial capital. oknazevad (talk) 12:39, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

To me, there's a pretty clear distinction between a list item and a table entry. I've been operating that way for years, and this is the first time I got any pushback. Dicklyon (talk) 21:04, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

A table is just a list structured into columns. Should still use the same principle of treating each entry as a sentence fragment written in sentence case, including if it's just one word. oknazevad (talk) 00:26, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

I understand your point of view. But I don't agree with it. To me a cell in a table is not like a list item; more like a list item fragment, e.g. a bit that follows a dash, which we do not capitalize. Dicklyon (talk) 04:19, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

And I understand your point of view, but it still looks sloppy to have some entries in a given column lowercase and others capitalized. It's terrible visually. oknazevad (talk) 14:51, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

We use sentence case for headings and subheadings, and we should do the same for the "titles" of table columns and rows. Tony (talk) 23:02, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

@Tony1: Yes, we all agree on that. The question is about cells in tables that are not row or column heading (nor any other kind of heading). Dicklyon (talk) 04:19, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

There's no reason at all to poke readers' eyes out by sprinkling unnecessary caps through table cells. None. Tony (talk) 05:28, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

As SounderBruce says above, it looks unrefined and unprofessional to start with lowercase. By a quick head count, it seems like only two people are calling for all lowercase all the time, so there's clearly no consensus for writing such into the MOS. oknazevad (talk) 14:45, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

There's not currently any proposal on the table to modify what the MOS says about caps. It already says to avoid unnecessary caps, and says when to cap, and table cells are not it. We could clarify that fragments in table cells should be capped when they serve as headings. The opinions about what looks better are of course variable, but not very relevant to the discussion. Dicklyon (talk) 21:26, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Right, currently the MOS is unclear regarding charts. This discussion is clearly (if you pardon the pun) about finding a standard which should apply. Considering everything in the MOS is ultimately just consensus opinion about what looks best (being that writing is a visual medium), the discussion is about opinions. oknazevad (talk) 22:15, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

MOS:RACECAPS

For the last few years, those of us who edit the Indigenous articles, many of whom participate in the Indigenous Wikiproject have been standardizing the capitalization of "Indigenous", as this is the convention in the world at large at this time. Older print sources don't always do it, so there are sources that have both. But we are going with those preferred by the people being described. I've added the ones we have up now, such as those from the Associated Press, The Chicago Manual of Style, The Native American Journalists Association, and the APA Style. There are many more who just haven't published their style guides, but their use of this convention can be seen in reading sources that are considered reliable for Indigenous coverage. I have tweaked the sources a bit at the wikiproject page, and in the WP:TRIBE notes, and fixed a link. So, my proposal is to simply add the word "Indigenous" in this part, as it is a synonym for "Native American", with a footnote link to the fuller explanations at WP:TRIBE. Current text:

Ethno-racial "color labels" may be given capitalized (Black and White) or lower-case (black and white). The capitalized form will be more appropriate in the company of other upper-case terms of this sort (Asian–Pacific, Black, Hispanic, Native American, and White demographic categories).

Proposed:

Ethno-racial "color labels" may be given capitalized (Black and White) or lower-case (black and white). The capitalized form will be more appropriate in the company of other upper-case terms of this sort (Asian–Pacific, Black, Hispanic, Native American, Indigenous, and White demographic categories).

Notes

- CorbieVreccan ^☊ ☼ 21:01, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

• Support: As someone that tries to capitalize "Indigenous" in any article that I come across where it has not happened already I concur that this alteration to MOS policy is needed. I haven't been reverted to this point but I have heard of others that have faced issues. Almost all modern sources that I run across already capitalize the word when used no matter the context. --ARoseWolf 21:16, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
• Support. Capitalizing Indigenous when referring to people is definitely a done deal with major style guides, as CorbieVreccan has already demonstrated with links to Chicago, AP, APA, etc. Major news sources are also on board, e.g. The New York Times. Indigenous and Native American identity is assuredly not a racial identity, so I'm wondering if there could be other shortcuts than MOS:RACECAPS. Perhaps MOS:IDENTITYCAPS? MOS:POCCAPS? Yuchitown (talk) 04:25, 16 November 2022 (UTC)Yuchitown

  Completely agree this needs to be addressed in ways and places that clarify this is not racial. I think we need at least a brief mention at RACECAPS, as most non-Natives still tend to look first in the racial category (see current text above). But we can hopefully use this to clarify and link to better explanations. I'll go look at the other ones you mention. Please suggest improvements in wording for those and link if you have ideas for them. Best, - CorbieVreccan ^☊ ☼ 18:55, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

  @Yuchitown and ARoseWolf: I'm looking at MOS:ETHNICITY. There has been some back and forth there over this, but not recently. Currently we only have a footnote at MOS:ETHNICITY. Editors unfamiliar with Indigenous issues have wanted to take tribal citizenship out of the lede of BLPs, citing this policy, insisting NDN-ID is "ethnicity". But the policy is clear that citizenship goes in the lede. I'm posting on talk over there now and would appreciate input: MOS:ETHNICITY and citizenship. Thanks! - CorbieVreccan ^☊ ☼ 20:37, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

  Also noting, per Yuchitown, that in addition to The New York Times [7], here are some more WP:RS sources that also capitalize "Indigenous" when referring to the people: Chicago Tribune [8], Los Angeles Times [9], The Christian Science Monitor [10], Forbes [11], Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC): [12], The Guardian [13]. Just off the top of my head. - CorbieVreccan ^☊ ☼ 21:55, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

• Comment It is stated: this is the convention in the world at large at this time; however, this is not supported by ngram evidence here and here. The term is not inherently a proper noun. It may be appropriate to capitalise it in certain cases but not in all instances. I would also observe that WP:TRIBE has evolved to give advice that is at odds with MOS:CAPS. It would capitalise circumpolar in Circumpolar peoples which is contrary to the ngram evidence and tribe in Tribe of Naphtali which is contrary to the ngram evidence. Cinderella157 (talk) 06:55, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

  See what I said about out of date books that regard Indigenous peoples as subhuman, categorized the same way as flora and fauna. Those are the uses/stats that are throwing off the results in the links you shared. The changes instituted by Chicago MOS, AP, APA, and the NYT, which are now standard usage by them and other journalists, are contemporary efforts to correct that bias. The CAPS and TRIBE pages are at odds for the moment, yes; that's why we're here to update MOS:CAPS to be in line with contemporary usage, not out of date, denigrating tomes. - CorbieVreccan ^☊ ☼ 18:51, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

  Where you have stated this is the convention in the world at large at this time, I am referring to the recent portion of the ngram evidence. Cinderella157 (talk) 23:39, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

  The problem with the ngrams evidence is it doesn't draw a distinction between the term as used to describe people groups, and the term as used in other contexts. All of the style guides seem to universally recommend using a capital I when describing people groups and a lower case i when describing, say, for example, animals or plants. Thus Indigenous Australians, but indigenous grasses would be expected. Your ngram search ignores this, and this isn't really a valid examination of usage, especially not in opposition to style guides, since styles guides do recommend the lowercase usage for non-human contexts! If you pull out usages that apply only to people groups, you can see a clear trend even in ngrams for capital usage, Indigenous Australians vs. indigenous Australians shows about a 4-to-1 advantage for the capital form. Similar results are shown for Canadians, etc. When a more nuanced ngrams analysis is done, and taken in as one of the many pieces of evidence along side the style guides, it is pretty easy to see that the tipping point has already passed. If this poll were taken 3 years ago, I would likely have voted against it. Today, in 2022, it is clear that the correct usage is with the capital I. --Jayron32 18:49, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

  I have not ignored anything but the comment suggests that my second ngram has been ignored. Ngram searches can be refined as in the second I presented, which is clearly showing the predominant uses relate to people. There is also nuance in what APA and the Guardian are saying as opposed to a blanket capital I. If my comment is read in full, I would agree that there are instances when it should be capped and this would be supported by ngrams - such as Indigenous Australians which has a specific referent and is capped about 82% on most recent data. As I have said, It may be appropriate to capitalise it in certain cases but not in all instances. Cinderella157 (talk) 07:49, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

• Support per CMOS Here and AP Style guide here and APA here. For the British side of things the Guardian is but one example I've found. This is not exhaustive. Wikipedia should reflect what reliable sources do; while in many cases this is a recent change to such style guides (often within the past few years), it is clearly now something that has become the norm; and Wikipedia's MOS should reflect that. --Jayron32 18:35, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose (for reasons given in the original discussion). This entire thread is a duplicate discussion of one already open on the same page: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Cap Indigenous?.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:58, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. "Indigenous" is not a name, and in particular not a name for any specific group of people. It is just a word, not a name, meaning the long-term inhabitants of a place. The fact that it is a word that refers to certain types of people is not a reason to capitalize it, any more than we capitalize Men or Women or Babies or Redheads. It is possible that some specific groups of people have a name that incorporates this word (although I note that the example I thought to use, Indigenous Australians, does not capitalize "indigenous" in-text), and when it is incorporated into a name it could be capitalized just like any other word incorporated into a name: Encyclopedia Brittanica is capitalized because it is a name even though the word encyclopedia when used as a word is not. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:08, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose - as it's not a proper name. PS - Why is this duplicate discussion occurring? GoodDay (talk) 08:10, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
• Support - per nom as it's the same reasoning I stated in the previous discussion. The previous discussion was not voting to make a change so I don't why it's "bad" to make a new one that is straight to the point with styles guides backing up the proposed change. This one is much more organized to follow along. oncamera _{(talk page)} 13:59, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
• Support - in the context of Aborigine, Native American, Black, White, Hispanic, First Nation, etc... Indigenous should also be capitalized per consistency and what you'll usually see in google searches. It looks like most articles that capitalize Native American, also capitalize Indigenous and Aborigine. It's when indigenous and aborigine are used alone in articles that I tend to see lower case. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:31, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose, especially since the "note" goes to a recent undiscussed addition that says to cap Indigenous and such, which is contrary to what looked it looks like we saw in the previous discussion on this page. Probably that change at WP:TRIBE should be rolled back until a discussion finds a consensus for it. Dicklyon (talk) 19:21, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose upper case but support a note that indigenous should, in most circumstances, be lower case. 122.62.120.118 (talk) 04:39, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Up & down casing of acronym & initialism expansion

IMHO, our MOS doc is overly tricky regarding our guidelines for the expansion casing of acronyms & initialisms. There are more than a dozen scattered, brief, and muddy paragraphs of MOS guidelines on the topic and very few clear sample expansions showing our preferred casings. It would be helpful to consolidate the MOS acronym paragraphs into one guideline area and also to add more samples. I will expand on this thread with specifics. Right now the fragmentation, muddiness, and brevity of the paragraphs in our MOS cause unnecessary confusion & editing drama. Following our MOS needs to be simpler for mainstream & newbie editors who do not have their Ph.D. in our MOS nuances. Please post shortcuts to all the MOS caps guidance you are aware of regarding acronym & initialism expansion. Hint: the unchecked default on the wild Wiki is title casing, whereas my read is that sentence casing would more often satisfy our MOS. Thank you to all of you here that do the heavy lifting on the technical issues in the MOS department! I truly appreciate your hard work, dedication, and effort. You are all rock stars. Cheers! {{u|WikiWikiWayne}} {Talk} 18:56, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

• MOS:CAPSACRS says "Do not apply initial capitals in a full term that is a common-noun phrase, just because capitals are used in its abbreviation. Similarly, when showing the source of an acronym or syllabic abbreviation, emphasizing the letters that make up the acronym is undesirable." and links to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Abbreviations#Expanded forms (aka MOS:EXPABBR), which says "Do not apply initial capitals—or any other form of emphasis—in a full term that is a common-noun phrase just because capitals are used in its abbreviation". I agree that both could use better examples of what not to do, since it is done often in WP and even more on the world wild web. Dicklyon (talk) 04:25, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

  @Dicklyon: How's this [14]? Feel free to substitute with other examples; I just borrowed (and shortend) these from MOS:EXPABBR for MOS:CAPSACRS.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:01, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

  That looks OK to me.

  @WikiWikiWayne: does this help you resolve your questions? Is there more we should consider? Dicklyon (talk) 09:41, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Use of "Christ" or "Jesus Christ" not discussed

And yet I thought I'd seen discussion in an MoS at some point. Seems relevant here. Doug Weller talk 08:58, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: there's MOS:JESUS, leading to a paragraph in the Judaism-related MoS. If you prefer a more mainstream venue to expand on this, might I suggest MOS:HON? The current page, MOS:Capital letters, treats the capitalisation of words/names. --HyperGaruda (talk) 19:12, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure I read you're confusion. Other than committing the etymological fallacy of assuming that merely because "Christ" in the context of Jesus Christ was originally not a personal name doesn't mean that English doesn't treat it as one. Basically all of English treats it that way, and it's a novel change to the language to lower-case it merely because it didn't originate as a personal name. The MOS shouldn't be in the business of introducing novel changes to English, even if at some time in the mists of history, Christ wasn't considered a personal name. --Jayron32 19:20, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

The Jayron32's analysis is convincing to me, but I think there might also be some difference in how different people, of different religions and cultures, react to it. Some people understand it as a title, and others don't. There are probably people who think it's a surname, and there are probably people who have only encountered it as a swear word. Wikipedia:WikiProject Judaism/Manual of Style#Jesus recommends not using what is/was a title.

Speaking of which, MOS:CAPS is the wrong place to talk about this. I don't think we need to write this down, and I don't think that writing it down will stop the problem, but if we did, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography#Titles of people would probably be the correct place for it. Perhaps if you decide to pursue it, you could deal with the misuse of the US title "President". The US only has one president at a time. Former presidents are properly addressed by their most senior non-unique past title: Governor Clinton, Senator Obama, and Mr. Trump – and in Wikipedia articles, by their names, perhaps with the occasional "then-president" or "the former president" thrown in as an explanation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:13, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

I mean, certain things are just going to be sui generis and that's okay. It's not a traditional "Personal Name-Family Name" construction, yes, "Christ" is a title and not a name, but ultimately, playing the etymology game makes little to no difference. I know of exactly zero mainstream English language sources that recommend writing it Jesus christ or even christ in isolation. Usage is always Jesus Christ and Christ in isolation, always capital. You can invent any reason you want for or against that usage, but it's irrelevant to the matter at hand. The prevalence of Christ (capitalized) vs. christ (not) is so overwhelmingly in favor of the capitalized version in all contexts that that's the only reason we need. --Jayron32 16:58, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

But there's not a recurrent "we should lower-case that" dispute about it, so it is not something MoS should address.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:40, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

RACECAPS CONFORM?

MOS:RACECAPS is our current guidance on capitalizing ethno-racial color labels (e.g. Black/black, White/white), and it emphasizes the need for consistency within an article. How have editors interpreted this when it comes to direct quotations? MOS:CONFORM says "Formatting and other purely typographical elements of quoted text should be adapted to English Wikipedia's conventions without comment" and later describes such recommended changes as "alterations which make no difference when the text is read aloud". Does this apply to ethno-racial color labels? I'm not pushing for a change to this guideline, just wondering what common practice is. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:56, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I would read MOS:CONFORM as meaning that we make the article consistent, as that's what the rules say at MOS:RACECAPS. Capital letters are a "purely typographical element", so we're allowed to change direct quotes in that context. --Jayron32 18:48, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't. Especially sources that apply a "Black but white" double standard; that is a leftist socio-political stance especially in (and mostly confined to) US writing, and is not "purely typographical", but memetically loaded. WP shouldn't be using it in our own voice, but we shouldn't be effectively censoring quoted material that uses it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:04, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

multiple split proper nouns?

Which is correct

• ...defeated French troops at the Battles of Roliça and Vimeiro

or

• ...defeated French troops at the battles of Roliça and Vimeiro

or is it personal choice? Herostratus (talk) 03:21, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Since book usage (n-gram stats) don't suggest consistent capitalization of either, it's no contest. Even if both were proper names, I'd probably go with the lowercase plural, as stats suggest. Dicklyon (talk) 04:41, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

• Use lower case. Same as we would for companies/corporations or universities in the plural.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:11, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Person of Color

The page currently includes "... person/people of colo[u]r is not offensive, and not capitalized". I venture that instead the phrase should be with black/Black and white/White in that it can be "Person of Color" or "person of color", and the choice depends upon the same considerations. I propose to edit the article accordingly. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 14:57, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Do you have evidence from well-respected style guides that the term "person/people of colo(u)r" is supposed to be capitalized? Generally Wikipedia strives to reflect existing scholarship on the topic; what do other style guides (the Chicago Manual of Style, Strunk and White, MLA, APA, AP Style Guide, etc.) have to say on the matter? --Jayron32 16:01, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Excellent question! My quick search gives the answer ... indeed I do not have style guides to back this. It is either the case that the folks I work with are ahead of our time and it will take the rest of you a while to catch up ... or we are a backwater and can be safely ignored for our straying from the norm. Time will tell. Pending finding it in a reputable style guide, I withdraw the suggestion. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 16:54, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Finding it in "a" reputable style guide wouldn't settle the question either; we'd want to see it agreed upon in a preponderance of major style guides.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:51, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

"Person of color" is overwhelmingly lowercase in sources. Dicklyon (talk) 08:59, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Agreed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:42, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Should we update/hedge "is not offensive"? Our own article on the term observes that "Many critics of the term, both white and non-white, object to its lack of specificity and find the phrase racially offensive" and that "Political scientist Angelo Falcón argues that the use of broad terms like "person of color" is offensive", and there are more examples. EddieHugh (talk) 18:26, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Have at it. Our page probably should not be making such a blanket statement, which verges on an endorsement PoV.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:42, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Does Angelo Falcón and the other examples represent the preponderance of scholarship on the issue? I mean, I can find a non-trivial number of people who find any given thing offensive. I'm not saying it isn't offensive, but we would need more than the say so of a single political scientist to establish that. --Jayron32 18:53, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Is there a lot of reason to use the term in wiki voice anyway? I assume that its potential for offense is outweighed by the fact that its use is always going to be connected to a source or existing discussion of the topics. We shouldn’t be going around using such a nebulous term for our own reasons, whether or not it is offensive (where better writing would favor listing ethnicities specifically). — HTGS (talk) 18:58, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Heritage-listed things

Sometimes (often) we use title-case article titles for things that are listed in title case in heritage listings, e.g. Pyrmont and Glebe Railway Tunnels; other times we don't, e.g. Glebe and Wentworth Park railway viaducts. I've recently been riding the L1 light rail line and exploring both of these areas that are part of the same system finished back in 1922; got lots more photos to upload. But I couldn't help but notice the capitalization inconsistency. My impression is that people who make articles on things that wouldn't be notable except for the heritage listing like to copy the title case from the listing, as there are typically few or no other sources using the same name or description. But does that make it a proper name? Or just a title-cased description? I can't find many sources with names for the railway tunnels in Pyrmont or Glebe. The heritage site uses "Glebe railway tunnel" in text, and just descriptive terms on the other one, so I suppose I'll downcase it. Dicklyon (talk) 08:49, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Similarly, I downcased "building" in Railway Institute Building, and provide the missing article "the" where it seemed sensible. Dicklyon (talk) 12:06, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Any opinions on heritage-listed things more generally? For things like the Smith–Jones House and Farm, we routinely capitalize, even though the title is essentially descriptive, just because it got stuck on a hertitage list that way (though usually listed with a hyphen when a dash is appropriate). There are typically no sources using the name unless it has been made into a park or something, in which case it is more clearly a proper name. I'm not proposing to go and downcase all the houses, but wondering what others think about such things. Dicklyon (talk) 09:22, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

I would go lower-case on these things, since independent sources are not near-consistently capitalizing them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:07, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

The trouble is that independent sources pretty much don't use the names at all. The heritage listings just took descriptive terms and title-cased them for their own purposes. I think it's a bit nutty to cap "House" in the Smith–Jones House, but I also think it would be nutty to take on trying to change that; it would be a bigger task than the downcasing of "Men's Singles" etc. in tennis was – not something I'd step into again; and some of them do get picked up, e.g. as parks, and appear capped in sources. But I'll downcase some purely descriptive ones when they poke me hard. Dicklyon (talk) 13:15, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Grape varieties

I wish to repost a question which I originally posted on WT:Manual of Style/Organisms but which received no reply.

What's the standard for grape varieties such as Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon or Sauvignon Blanc? For example, currently the article on Pinot Noir apparently consistently does not capitalize ("pinot noir"). Cabernet Sauvignon does capitalize the name of that variety, but otherwise the capitalization appears to be not very consistent: in the lead we have "the grape is ... the product of a chance crossing between Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon blanc ...". Here, both words in "Cabernet Franc" are capitalized, but only the first word in "Sauvignon blanc". Why is that? What would be the official rules? -- 04:58, 24 April 2023 (UTC) 2001:16B8:A8:2900:B834:EF24:15B0:A140 (talk) 04:58, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Book n-grams suggest that capitalization of wine grape varieties really took off in the 1970s and 1980s, but that recently the lowercase usage is making a big rebound. I can see why one would capitalize Franc but not blanc or noir, base on proper-name derivation of the former. Dicklyon (talk) 05:21, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

The official rule is that (from the lead paragraph of this section of our Manual of Style) "Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia." (emphasis in the original)

However people who edit in various subject areas spend time with the specialist literature for that area and feel that we should follow the style of the specialist literature. They often feel strongly that Wikipedia looks wrong if it looks different from what they see in their sources. I've read books about butterflies that capitalize the common names of butterfly species, but do not capitalize the names of birds or other species. That's fine in a book about butterflies, but Wikipedia is an encyclopedia about all things.

What I'm saying, to directly answer your question, is that grape varieties, not used as formal cultivar names, which do not include place names or other proper nouns should be in lower case because they are not "consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources". Wine lovers may disagree, but we should follow Wikipedia's long established style. The other question is whether it's worth your time to make the changes and then probably argue about them. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 13:23, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Agreed with SchreiberBike. This over-capitalization is yet another WP:Specialized-style fallacy. They're not cultivar names. I'm not sure even franc should be capitalized; cabernet franc is a French term, and French does not capitalize modifiers derived from proper names the way English would capitalize French. Thus bœuf bourguignon, not bœuf Bourguignon.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:01, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

It should be noted that consistently does not mean 100%. Cherrypicking sources that don't capitalize so as to give greater impression that it is more widespread than it is probably is a bad idea. It's trivial to find at least a few sources one way or the other. --Jayron32 13:10, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

We expect to see about 90%+ capitalization, in sources independent of the subject, to consider it consistently capitalized.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:19, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Changing case of, e.g., title, section, per WP:CONFORM?

Often publications have e.g., chapter name, section names, titles, in all capitals. It would be helpful to have explicit guidance on when, whether and how to change the case per WP:CONFORM when citing parts of such works.

If such case change is appropriate, is there a widget to automate case changes to parameters of citation templates? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 10:32, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

It says so in the section you cited. To directly quote it "Underlining, spac ing within words, colors, ALL CAPS, small caps, etc. should generally be normalized to plain text." If capitalization doesn't conform to Wikipedia's manual of style, it's okay to alter direct quotes on matters purely related to text formatting. That includes capitalization. --Jayron32 10:58, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Yep. Also says so at MOS:TITLECONFORM.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:33, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Ancient, classical

What are the rules regarding the capitalisation of words ancient and classical in language names? I see that the article Ancient Greek uses capitalised Ancient, but this MOS guideline provides examples such as ancient Latin, Gaulish, etc. as well as classical Latin, Greek. --TadejM ^{my talk} 00:21, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

See lead of MOS:CAPS: If it's not capitalized near-consistently in most sources, don't capitalize it here. Most of these phrases are not treated as proper names, but are descriptive. Ancient Greek (better Koine Greek or something else more specific) and Classical Latin are generally treated as proper names. So are Old English, Old French, Old Irish (same with the middle versions: Middle English, etc.). But "ancient Gaulish" is just a descriptive phrase (and a redundant one, since Gaulish was extinct by the Medieval period). And "classical Greek" is just a descriptive phrase. If MoS is giving "classical Latin" as an example, that's a mistake.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:54, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. The text contains "letterforms in classical Latin, Greek, and other unicase scripts". I don't think classical should be capitalised here as it also refers to Greek and is thus descriptive rather than part of a proper name.--TadejM ^{my talk} 17:04, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Right.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:55, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Case-fixing progress

As many of you know, I have been somewhat focused on fixing over-capitalization recently, with about 30,000 edits so far in 2023, and about 200,000 edits in 2022. My typical MO, when I'm not otherwise too busy, is to click through "random articles" looking for obvious over-capping. When I see something, I fix it, like I did here a few minutes ago. Then I do a search on some of the things I fixed to see if they are patterns that repeat in other articles. In this case, I found only one more, and fixed it. But sometimes I find thousands more, so I work on those via JWB. In a few cases (see for example some sections above and some recent or open RM discussions), I get some pushback, so I stop and discuss. This is less than 1% of cases, I think, and has been almost all from sports enthusiasts wanting to cap things that are not so commonly capped in sources (not surprisingly, since most of the over-capitalization I found and worked on was in sports articles). Depending on how discussion goes, my attempts stop, or resume. These edits have fixed well over a million unnecessary capital letters, with very little controversy and pushback, and I think help make the encyclopedia better by having caps really mean something, in conformance with our Manual of Style and the usually strong consensus to follow what it says at MOS:CAPS. I'm not expecting any great kudos for this work, but I'm happy that I've gotten more thanks than complaints. Progress. It's hard to say how much more is to be done, but I find I have to click a lot of random articles before noticing any over-capping problems these days. I hope people will continue to scrutinize my edits, and speak up if I make mistakes, as I sometimes do. Dicklyon (talk) 08:51, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Keep on keeping on. I do similar work, but not as much and especially less lately as my life has changed in positive ways. I feel like there will always be usage projects to take on, but I do feel like things are getting better. I've no skill as an article writer, so I'm glad I can help the make the content that others add better. On great occasion, there's some pushback, but it's rare. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 03:56, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Quantity-wise, WP:JWB has been an amazing breakthrough. But I've also had to learn to, and agree to, get clear consensus for any bulk high-speed edits, as if a bot. So that sometimes slows it down a bit. Life would be better if JWB was a bit smarter and more flexible, e.g. in providing ways to not match and change patterns in filenames and reference titles. In filenames, changes get quickly fixed by the editors who watch a category that catches such things, so are not a huge problem. In reference titles, even if you check "ignore unparsed contexts" or whatever it's called, it does ahead and makes changes; if you try to lowercase there via the subst:lc: magic, it doesn't subst it and leaves a nasty mess in the article code. Fortunately, therse are easy to find and fix in a second pass. It shouldn't be this hard. If I knew how to build my own scripts, maybe I could make it easier. I'd be happy to collaborate with a better hacker who wants to help. My brother who writes Javascript for a hobby refuses to get involved. Dicklyon (talk) 09:11, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Sometimes progress on case fixing is hard due to the shear numbers of sports fans, rail fans, or whatever, that like to capitalize their stuff. For example, the RM just closed with no consensus because "While those in support had a stronger argument, the argument was not sufficiently strong to overcome the numerical opposition to this proposal" as the non-admin closer put it, even those many of the opposers just repeated things that were clearly false. Without more people taking style issues seriously, it will generally be difficult to make progress toward compliance with guidelines in areas that can be dominated by fans of over-capitalization of their special stuff. Oh, well, win some, lose some. Dicklyon (talk) 11:02, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

I found another big area of over-capitalization: Stars, Actors, Writers, Producers, Directors, Hosts, Co-Hosts, Narrators, etc. of TV Film, TV Series, etc. I did about 10,000 edits on that in the last few days, fixing maybe 100,000 unneeded capital letters. A few mistakes were reverted (which I gave thanks for), but so far no pushback on this. Further checking is always welcome. Dicklyon (talk) 06:24, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

I was over-optimistic on the sports progress, I think. I found and fixed a few thousand more football, and a thousand or so volleyball articles with widespread over-capitalization of staff and player positions and such. Looks like the same will apply to other sports. Dicklyon (talk) 11:28, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

@Jweiss11: Doing lots more sports case fixing, I ran into this one with a claim of proper name status: BCS National Championship Game. The "logo" and many sources don't consider "Game" to be part of the name, so I could see compromising on BCS National Championship game or just BCS National Championship. Then there are contexts such as "their first BCS National Championship", which should be "their first BCS national championship", right? Dicklyon (talk) 23:59, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

I believe BCS National Championship Game is a proper name, and the article is named accordingly. It is specifically the national title game of the Bowl Championship Series. The winner of the BCS National Championship Game wins a "BCS National Championship", also a proper name. A generic "national championship" in college football, referring to a title won in any of a number of eras via a number of different methods is definitely not a proper name though. If you think the capitalization of "BCS National Championship Game" is wrong, you should open a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football or Talk:BCS National Championship Game. Similarly, there is College Football Playoff National Championship, the successor to the BCS. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:12, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

@Dicklyon:, also note that National Football League Draft (NFL Draft) is a proper noun. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:48, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Why do you say so? Sources disagree. Dicklyon (talk) 00:19, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

The Ngram Viewer chart from Google shows "NFL draft" and "NFL Draft" reaching near parity in recent years. And the prevalence of generic references to "draft" does not necessarily invalidate the existence the proper noun "Draft" if it also occurs in substantial volume. Whatever the case, the main article here is National Football League Draft. Until that article is renamed, we should consider it a proper noun here on Wikipedia. Jweiss11 (talk) 05:24, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

That "near parity in recent years" is likely driven by people copying Wikipedia's over-capitalization. Either way, it's nowhere near the threshold specified in MOS:CAPS. And if you're saying there are some contexts where it's not a proper name, and some where it is, could you give a couple of examples at least? If we could distinguish difference uses, one of which is a proper name and one of which is not, we could use that to settle the issue (sort of like I suggested on the national championship thing). Dicklyon (talk) 07:28, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Here's another look at recent 50+ years: [15]. Only in 2011 was there a majority capitalization of Draft in National Football League Draft. For NFL Draft, only 2019, the most year for which we have stats. I don't think this means the world has recently promoted this to a proper name, especially considering the hack by which WP decided to re-cap it in 2016. Dicklyon (talk) 11:13, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

The BCS thing is more complicated. In some years, lowercase "game" is in a clear majority. And while "National Championship" is majority capped, it's hardly "consistetly" so. Dicklyon (talk) 11:39, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

'Google shows "NFL draft" and "NFL Draft" reaching near parity in recent years' - which means WP will still lower-case it. See the first two sentences of MOS:CAPS. We expect to see near-uniformity of capitalization in sources (and ones that are independent of the subject). 'Until that article is renamed, we should consider it a proper noun here on Wikipedia.' No, it doesn't work like that. WP is not a source for itself (WP:CIRCULAR).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:38, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish:, I'm not suggesting that Wikipedia is a source here. I'm suggesting that the article's title is principal place where we reflect the common name for the subject per reliable sources. It's stilly to downcase the D in wikilinks and references to National Football League Draft around Wikipedia while the article itself has a capital D in its name. If the D should be down-cased, then propose an article move. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:10, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

On the NFL Draft issue, I've started an RM discussion as suggested. It's linked under #Current above. Dicklyon (talk) 09:25, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

@Jweiss11: I hope that the source evidence, in combination with guidelines, is convincing enough that you and other football fans will get behind lowercase. Let us know if the case is not clear. Dicklyon (talk) 11:26, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: By "football fans" did you mean to say "football content experts"? Jweiss11 (talk) 12:01, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

No, I just meant the fans, the ones who like to make their area look more glitzy by over-capitalization and such. Most editors in this content area, like in most content areas, focus on content and don't fight people who focus on styling; the "fans" are not those. Dicklyon (talk) 22:23, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

The main problem is that sports editors don't seem to know about MOS:JOBTITLE. Every player position, every staff position, in every imaginable style or context, is title-cased. I've been fixing these for months; just did a few thousand more in football, from Tight Ends to Graduate Assistants. The over-capitalization of events that aren't capped in sources is small potatoes by comparison, but that's what they fight for. Dicklyon (talk) 13:08, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, good work. You are a great Editor! — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 14:33, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

@Dicklyon:, the sorts of editors that capitalize generic positions like "graduate assistant" and "tight end" will never be convinced by any argument that you or I make, because they will never read any argument that you or I make. Those sorts of edits are made by IPs, short-lived, fly-by editors, and perennially disengaged silo editors that never engage in discussions. The editors participating at Talk:2024 NFL Draft and those who contribute regularly at places like Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football are a totally different set of editors. These editors, which include me, sometimes have principled objections to your efforts to downcase entities we believe are actually proper nouns. Jweiss11 (talk) 19:23, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

The bulk of these over-capitalizations have long been the standard in the sports area, not from fly-by-night editors. It's just that the editors had little interest or exposure to capitalization issues, and there's a general tendency to cap what's important to you. Fortunately, they usually accept the change since it's obvious that you can't claim "Tight End" as a proper name or trademark, so these go OK. And I'm OK with principled objections, but in the case of the NFL Draft, the arguments are being made in contradiction to the evidence; it's OK for you to have and express the opinion that it's a proper noun, but it would be good to temper that in light of evidence that says most sources don't treat it as such. Dicklyon (talk) 21:57, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

And there a bit of an WP:OWN issue with the siloing you suggest. Some of us work "horizontally" across projects and should be given as much weight as those who work in "verticals". Dicklyon (talk) 22:02, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Okay, when I used to term "silo" above it was to describe the sort of editor that edits but never engages in discussion with other editors. That's not a good behavior, and I certainly don't support it. I made no comment there about editors who work "vertically" on one topic versus editors who work "horizontally" on a broad range of topics. So whatever "WP:OWN" you see there is your invention born of your misunderstanding. As for "standard in the sports area", the over-capitalization of things like "tight end" or "graduate assistant" are not the work of currently active sports editors with which are you likely to engage in discussion. These are either 1) relics from 10+ years ago when the general quality of Wikipedia was much lower, 2) the work of fly-by/IP editors, or 3) the work of more tenured, but disengaged ("siloed") editors, many of whom do things like create 2023 college football team articles (e.g. 2023 Marist Red Foxes football team) by copying and roughly adapting the analogous 2022 article. Any bad format in the older article tends to get transposed on to the new one. Jweiss11 (talk) 23:15, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

That transporting of old errors to new is why I think it's worthwhile to spend my time working on fixing these things. We see a similar transporting of WP over-capitalization to outside sources, as writers trust us too much. Dicklyon (talk) 10:02, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

With the Internet, there's a lot more amateur sportswriters than in the past with sites like SB Nation, Bleacher Report, FanNation, etc. They might see ESPN with "Tight End" in a player profile[[16] and think that is standard, or think "WR" must mean that wide receiver should be Wide Receiver; afterall, even MOS:CAPSACRS warns: Do not apply initial capitals in a full term that is a common-noun phrase, just because capitals are used in its abbreviation Or course, WP is full of amateur writers (myself included)—Bagumba (talk) 11:07, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

For sure. And some of those "amateurs" are actually professionals, book writers, etc. We've seen lots of clear examples of Wikipedia info being copied into books (often correct, but often enough wrong). I'm pretty sure the same is happening with over-capitalization, too. Not that we have a ton of it, but where we have it, it self-reinforces. Dicklyon (talk) 20:57, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Aye. In some of the topics that I "work", I very regularly run into erroneous stuff in "professional" writing that was obviously copied from a Wikipedia article that had wrong, unsourced or badly sourced stuff in it, and the off-site writer/reuser did not bother to check whether it was reliable. Then we get into WP:CIRCULAR problems when the error in the source is cited as evidence to use in the WP article to retain the wrong information. That negative feedback loop clearly applies to bad style choices, too. It's pretty obvious that MoS-noncompliant style (overcapitalization, etc.) – which tends strongly to run in certain topics, due to wikiproject WP:CONLEVEL problems – gets copied by off-site writers, and then fans of the divergent style try to rely on such material to push the over-capitalization (or whatever) as a new norm for WP to adopt. It ties in also with the fallacious idea that MoS should throw out any rule that editors aren't assiduously following, as if editors actually memorize MoS, rather than using it as a WP:GNOME cleanup guide and as a dispute-settling mechanism.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:04, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Stylistic Uppercase similar to MOS:LCITEMS

MOS:LCITEMS says Wikipedia articles may use lowercase variants of personal names if they have regular and established use in reliable third party sources, why is this not also true of uppercase variants? For example MF DOOM, who has specifically requested his name be stylized as such. 2601:603:207E:170:D0E4:8ED5:FBD:A9C5 (talk) 19:36, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Probably because it conflicts with MOS:TM: WP doesn't mimic "MARKETING ALL-CAPS" style. We'd need to find some way to change both guidelines that doesn't cause unforseen problems later, and that could be tricky. Meanwhile zero editors are going to be confused by the current lead at MF Doom, which says "best known by his stage name MF Doom or simply Doom (both stylized in all caps)". I.e., there's not a real problem to fix. The question also comes up whether we should be making the all-lowercase exception at all. E.g., it simply isn't true that nearly all sources write "k.d. lang"; quite a few of them use normal capitalization (several in the first page of Google News hits[17], including BBC News and the official Grammys website).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:53, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Notification of RfC

There is a request for comment regarding whether MOS:SECTIONCAPS should advise capitalizing after a colon in a heading. Discuss it here. Wracking ^talk! 05:57, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Upper vs lower case for Black and White

Have I missed any guidance about whether these can be mixed? I’ve seen occasions where one is upper case and another lower case? Doug Weller talk 08:31, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

No; it's been discussed repetitively, and we need to RfC it again. The last RfC on the subject failed to come to a clear consensus, leaving us with the status quo ante by default (which was basically that it could vary on an article-by-article basis whether to use black and white or Black and White, as long as it's consistent within an article). There's no consensus for Black but white, and many editors have observed that this is a usage almost exclusively American and leftist, which would be a WP:NPOV problem in Wikipedia's own voice. But this does not stop various activistic editors from going around changing our articles to read Black but white. I.e., it's an ongoing unsettled dispute that needs firm resolution.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:06, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

I hadn’t noticed the discussion above. Doug Weller talk 20:27, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

See the archive pages for several previous rounds of general discussion of this, that have not really gotten us to a clear resolution.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:22, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Newbie here. Thank you for this explication. I'm glad I found this talk page, where it's evident that the issue has been discussed to death. I raised the question on a couple of talk pages (Black people and White Americans), but I now see I should've looked here first. It's all quite clearly a big mess, and I'm happy to just let it go ... for now, anyway.

(This experience has had the benefit of teaching me a lot about WP rules, the MOS (which I must thoroughly explore), RFCs, and much more. I've added the very helpful Wikipedia:List of policies and guidelines to my ever-growing collection of WP bookmarks.) Yesthatbruce (talk) 09:44, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

What next for capital "T" in The Gambia?

I'm starting a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#What next for The Gambia? about how to followup on the RfC which changed Wikipedia style to use a capital "T" for The Gambia mid-sentence and mid-article title. Please participate in the discussion there. Thank you, SchreiberBike | ⌨ 04:02, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

As noted over there, that RfC has been changed to "no consensus", so do not go around putting "The Gambia" in mid-sentence.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:41, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Per SMcCandlish. Tony (talk) 10:15, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Of course, the "the" in these cases (including "the Ukraine") is colonial: it originally referred to territory. So, "the Sudan (territory)". Tony (talk) 07:27, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

The RfC was later changed to "no consensus". The discussion referenced above is now archived at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 227#What next for The Gambia?. I should have noted that change here when the closure was changed; my apologies for any confusion. SchreiberBike | ⌨  00:51, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

TsNIITochMash

Thoughts on this title. Cinderella157 (talk) 08:20, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Google books search has it all over the place, including all caps and first letter caps (and different combos in between). Cinderella157 (talk) 08:28, 17 June 2023 (UTC)