Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters/Archive 40

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Should Palauan chief titles be capitalised when not used before a person's name?

I tried to create a RfC at Talk:Traditional chiefs of Palau#RfC about the capitalisation of Palauan chief titles, but that didn't work. Basically the titles are always capitalised in the main newspaper of Palau (Island Times) as well as on French Wikipedia (Ibedul). In Palauan dictionaries they are considered proper nouns (see the wiktionary article Ibedul). I am not sure if you would capitalise them on Wikipedia e.g. "ibedul of Koror" as you wouldn't capitalise similar words such as king if it was not before a person's name e.g. king of France. Sahaib (talk) 14:17, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

A title as such is never capitalized, like you say. So I'd tend to capitalize them only if a person name (bearer of the title) follows. Gawaon (talk) 16:32, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Yep. There's no principle for exception just because the origin language of the title isn't English. This already came up many times and was resolved long ago with regard to European and Asian nobility and military.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:02, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Capitalisation of "native" in King Philip's War

The word native is consistently capped in the article as a shortened form of Native Americans which might reasonably be capped per guidance but I don't think the shortened form should be? Cinderella157 (talk) 02:27, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

That came in here, by a one-hit IP, changing "Indian" to "Native". Seems wrong to me; perhaps "native" is an OK fix; or may "Indian" is better? Dicklyon (talk) 03:57, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Indian or native, not Native (the meaning of the cap would be unclear). There's also First Nations man/woman—I guess Americans cap the F and N? In Australia Indigenous is always capped by convention. Tony (talk) 07:08, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

First Nation is a Canada thing. The US never uses that for the native/indian population. Dicklyon (talk) 15:51, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

The first thing I noticed is the word "Indigenous" is not but should be capitalized when speaking about the people, whether a group or individuals, much like Native American should be. Second, the word "Indian" is not offensive to many but is to others. The normal MOS practice is that if it used in an article, leave it. Since that was not adhered to and the changes were made I say leave "Native" in the article but most definitely capitalize in this case because you are still talking about specific group of Natives rather than the fact they are native to the land. --ARoseWolf 16:40, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely what User:ARoseWolf says. Indgineous and Native are capitalized when discussing people, but not, for example, plant species. And Indian is widely used, especially when discussing historical topics. Spelling out American Indian and Native American might be preferable to just Indian and Native to avoid any confusion. In this article, when people in Canada are discussed, then Indigenous or First Nations would be preferable. Yuchitown (talk) 17:22, 7 November 2023 (UTC)Yuchitown

"Indigenous" should not be capitalized except for a specific population who have adopted it as how they prefer to be referred to. Same goes for "native" and any other such term. It's "the indigenous peoples of Siberia" not the "the Indigenous peoples of Siberia" much less "the Indigenous Peoples of Siberia". It does appear that over the last generation or so, "Indigenous" has become a catch-all for, roughly, "Native American, Canadian First Nations, and Alaska Native". But this does not translate to every population on earth, not even every population in the Western Hemisphere. "Native American" has become a proper name, and should not be written "native American"; but don't confusingly and confusedly write "the Native people of Nauru". "Aboriginal" is taken as a proper name in the Australian context, but "the Aboriginal people of Okinawa" would be misapplying this to people outside the context in which the capitalization has become near-universally conventional. Wording like "Unlike many Indigenous groups in South America, the Lokono population is growing" that I just found in an article is an error; this use of "indigenous" is not capitalized in reliable sources except by mostly activistic and very recent ones. This is yet another area where we have to be clear that WP is not a soapbox for promotion of language-change advocacy or activism. And it really doesn't matter that some newspapers have adopting an over-capitalizing style with regard to all such words, in a desperate attempt to appease everyone all the time; WP is not written in news style as a matter of policy. Not even all the topic-focused sources on use of "Indigenous" in the North American context are on board with capitalizing it at every occurrence: 'The term "indigenous" is a common synonym for the term "American Indian and Alaska Native" and "Native American." But "indigenous" doesn't need to be capitalized unless it's used in context as a proper noun.' (Editorial Guide, US Bureau of Indian Affairs [1]). I.e., they apparently would not capitalize adjectival use, which is most use, and they definitely mean to exclude capitalization when the term is not used as a proper name for the specific groupings they identified as applicable to that specialized capital-I meaning. Whether one personally prefers this take or not is irrelevant; it demonstrates that there is not a real-world consensus on even that specific term among those centrally involved in the subject. And WP does not adopt language changes unless and until there is such a real-world consensus on the usage shift (thus our very slow uptake of singular-they, etc.).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:06, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

PS: The vast majority of our content appears to be using these words properly lower-cased when appropriate, including "indigenous" in reference to the Americas a whole or south of the North American populations for whom it has become conventional to use "Indigenous". But any given article somtimes has scattered exceptions in it from drive-by "corrections" (e.g. one section of Arawak had "Indigenous" capitalization inserted by a single person who also capitalized a bunch of other stuff in MOS:SIGCAPS-unaware fashion, like "International Indigenous Rights Activist" and "a Pan-Tribal & Multi-Racial Indigenous NGO"), and at least one article needs to move back to lower-case (Genetic history of Indigenous peoples of the Americas).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:26, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, Native American or American Indian is preferred to the Indian or Native. I believe First Nation is preferred in Canada as pointed out by Dicklyon but I'm not an expert on that. --ARoseWolf 17:42, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Yuchitown and ARoseWolf, Indigenous, Native, Indian, First Nations, etc. should all be capitalized in this context. PersusjCP (talk) 17:57, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

I have not seen a MOS saying to leave "Indian" when its used in an article. It's an outdated term, also confusing on an international website like Wikipedia, even if it's not offensive to some people.  oncamera  _{(talk page)} 18:09, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

It should be capitalized per MOS:RACECAPS.  oncamera  _{(talk page)} 18:08, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Context matters a lot here. If indigenous or native is merely describing people (The native people of America or The indigenous peoples of the American continent) it is lower case. In most uses of native I saw on that page, it should be capitalised (the peace agreement should include the surrender of Native guns, same as Native Americans) as a descriptor of a specific ethnic group, the same way Indian is. That’s the same reason Aboriginal and First Nations are capitalised (and why indigenous is mostly not). — HTGS (talk) 22:02, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Over-capitalization of "ayurveda"

Resolved

I notice at Ayurveda that every or nearly every occurrence of the word (and the ayurvedic adjectival form) is capitalized, but it does not seem to be a proper noun, any more than chiropractic, homeopathy, traditional Chinese medicine, etc. This seems to be a clear-cut MOS:SIGCAPS and MOS:DOCTCAPS case, of boosters of the topic capitalizing it to make it seem more important. But I guess it's worth discussing before I go on a lower-casing spree. And I think it's better discussed here than at a page that tends to be beset with ayurveda proponents, though I'll drop a notice there.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:32, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

I came here from that talk page notification. I'm neutral as to whether or not it should be capitalized. But I figured I should point out that there are several of us who are definitely not boosters, who watch the page for the exact reason that we don't want boosters to POV it. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:08, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

I can't imagine telling one of the boldest to be bold, but be bold SMcCandlish. You are right and you and I know it. SchreiberBike | ⌨  00:30, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

I honestly have less stomach for doing this stuff than some others like Dicklyon (who knows tools like AWB/JWB a lot better than I do, anyway). I'm willing to make fairly forceful arguments against willy-nilly changing MoS, or misrepresenting/ignoring it at WP:RM, but my stress-response doesn't deal well with angry pushback about the content of particular articles that tend to be dominated by insular wikiprojects of single-minded persons with an overcapitalization addiction. The last time I waded deep into such waters I was hounded for months by a pair of such people and ended up mostly resigning from editing for about a year. (The content in question eventually ended up the way I said it should, after some RfCs and mass-RMs, but getting it there was the worst experience of my entire wiki-life.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:42, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

SchreiberBike fixed this shortly after you brought it up here in November. No pushback. Dicklyon (talk) 17:58, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Huzzah. Thanks, SchreiberBike.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:23, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Demonyms

Is there any place in the guidelines that says demonyms (e.g., Hoosier, Carioca, New Yorker) should be capitalized? I see that demonyms are included in a list of examples of capitalized terms in MOS:HYPHENCAPS, but that does not seem sufficient so me, since it is not a direct statement saying they should be capitalized. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 19:24, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

That's universal English usage, isn't it? As such, I don't think we have to repeat it. Gawaon (talk) 19:46, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, that could perhaps be said for proper names too, I guess, but we still say it explicitly. And apparently whoever wrote the Carioca article didn't know it. I suggest to put into the list that's at the beginning of MOS:PEOPLANG, a section I hadn't noticed before making that comment. It would only take one added word to include it there. Perhaps it's already covered by "nationalities, ethnic and religious groups, and the like". I was hoping to find the word "demonym". How about adding a shortcut called MOS:DEMONYM that links to that and including it in the {{Shortcut}} at the top of that section? That's currently a red link. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 20:15, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Carioca is probably somewhat of a special case – the article frequently puts in it italics and lowercase, treating it as a Portuguese rather than English word. As such, it is of course not capitalized – though, once considered as loaned into English, it is.

Generally, I'm certainly not opposed to adding "demonyms" to the section you mention, though I don't think an extra shortcut is needed for it. Gawaon (talk) 20:30, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

I would think Portuguese would also capitalize this when it's used as a noun; that language lower-cases demonymic, national, etc. derivatives that are used adjectivally. Same with Spanish and many other languages: he is an Americano but your accent is americano.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:10, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Are you confusing that with French, maybe? I'm pretty that sure that both Portuguese and Spanish lower-case demonyms both as adjectives and as nouns, and their Wiktionaries agree (pt:americano, es:americano). Many languages do so, see the translations listed for wikt:American#Noun. Gawaon (talk) 21:05, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Possibly. Not what I was taught in Spanish class (which was to just lower-case the adjectival usage), but that was a lifetime ago, and specific to a particular form of Spanish anyway.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:28, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Men's Double Sculls

... is just one example of an event name that's over-capitalized in hundreds of articles. "Women's 100m Breaststroke" is another (not to mention that it needs a space between the number and the m). There are dozens more such events. They're mostly the same set of articles, e.g. East Germany at the 1980 Summer Olympics, across various countries and years, and some non-Olympic articles, too. Sorry I'm not able to work on those for now. Dicklyon (talk) 06:16, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Seems like routine MOS:SPORTCAPS and MOS:NUM cleanup to me.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:28, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, but who will work on it? I can't, without JWB. Dicklyon (talk) 04:13, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

DEFAULTSORT capitalization conventions?

I notice an awful lot of DEFAULTSORT keys are capitalized like title case, as opposed to sentence case. Is there a guideline some place that would suggest one way or the other? Dicklyon (talk) 21:04, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

I took a look and see it is a convention going back a long time to capitalize every word in defaultsort and sortkey. I can see it discussed in the moving forward section in this archive. I didn't really read very much to figure out as to why it has always been done that way. Maybe ask an expert in the categorization area? Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:01, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Sortkeys used to be case sensitive, so it was decided to capitalize every word. Case sensitivity ceased quite some time ago, but there's no reason to change existing keys. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:10, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

@Michael Bednarek: Sounds reasonable if it's not hurting anything. Is it usually used with new keys too, 50/50, or more sentence case with any sorts newly created? Fyunck(click) (talk) 01:28, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

OK, if sort keys are not case sensitive, it's a non-issue. So in doing case fixes, it's not important whether they hit the sort key or not. Dicklyon (talk) 19:17, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Might as well remove such sort keys in cases in which they are not actually necessary, and fix the title-casing of necessary ones so that the case matches the article name, since it's just confusing code bloat. Since it doesn't affect output for the reader or fix genuine technical breakage, I guess that would be subject to WP:MEATBOT, i.e. something that should be done in the course of an edit that also makes at least one substantive improvement.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:26, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I've taken to deleting irrelevant default sort keys when I notice them, and not worrying about their capitalization in any case. Dicklyon (talk) 04:16, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Barbie shows with embedded titles?

In the redirect titles Barbie & Her Sisters in A Pony Tale and Barbie and Her Sisters in The Great Puppy Adventure, are "A Pony Tale" and "The Great Puppy Adventure" properly treated as embedded titles, per MOS:THETITLE? Or should the "A" and "The" be lowercase? I'm thinking they're embedded titles, but the user marking them as "miscapitalized" disagrees. Dicklyon (talk) 03:31, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

To summarize my previous comments, this is a pretty straightforward case of MOS:TITLECAPS. Words like "a" and "the" are never capitalized in a work title unless it is the first or last word of a title, or after a colon or dash. The "embedded titles" MOS:THETITLE alludes to is referring to titles of other works embedded in a title, i.e. a title within a title. A Pony Tale and The Great Puppy Adventure are subtitles part of the regular title, which follow TITLECAPS. InfiniteNexus (talk) 04:38, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

But "An indefinite or definite article is capitalized only when at the start of a title, subtitle, or embedded title or subtitle." So if it's a subtitle, that would again make it capitalized, no? Dicklyon (talk) 04:56, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, I misspoke. A Pony Tale is not a subtitle, as there is no colon or en dash. It should therefore follow the capitalization conventions of TITLECAPS, which says that a and the are not capitalized. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:41, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Side question: where do you find guidance that subtitles can be placed after dashes? All I can find is MOS:TITLEPUNCT, which includes "Where subtitle punctuation is unclear (e.g. because the subtitle is given on a separate line on the cover or a poster), use a colon and a space, not a dash, comma, or other punctuation, to separate the title elements. If there are two subtitles, a dash can be used between the second and third elements." That seems quite narrow. ~TPW 14:23, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

One example would be the recent Mission: Impossible films. But usually, a dash is used as a "secondary" subtitle. InfiniteNexus (talk) 21:41, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Just as a point of order regarding the M:I films, that was largely a special case because having two colons in the title would be awkward (and, no, we are not omitting the colon from Mission: Impossible, so don't even think about it). It fortunately has been consistent with outside-Wikipedia practice for those films as well. oknazevad (talk) 00:52, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, and we also usually follow the formatting used in the billing block, we don't arbitrarily decide how to punctuate subtitles. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:36, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

To A Pony Tale and The Great Puppy Adventure (however capitalised) these are not embedded titles as described in the guidance. They do have a semblance of being a subtitle but are not formatted as a subtitle by using a dash, colon or parenthesis - nor do I see this being done in sources. Consequently, I don't think we should treat this as a subtitle in respect to the guidance that would lead us to capitalise the words in question. A Google search looking at the usual movie sites that are often used as sources show mixed capitalisation on the point in question. If we defer to the general advice at MOS:CAPS, we would lowercase the subject words. That would be my reading of things. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:11, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Definitely not subtitles. But structured as embedded titles, whether "A Pony Tale" is a true title or not. Dicklyon (talk) 15:26, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Dicklyon, they are not embedded titles, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of MOS:THETITLE. "Embedded title" means that the title of Work A is being quoted in the title of Work B. For example, Lorem Ipsum of A Christmas Carol, or Lorem Ipsum of Lorem Ipsum and The Odyssey. InfiniteNexus (talk) 21:41, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

It should be capitalized in accordance with MOS:TITLECAPS not because it is a subtitle, but because it is part of the title of the work. InfiniteNexus (talk) 21:41, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't see that I am disagreeing with you at all. Cinderella157 (talk) 22:50, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Looks like everyone is on the same subtitle page on this. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:58, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

So everyone's good with lowercase articles in these? I have a crazy backwards feeling somehow. Dicklyon (talk) 04:20, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Everyone is okay with uppercased titles, as embedding titles. I thought that's what you had said above. And by the way, a quick quiz, how many of the 297 moons in the Solar System have lowercased names? Randy Kryn (talk) 04:42, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Uppercase "A Pony Tail" and "The Great Puppy Adventure" as embedded titles? I read the discussion as nixing those capped A and The. Clarify? Dicklyon (talk) 04:50, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus uppercases the 'The'. Wouldn't Barbie and her Sisters in a Pony Tail change the meaning or the embedded descriptor which is featured as an embedded title in the film itself? Randy Kryn (talk) 05:05, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

For the last time, those are not embedded titles. ; or,–style subtitles that were popular in classic literature are no longer prevalent. Per MOS:TITLECAPS, words like "the" and "in" are not capitalized in titles of works; this is an extremely straightforward case, and I can guarantee you every single editor from WP:FILM will tell you the same thing. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:20, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm glad it's for the last time so you won't reply, but either the embedded title of the film's name is uppercased or the film itself should be renamed The Pony Tail on Wikipedia. It's a clear-cut case, but the opposite of what you are arguing. MOS:TITLECAPS is a guideline, and guidelines include the common sense language "...it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply". Randy Kryn (talk) 05:34, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

I really don't understand how editors continue to misinterpret MOS:THETITLE when it discusses "embedded titles". The example used there is "An Examination of The Americans: The Anachronisms in FX's Period Spy Drama", in which "An Examination of The Americans: The Anachronisms in FX's Period Spy Drama" is the title of a chapter and The Americans is the title of a TV series. To copy-and-paste my earlier comment, "embedded title" means that the title of Work A is being quoted in the title of Work B. There is consensus above that we are not dealing with subtitles due to the lack of a colon or dash; it is exceedingly rare for an exception be granted, and I see no reason an exception should be granted in this case. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:56, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Duh! This is not an embedded title nor a subtitle for reasons already stated. The guidance is clear as to what constitutes an embedded title. Sources don't truncate the fuller title that is being used. I don't see sources doing this so nor should we. Cinderella157 (talk) 06:21, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

The full title has plenty of sources which quote it exactly as titled, with the uppercased 'A'. The on-screen title has the uppercasing, which is logical given the wording. The words 'Barbie and Her Sisters' are presented as if they were 'starring' followed by the title of the film, but since the full title includes the starring roles then it acts as an embedded title (per common sense, which should take preference over strictly-following-guidelines). Randy Kryn (talk) 13:20, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

We generally do not conform to how organizations style their names or trademarks, for example, even if they consistently use all-caps or capitalize their leading "the". Additionally, making an exception here would be breaching the long-standing naming conventions of the film project:

• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (film)
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
• Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
• Alvin and the Chipmunks (film)
• Raya and the Last Dragon
• The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians (TV series)
• Ant-Man and the Wasp

InfiniteNexus (talk) 16:40, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

InfiniteNexus, please note that not one of your examples includes wording similar to Barbie and Her Sisters in A Pony Tail. Doctor Strange may come close if you squint a little, but no, that title actually describes where Doctor Strange has found himself in. In this and the other Barbie films it's like Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen if that film was so-named. Big difference. That the studio puts the correct title styling in the clearest terms it could in the film's title sequence and film trailer seems evident and important to this discussion. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:31, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

It is also true that there are a good proportion of sources that don't cap "the" and "a" in these titles - sufficient for us to revert to the general advice at MOS:CAPS - which is the common sense approach. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:32, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

If I hadn't nailed that horse down, it would have nuzzled up to those bars, bent 'em apart with its teeth, and VOOM! Cinderella157 (talk) 02:42, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

OK, I agree that we disagree. On this one, I'm more on Randy's side than Cinderella's, which makes my head spin, but that's where I am. Dicklyon (talk) 04:07, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

And I'm actually agreeing with Dicklyon here. The titles are clearly A Pony Tale and The Great Puppy Adventure - Barbie & her Sisters is almost a parenthetical, as in the example from MOS:TITLE, "(Now and Then There's) A Fool Such as I". See also Barbie in A Mermaid Tale, etc. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:01, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I've exhausted everything I have to say, but I'll repeat that we always conform to our own MoS rather than follow how organizations (or even sources) style the trademarks they own. For film articles in particular, we never conform to stylization in logos. But I'm not going to continue wasting time pushing a change to a set of redirects about a series of obscure, animated, low-budget, direct-to-DVD films. So, do as you please. InfiniteNexus (talk) 14:46, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Same. I'm not going to waste more time on this. I just wanted to know whether others agreed that these are cases of embedded titles, and I found that opinions are mixed on that point. For me, the substantive issue is whether to "fix" these, or to remove the redirect tag that says these are miscapitalizations. To prevent this coming up more in the linked miscapitalized redirects report, I'll remove that tag, and just call it "other capitalization". Dicklyon (talk) 16:45, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

That seems reasonable, since whether they are "errors" is actually dubious. See also footnote "i" at MOS:TITLES: ... the TV-episode article Marge Simpson in: "Screaming Yellow Honkers", the title of which would be given as "Marge Simpson in: 'Screaming Yellow Honkers'" in running text. What we have here is basically the same kind of case, except that the "story name" within the real-world work title doesn't have its own quotation marks around it. I think I would be inclined to treat these as embedded titles. I could write a paper titled "The Impact of Harr's A Civil Action" and a book titled Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and 21st-century Views on Race, both with embedded titles treated as titles (no lowercasing of the A or The). If we already have a MOS:TITLES rule addressing "Screaming Yellow Honkers" as an embedded title albeit a fictive one that doesn't actually refer to a separate work, what would be the rationale for not applying it to the Barbie cases? (Someone might even make a MOS:CONFORM argument to change them to Barbie and Her Sisters in "The Great Puppy Adventure", etc., though I don't think I would go that far.) Anyway, the Barbie cases are qualitatively different from the other works mentioned as allegedly analogous (Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, etc.), which are cases of a character name followed by a situation or nemesis or partner. The only at-first-dubious one in that set was Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings in which it was not immediately clear whether there was a legend (real or fictive) about ten rings or a work (real or fictive) titled The Legend of the Ten Rings, but it turned out to be the former. We might have a problem if something called Harry Potter and [t|T]he Book of the Spirits came out. We'd have to determine whether this refered to something described as "the book of the spirts" or something literally titled The Book of the Spirits within the narrative. Logicking this stuff out leans me more and more toward accepting Barbie and Her Sisters in The Great Puppy Adventure as preferred by the publisher, because it appears to mean "Barbie and her sisters in the story named 'The Great Puppy Adventure'" not "Barbie and her sisters in an adventure about puppies, and it happened to be great". It's the same "character-name[s] in story-name" format as "Marge Simpson in: 'Screaming Yellow Honkers'", just with less punctuation (and the colon in the latter was really quite unnecessary). That said, the usage in independent sources is mixed; I think this is because of the amgiguity caused by there being no punctuation at all. If the title had been Barbie and Her Sisters in "The Great Puppy Adventure" (or even Barbie and Her Sisters in: The Great Puppy Adventure), there would be no question at all in anyone's mind, on-site or off-site. It's not a hill I would die on, because of the general default at the top of MOS:CAPS to go lower-case if in doubt, but I've argued elsewhere that more specific guidelines like MOS:PROPERNAME (and MOS:TITLES by extension) are necessarily codified exceptions to this principle or they could not exist in the guidelines at all.

Side point: There is not actually a requirement that a subtitle be preceded by a colon or dash, or be wrapped in parentheses (round brackets), to be a subtitle. A lot of works from the mid-20th century on back used other formats, e.g. The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, and these formats varied a lot. E.g. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus; these were sometimes presented without any punctuation (Foo or The Bar) in the original publications, though punctuation is sometimes added by later writer for clarity or to comply with a particular style guide. Sometimes "being" or other terms were used in place of "or". An unusual modern case is Star Trek Into Darkness, in which it turned out reliably sourceable that this was word-play, both meaning "a star trek into darkness" ("a trek into darness, among the stars", "a trek between the stars, leading into darkness", however you like to parse it) and being a subtitle to be interpreted as "Star Trek: Into Darkness", with the colon intentionally omitted to produce the ambiguity. It's why our article is not at Star Trek into Darkness or Star Trek: Into Darkness, despite both forms attested in RS and fierce arguments here for one or the other. (Meanwhile the "exception" at Spider-Man Far From Home is no such case and has an improperly capitalized "From", against MOS:5LETTER, simply because of a lame fanboi WP:FALSECONSENSUS rooted in the WP:CSF problem: there's nearly no independnent RS coverage outside of entertainment news material and virtually all such writing uses a 4-letter rule instead of MoS's 5-letter rule. If it had been "high cinema" covered by academic film journals, they would have consistently rendered it Spider-Man: Far from Home and so would we.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:28, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Clarification request: capitalization of "the sun" etc.?

I'm in a discussion with another user about the exact meaning of the sentence "Names of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, stars, constellations, and galaxies are proper names and begin with a capital letter" in the MOS:CELESTIALBODIES section. My understanding is that this does not apply to the earth (our planet), the sun (the star it turns around), and the moon (its natural satellite), as these are already covered by the previous paragraph, which gives more detailed rules. (Capitalization in an astronomical context and in personifications, but not otherwise.) Their understanding, however, is that the sentence nevertheless refers to these three bodies too so that references to them are always to be capitalized.

What's the consensus interpretation here, assuming there is one? Maybe the page could be improved to clearly resolve the apparent ambiguity, one way or the other? Gawaon (talk) 14:28, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

The wording "Names of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, stars, constellations, and galaxies are proper names and begin with a capital letter is very clear. Wikipedia uppercases proper names, and of course this applies to the Sun, Moon, Earth and the rest. If anything this should be made clearer. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:38, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps the guideline could be clarified simply by adding other at the beginning of that sentence: "Other names of planets, moons ...", since the foregoing paragraph details when earth, moon, and sun should (and should not) be considered proper names. Deor (talk) 15:47, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

This perennial topic has had discussions galore. Do you really think the Sun (the big burning nuclear furnace that keeps us all alive and editing), Moon (that huge rock-like thing that keeps attempting to fall onto...) Earth (hmmmm, no comment) and Solar System don't have proper names? For example, the Moon article, in its section on naming, says "Moon" is a proper name. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:52, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

They're not always used as proper names. Or do you think that ""Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men" and "When the sun beats down and burns the tar up on the roof" contain incorrect lowercasing? Deor (talk) 16:36, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

That tar is burning because of the intense heat of the sunlight. Since you are going on about song lyrics how about "When the moon hits your eye/Like a big pizza pie". That's amore! (and lowercased because it alludes to moonlight) Randy Kryn (talk) 22:53, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

I, for one, would be happy with the suggested addition of "Other", as it seems quite well to reflect the intended meaning of the rule. See also the wording over at Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Celestial bodies, which includes the example: "The sun was over the mountain top" – very clearly using lowercase for what's evidently a reference to our star as visible in the sky. Gawaon (talk) 16:45, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

I have now inserted "Other" as suggested to make it clear that that paragraph is not to overwrite what the previous paragraph said to regard to "Sun, Earth" etc. That by itself should be a fairly uncontroversial change as everybody can read what the previous paragraph say, and why should it be there if it had no meaning? Gawaon (talk) 16:46, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Randy Kryn, I see you have reverted the change "Other names of planets" which Deor had first suggested and which I had then applied. I must say I'm a bit frustrated to this. You can't act as if you own the MoS, preventing even the smallest changes to make the wording clearer. You know, as well as everybody else, that the preceding section says: "The words Sun, Earth, Moon and Solar System are capitalized (as proper names) when used to refer to a specific celestial body in an astronomical context" (emphasis added) – but not outside of an astronomical context, even when referring to the specific celestial bodies. The MoS itself gives "The sun was over the mountain top" as example for lower-case usage, and you yourself have admitted that lower-case it at least possible in phrases such as "They waited for the moon to rise."

Anyway, what do you think about inserting the "other" elsewhere and writing "Names of other planets, moons" etc.? After all, whether "the sun/moon" etc. are indeed names or just generic words which, when used with the definite article, refer to the nearest such object without thereby becoming proper nouns is very much part of the question. (Just like people living near a city might routinely refer to it as "the city", without "the city" therefore becoming a proper name and requiring a capital letter.) So by pushing the "other" back we prevent people from getting confused but without having to address the thorny (and not objectively decidable) question whether or not "the moon/Moon" is indeed a proper noun.

I'll hope others will weigh in on this too. Gawaon (talk) 11:57, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Gawaon, please do not add to or try to "explain" long standing language in the MOS then, if reverted, become frustrated, thanks. "Other" is not needed, as there is no contradiction to address. Proper names are proper names throughout the English language, and have been since the beginning of time when English was first grunted in the caves. The opening paragraph, although it could be written better or even eliminated, just makes clear to editors who may not totally understand proper names that words like "sun" when it means "sunshine", or the common use of "earth" for soil, or that the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, are not uppercased. As to your example, "the city" is an example of a general use nickname but not a proper name as it does not denote to a worldwide readership which city. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:58, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

How come then that "the sun" is considerable more frequent in written English than "the Sun" [2] and likewise "the moon" than "the Moon" [3]? Has it ever, for just one second, occurred to you that you could be wrong rather than the wast majority of the English-speaking world? Also, assuming that there ever is a human colony on Mars, would they really go on using "the Moon" (whether capitalized or not) to refer to Earth's moon? Maybe they would rather give it a proper proper name (say "Luna") and instead start to use the collective noun "the moons" to refer to the moons of their own planet? As long as there is no such colony, we simply cannot know that, and so the question whether "the moon/Moon" is a proper name or rather a definitive use case of a common noun is undecidable. Gawaon (talk) 13:11, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

The Mars colony is an interesting scenerio, thanks. I would think they would still call the Moon the Moon and the Sun the Sun, etc. Their own multiple moons already have names, which would be used, and when they strolled under the moons they would lowercase "moons" as a general name. The use of Sun and Moon in ngrams and such has been discussed and decided many times on Wikipedia, retaining the present usage. Yes, I was wrong once, in 1995 (or was it '94?). Randy Kryn (talk) 14:31, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

I think the phrase "astronomical contexts" is causing some of the problem here. I would say that the name of the astronomical object should always be capitalized. Whenever you mean the specific ball of hot gas, that's the Sun; it's a proper name. That's true whether you're talking about astronomy or not.

When you mean the light or heat that comes from it, that should be lowercase. When you mean the disk of light in the sky — I think that's an in-between situation. So for example it's OK with me if Wikipedia articles say the sun rises earlier in the summer; I personally use a capital letter for this situation, but I recognize it as different, because you're not really talking about the astronomical object here (the Sun doesn't rise at all; rather, the Earth rotates so you get a different view of it). --Trovatore (talk) 18:54, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

The moon or sun rising or setting is clearly not an astronomical context; it's a very human-centric viewpoint. Dicklyon (talk) 20:13, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

What I'm saying is, the guidance should be clarified. The name of the astronomical object should always be capitalized, even if not in an astronomical context. However, many common uses are not really about the astronomical object, and they can stay lowercase. --Trovatore (talk) 20:19, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

What clarification would you propose? Currently the main page requests capitalization "in a scientific or astronomical context", but not "in general use". That's not so bad, and I suppose this wording expresses a consensus view that can't be changed easily. Now, how would you decide whether a usage outside of a scientific or astronomical context is about the astronomical object? To me that seems trickier than simply saying "just use lower-case in such cases", as the current rules do. Gawaon (talk) 21:07, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Well, aboutness can be fraught, but it is really the center of a lot of editorial decisions. I would change the guidance to put it in terms of aboutness, and then give a couple of examples and let people take it from there. It shouldn't be a huge difference in practice, but it's closer to the real issue.

Maybe a test case: suppose that for some reason, in an article that's not particularly scientific, you had cause to say that something was as hot as the surface of the Sun. I would argue that, even though the broader context is not especially scientific or astronomical, the capital S is basically required there. --Trovatore (talk) 21:24, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

That example would of course be uppercased, as "surface of the Sun" refers directly to the star, which has a proper name (Sun). Dicklyon is correct about the sun setting, which has been lowercased for as long as I've been editing. This doesn't seem hard, if the language refers to the Moon, Sun, or Earth when discussing the moon, the star, or the planet, then they have proper names. I don't know even know why we are discussing this, seems like a 1930's comedy (which may be because I'm watching one now, so my feeling watching it is subjective and carried over as I type - sort of like the subjective language that some people want to place onto these proper names). The language could be simplified to "uppercased when used as proper names" and just get rid of the "astronomical" and other contested and confusing language (then clarify with a few examples, but most editors can recognize a proper name when they see one). Randy Kryn (talk) 22:43, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

I mean, I agree with you, but I'm not sure the current language that references "context" expresses that idea clearly. It could be interpreted as saying that if you talk about the star, but in some non-astronomical broader context, you'd lowercase it. The "proper names" language is an interesting idea; I could maybe support it, but it does leave some cases a bit unclear. Does the disk of light in the sky have a proper name? It seems like it reasonably could; there's no reason abstract objects can't be named. --Trovatore (talk) 23:07, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

That abstract disc in the sky is the Sun (didn't they learn you nuttin' in school?). As for its proper name, the language is already present in the guideline "Names of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, stars, constellations, and galaxies are proper names and begin with a capital letter. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:48, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

But the abstract disk does rise and set. The hot ball of gas does not. --Trovatore (talk) 03:06, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree with the capitalization in this example ("as hot as the surface of the Sun"), but I'd say that the wording "surface of the Sun" by itself suggests a scientific context – that's hardly everyday language. In general, everyday usage, on the other hand, somebody might say "as hot as the sun" in a metaphorical rather than scientific sense ("very, very hot"), and in such a context lower case would be fine and usual. Likewise with the phrase "reach for the moon", which Randy Kryn once used as example. It has no scientific, let alone astronomical context, but simply means "try to do something very difficult or impossible", so lower case is fine here (and indeed common in general English usage, which Wikipedia largely strives to follow). However, when pursuing the "proper name" idea, it seems hard to explain why such usages should be lower-cased, or even why "the sun rises" should be lower-cased – after all, they clearly do refer, in some way or other, to our planet's star and moon, both of which have a name and are identified by that name in all these phrases. So capitalization depends not really on the name, but rather on the context in which that name is used. Gawaon (talk) 05:36, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

The problem is that "context" could be taken as the broader context (say, of the article as a whole). It should be surface of the Sun regardless of how pop-culturish the whole article is. --Trovatore (talk) 20:37, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree. One way out may be more examples to clarify to intended usage. Gawaon (talk) 20:39, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

When our manual of style has micro-fine shades of meaning, as it does here, I do not believe it serves anyone. That's why there are perennial discussions, because we have rules that are based on subtle differences of context. I believe that words like sun and moon and earth never need be capitalized because it's always obvious what's being talked about. If the word we use to refer to a concept has become a common noun, it's always a common noun. There is no situation in which capitalizing "sun" is going to make it clearer to a reader that the in that instance the word means "the star around which the earth orbits" that cannot be made even clearer just be using clearer words. Moreover, that capitalization does nothing for anyone with a vision impairment; those individuals have no choice but to depend on context. Perennial arguments like this are evidence that we should shift to lower case in all contexts, and trust writing to get the job done. What's the value of creating discord and excluding the visually impaired by digging in heels about this?~TPW 13:24, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I think any suggestion that would allow The Apollo project achieved the first human landing on the moon is a non-starter. Also not really following how capitalization "excludes" the visually impaired. --Trovatore (talk) 20:30, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd say that such usage must be capitalized, while "they waited for the moon to rise" must be lower-case. So the most simple solutions are (sadly) unavailable. Gawaon (talk) 20:38, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

You say "must be capitalized", but sources mostly don't. Nor with the sun. Dicklyon (talk) 15:28, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Interesting. I googled "nasa return to moon" and while NASA itself uses capitalization (as do we), most other sources don't. Personally I wouldn't be opposed to a "largely lower-case" resolution, I just think it's important to have a rule that's clear and easy to follow. Gawaon (talk) 16:23, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

I googled a bit further to see how others handle this and the first consistent and simple rule I found is from the MLA Style Center: "We usually lowercase sun, moon, and earth, but ... when the does not precede the name of the planet, when earth is not part of an idiomatic expression, or when other planets are mentioned, we capitalize earth." Examples include: "The earth revolves around the sun" and "The space shuttle will return to Earth next year".

Personally, I would be happy with such a simple and consistent rule. However, it deviates significantly from Wikipedia's current usage, which is to use capitalization in many cases (but without an easily detectable consistent pattern). Gawaon (talk) 16:44, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

I would prefer that, too. We also over-capitalize Universe and Solar System imho. Dicklyon (talk) 17:27, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

When sources don't support a style that is also inconsistent, that's strong justification for a request for comment. ~TPW 18:05, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

True Pagan Warrior, I see you have started RFCs regarding this manual before, would you be willing to do one for more consistent lower-casing of "the sun" etc. too? I would support it, but I have no experience with starting RFCs. Here's the text I would propose to use instead of the current first paragraph of MOS:CELESTIALBODIES (but it's just a suggestion, I'm open for improvements):

The words sun, moon, solar system, and universe are not generally capitalized (India was the fifth nation to land on the moon; The solar system was formed 4.6 billion years ago), except when used in personifications (Sol Invictus ('Unconquered Sun') was the ancient Roman sun god). References to our planet are written as the earth (lowercase, with article) or Earth (capitalized, no article); if other planets are mentioned as well, the latter form is usually preferable (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are the four terrestrial planets). It is lowercased in colloquial expressions such as what on earth.

Gawaon (talk) 17:46, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I do not have the time at the moment, either to request comment or closely look at your proposed text. That means that we have time for others to weigh in on the text, or request comment themselves. ~TPW 18:25, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Considering that the proposal doesn't seem to generate any enthusiasm, I'm not going to pursue it further. It would probably also be too big a change, considering the frequency of the capitalized spellings the Moon/Sun/Earth throughout Wikipedia. Gawaon (talk) 17:40, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

What I'm saying is that a desire to capitalize a word is a desire to convey some information about that word, usually that it's special in some way, but since we do not pronounce capital letters, anyone who uses text-to-speech has no clue that there is information being conveyed. ~TPW 18:00, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

I mean, you could take that argument to say we shouldn't have images, because it might tempt us to leave out information from the text that the visually impaired could have used.

But anyway, you're mostly right that conveying extra information is not the main point. The main point is to capitalize proper nouns, which are the names of fixed things like the Sun and the Moon, as is correctly done in English. --Trovatore (talk) 18:45, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

No, we have alt-text to convey information about images. As for what's a proper noun, that's the point of this discussion. ~TPW 18:59, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Alt-text gives some information about the image, but it's never going to get across everything the image imparts to sighted readers. Put another way, by your argument, why use capitals at all? They do convey information that's not available to users of text readers. But look, text was developed for use through the visual sense. It's really wonderful that there are ways for those who can't see to nevertheless use text, and we should make that as easy as reasonably possible, but that's not a reason to avoid thinking about the visual presentation and how it can help the reader who uses it in the ordinary way. --Trovatore (talk) 19:15, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

I think the best way to do that is only to capitalize words that are, per overwhelming consensus, proper nouns. For any argument around the edges like this, with capitalization in some contexts and not in others, it's confusing to visual readers and lost on non-visual readers. I don't see any point to capitalizing such words at all. Whether it's metaphorical or astronomical, the sun is the sun. How does capitalizing the word from time to time improve understanding for anyone, really? ~TPW 16:23, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Completely agree. If a word needs emphasis, tag it as such, don't capitalize it. MOS says reserve caps for proper names, i.e. terms that are consistently capitalized in independent sources – not terms that are just "sometimes" capitalized in sources, or terms that are capitalized in sources that are promoters of those terms. Using caps sparingly is a great service the reader, and I hadn't thought about how it might also help the screen-reader user, but you are right. Dicklyon (talk) 04:17, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Comment This really isn't all that hard. The words Sun, Earth, Moon ... a specific celestial body in an astronomical context. Astronomical sense means in the context of the science of astronomy - broadly construed. Trying to have it extend to more everyday uses could be construed as pettifogging. Cinderella157 (talk) 23:12, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

It isn't hard at all. If a word is a proper name, it is upper-cased. That's a universal rule of the English language. There is no separate category for the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, the Solar System, or the Galactic Center as proper names. Wikipedia status-quo on uppercasing all proper names is clear. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:56, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

But how do you know what a proper name is, as opposed to a descriptor pointing to a specific object (an object that exists just once)? If you want to generally capitalize the Sun, why not equally generally capitalize the Universe, the World, Climate Change, Economics etc., all of which exist just once and could therefore equally well be regarded as proper names? Gawaon (talk) 05:37, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

The Sun? You know it when you see it (look, up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, nah, it's the Sun). I think editors can figure out when the Sun is used a proper name or is referring to sunlight, etc. That's where examples can come in, but the proper name for the star is Sun and not much else to say about the topic. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:38, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

According to at least one source, "Although it’s a star – and our local star at that – our sun doesn’t have a generally accepted and unique proper name in English. We English speakers always just call it the sun. ~TPW 16:26, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm convinced by the good people at earthsky, why would humanity go to the trouble of actually naming the nearest star that has given us all life. It's not like it's obvious to anyone or deserving of a proper name, just hanging there, not doing anyone a bit of good. But to be serious, I'm extremely proud of Wikipedia for using obvious proper names for the Sun, Moon, Earth, and Solar System even when many sources, such as the one you point out, do not. By the way, may I ask what do you call it when discussing the Sun (I personally seldom discuss it, but there really should be a holiday honoring the thing, maybe call it Sunday or something). Randy Kryn (talk) 22:24, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Just wondering in looking at this, are there times we don't capitalize Jupiter or Saturn? Granted I'm old, but I've used the phrase "jumpin' jupiter" many times. Is Jupiter always lower case in this context? I assumed it would be like cases of lower case sun and earth, but I've never seen it uncapitalized in that phrase. And sure I can see that we would spell it sunrise or sun-rise, but then when NASA talks about Titan and it's lakes and throws up a photo we see a picture of Saturn-rise over Titan? It does get confusing. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:06, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Yep, this is not difficult at all. If you're referring to the daystar as an astronomical object, it's "the Sun". If you're employing a derived usage, as in "lying in the sun too long" (which really means "lying in the light produced by the Sun", not "going into the Sun and lying down"), then it's "the sun". "The Moon looked red because of dust particles in the Earth's atmosphere", but "The moon hits your eye / Like a big pizza pie" and "archaeologists digging in the peaty Scottish earth for months" (an astronomical body did not come down to Earth and hit someone; Scotland does not have its own separate planet).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:34, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

NFL Draft RFC at Village Pump

You may be interested in a proposal on whether to capitalize the "Draft" in National Football League Draft, taking place at the village pump. (this is a copy of the duplicated notification posted to the project page Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League. Dicklyon (talk) 22:16, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

That would be an RM not a Village pump (policy) decision. But NFL Draft is already at its proper capitalization, so an RM might be a time-sink. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:40, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Any time some process like RM is failing to come to a consensus, or is subject to WP:FALSECONSENSUS / WP:CONLEVEL problems such as canvassing or nearly no input except from a particular WP:FACTION with a non-neutral interest in the question, the solution is an RfC at a broader venue. WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY, and we have many times resolved questions about an entire class of article titles with RfCs (at VPPOL or otherwise). See also WP:CONSENSUS: it can form anywhere, at any time, by any process.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:06, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Moving what is presently MOS:ACROTITLE into a naming-conventions guideline

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#"Acronyms in page titles" is mis-placed in an MoS page. In short, the material needs to move to a naming-conventions guideline, but which page?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:19, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Capitalizing internet (or not)

It's been four years since the last RfC on this ended in no consensus, and seven years since the Associated Press stopped capitalizing it, prompting Wired to write an article headlined with "The AP Finally Realizes It's 2016, Will Let Us Stop Capitalizing 'Internet'". Is there appetite to try another RfC, or is this something more easily solved with a brief discussion on this page? Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 08:27, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

• I don't cap it. Back in the day some people wanted to signify the web vs internal internets (lowercase). Redundant now. Tony (talk) 11:31, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
• The fact that Wikipedia continues to capitalize is silly. It's increasingly archaic — see almost every major style guide, including those of tech giants like Microsoft, Apple and Google. So I welcome any opportunity to fix that. Popcornfud (talk) 11:55, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
• It's time to take it down. Outside of Wikipedia I almost never see it capitalized. SchreiberBike | ⌨  22:25, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

  This is not true, a lot of sources still capitalised the Intermet. 2001:8003:9100:2C01:2965:EB6E:1F6D:D428 (talk) 23:08, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

• I would oppose any effort to force one style over the other. Many sources and style guides continue to call for a capital letter. This is the same scenario as "U.S." vs. "US" and "Black" vs. "black". There is no reason or benefit to mandate one specific style. InfiniteNexus (talk) 06:33, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
• Internet should continue to be capitalized on Wikipedia, at least in reference to technical articles. Multiple organizations, mostly technical organizations, continue to capitalize it. Wired and AP are wrong, anyway. Lowercase "internet" is simply bad grammar. The father of the Internet, Vint Cerf, agrees. I am however fine with this particular article clarifying that MOS:RETAIN should be controlling for this, or alternatively, that capitalization should only be required for technical articles, because with technical articles, capitalization DOES matter, since the Internet is an internet (a network of networks), but an internet is not necessarily the Internet (the global network of networks). As a practical matter, deciding that Internet should not be capitalized (or that it always should) will probably result in a lot of work to make every reference in every article consistent, so it seems like RETAIN is the best option. -- Rockstone^{Send me a message!} 08:01, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
• De-cap. Is the concept of "an internet (a network of networks)" even still used? Or do people just simply say "a network of networks" for that now. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:04, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

The IETF still uses lower-case internet in that way. --Rockstone^{Send me a message!} 22:26, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Just to clarify, Rockstone35 means IETF uses lower-case internet in the generic sense of "an intra-net, any network of networks". IEFT consistently uses "the Internet" in reference to, well, the Internet: "The IETF publishes RFCs authored by network operators, engineers, and computer scientists to document methods, behaviors, research, or innovations applicable to the Internet."; "The development of new transport technologies in the IETF provides capabilities that improve the ability of Internet applications to send data over the Internet."; "As the number and diversity of devices that make up the individual networks that comprise the Internet continue to grow," etc., etc. I can't find an instance of them using "internet" in this sense. If people here will not believe the very IETF that the Internet is the Interent, then who on earth would they believe? There literally is no more reliable source about the question. This basically comes down to "I like to read The Guarian and The New York Times and they prefer it lowercase." They also do a lot of other rediculous style things following their own internal style guides, which have nothing to do with how to write an encyclopedia.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:46, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

This is another thing we need to list in WP:PERENNIAL since it comes up over and over and over again and the answer is always the same: Capitalize it, because it is a proper name, by definition. The fact that various lazy news writers and editors always looking for expediency (and a much smaller minority of technical writers who should know better) have taken to treating it as if it isn't one does nothing to change the fact that it is one. It's simply an irrational house-style choice on their part (one we are in no way obligated to emulate), akin to various news publishers refusing to treat acronyms as abbreviations and pretend they are words ("Unicef", "Nasa", etc.). A lower-cased "internet" is any inter-network (what is more commonly called a wide-area network or WAN these days), using any protocols. The Internet is a singular thing, like Eurasia or the Manx language or the band Skinny Puppy. The internet is defined by the Internet protocol suite (note not "internet protcol suite"). The World Wide Web or the Web for short is also a proper name, but web in reference to the general technologies (often used for closed intranets that are not part of the public Web) is lower case: "posted it on the Web", but "their web development business". As a fused prefix, web- has become lowercase: "their official website", "on her personal webpage".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:34, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Not to be a pedant, but if an acronym is treated like a non-abbreviated word enough, is pronounced like word and not an initialism, etc.—doesn't it become one in that form? I agree with you on the general style point, but I do think it's important to always acknowledge the inherent unfixed, evolutionary nature of language. "Laser" seems like an airtight example here. Remsense留 02:38, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Whether an acronym is pronounced like a word and not as an initialism has nothing to do with how often it is used (or how often it is confusingly written – that's backwards, as the confusing "Unicef" style is due to the pronunciation, not the other way around). Rather, the pronunciation is largely determined by what letters are in what order, and to some extent by the usage of the entity to which the acronym pertains and those with whom that entity interacts (e.g. "CIA" could conceivably be prounced "see-ah" but no one at CIA or any other agency or branch of government says it that way, so that pronunciation never took hold). If UNICEF changed its name in such a way that a new acronym of EUNCFI resulted, it is very unlikely that people would take to calling it something like "youn-kuh-fee", because the letter order forming awkward results does not suggest trying something that unnatural; people would letter it out, exactly as they do with AFL-CIO (but contrast SAG-AFTRA, almost always said as "sagg-afftrah", because its lettering strongly suggests this and the entity promotes it).

WP is not in a position to base its style decisions on vague notions about slow language change; we only do what the preponderance of recent reliable sources do. (This is why WP took several years to jump on the singular-they bandwagon, and was a decade behind the times in dropping commas from constructions like "John X. Smith, Jr."; we had to wait until the sourceable proof of a general shift in usage was incontrovertible.) Note here that even with "Nasa" being a human name or other word in various languages, "NASA" clearly dominates, as does "UNICEF" over "Unicef", despite multiple British and a few American news publishers preferring the "Unicef" weirdness. WP uses laser and radar and scuba and maser because these are the overwhelmingly dominant usage in sources, are written this way in almost all dictionaries, and the average person has no idea they even originated as acronyms. Assimilation of technical acronyms as non-acronym words happens fairly often, but virtually never happens with organizational names. The only almost-example I can think if is IKEA which is an acronym, but many people do not know that and fairly often write it as "Ikea" [4]. In the end, WP would be unlikely to switch to "Unicef" even if usage slid into a slight majority, until it became an overwhelming majority, because our general principle is to not make unusual stylistic exceptions unless independent sources are overwhelmingly consistent in preferring that specific exception for that specific case (see MOS:TM, etc.).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:41, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

This is circular reasoning. You're basically saying "it's capitalized, because it's capitalized".

You can insist all you like about what the internet is or is not, but when hardly anyone left in the world shares your definition, your definition isn't worth much. By definition.

Besides, this position flies in the face of the main principle of WP:MOSCAPS, which is that only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. And that hasn't been true of "internet" for years. Popcornfud (talk) 02:54, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Straw man. I said nothing remotely like "it's capitalized, because it's capitalized". Show me any reliable source definition of the Internet that conflicts with what I said (other than some may leave out mention of the Internet protocol suite in particular). I'll do some of the work for you, and note carefully that in every one of these cases they mean the Internet, the singular global network of networks, not "an internet", any inter-network.

• Dictionary.com: "a global computer network providing a variety of information and communication facilities, consisting of interconnected networks using standardized communication protocols."
• Merriam-Webster: "an electronic communications network that connects computer networks and organizational computer facilities around the world —used with the except when being used attributively; doing research on the Internet, an Internet search".
• Cambridge Dictionary: "the large system of connected computers around the world that allows people to share information and communicate with each other".
• Britannica.com: "Internet, a system architecture that has revolutionized mass communication, mass media, and commerce by allowing various computer networks around the world to interconnect. Sometimes referred to as a 'network of networks,' ... more than half of the world’s population, were estimated to have access to the Internet. ... DARPA established a program to investigate the interconnection of 'heterogeneous networks.' This program, called Internetting, was based on the newly introduced concept of open architecture networking, in which networks with defined standard interfaces would be interconnected by 'gateways.' ... In order for the concept to work, a new protocol had to be designed and developed; indeed, a system architecture was also required. ... [Details of the Internet protcol suite here] .... Today a loosely structured group of several thousand interested individuals known as the Internet Engineering Task Force ... [various other governance organizational details] ...." Note that Britannica mentions the original more generic meaning.
• Collins Dictionary: "The internet is the network that allows computer users to connect with computers all over the world, and that carries email."
• Here Oxford English Dictionary online ed. provides the definition of the common-noun term (so your pretense that this definition doesn't exist is disproved, by the world's most authoritative English-language dictionary): "internet (1974–): Originally (with lower-case initial): a computer network comprising or connecting a number of smaller networks, such as two or more local area networks connected by a shared communications protocol; an internetwork". For the Internet: "the global network comprising a loose confederation of interconnected networks using standardized communication protocols, which facilitates various information and communication systems such as the World Wide Web and email. ... Sometimes shortened to the Net."
• Shall I go on?

Some of these publishers today prefer lower-case for both senses (including Oxford) some do not (inc. Merriam-Webster), some observe both without picking one (Cambridge). WP has no reason to make a confusing "magical exception" to the treatment of proper names in this or any other case unless normal proper-name capitalization is nearly unheard of in reliable sources for a specific case (e.g. iPhone is nearly never called "IPhone" or "Iphone", so we do not use those spellings and we stick to iPhone, despite MOS:TM preferring to avoid trademark stylizations). This near-universality in reliable source material, the basis on which we make ususual exceptions, is not found for the Internet or the internet as you would have it. Wikipedia usage is not dicated to by what has a 50.00001% majority in the sources. We only diverge from a general rule when there is overwhelming RS support for it. PS: Someone (oh, never mind, Popcornfud already did it) is apt to claim that per MOS:CAPS we should default to lower-case when usage is mixed. That is the general approach to miscellaneous text strings. But MOS:PROPERNAME is more specific and is part of the same guideline (i.e., it is not procedurally possible for capitalization by default of proper names, specifically, to not override lower-casing by default of text, in general, or MOS:PROPERNAME literally could not exist). Our guidelines and policies have to be read and understood in concert with each other, not as isolated text snippets to wave around like out-of-context Bible quotations.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:41, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I said nothing remotely like "it's capitalized, because it's capitalized".

You said: "Capitalize it, because it is a proper name, by definition."

This is circular because whether to treat "internet" as a proper noun is the entire question.

As you admit, several of your dictionary examples there don't cap it. Not even tech giants such as Apple, Google and Microsoft cap it. Are those guys confused about how computers work, too?

This is a lot work to defend this unwritten exception to MOS:CAPS, which does not demand a "nearly unheard of" abundance of proper-name capitalization, but a substantial majority, which has not existed for years now. (Edit: or, as you yourself say above, "we only do what the preponderance of recent reliable sources do").The fact that this majority no longer exists has even been written about in reliable sources. The "confusing magical exception" at this point is very much Wikipedia's. Popcornfud (talk) 04:29, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Yup. And as I said at the top, they were writing about how the usage of this word had shifted seven years ago. This isn't new! Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 04:58, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

And nothing has changed in those seven years to validate the idea that Internet should be lower-case. -- Rockstone^{Send me a message!} 03:40, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Indeed. This is perennial and tedious rehash.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:12, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Microsoft and Google are both interested in being user-friendly and following trends. Organizations that are specifically interested in the Internet's plumbing, like the IETF and CloudFlare, capitalize it. -- Rockstone^{Send me a message!} 03:40, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

"to defend this unwritten exception to MOS:CAPS" - Popcornfud's just is not paying any attention. Repeat: MOS:PROPERNAME is an integral part of MOS:CAPS, and is a very clearly written, not "unwritten", exception to the default in the lead of MOS:CAPS. Let's go over this yet again. The MOS:CAPS default is to not apply capital letters unless sources overwhelmingly do so for the case in question. MOS:PROPERNAME is an entire section unmistakably codifying an inverse exception to this: do capitalize all proper names by default (unless, again, there is such an overwhelming case for an exception, e.g. as there is for iPhone). What part of this is can still be unclear? The only way for Popcornfud's "quote what I like out of context" misinterpetation to become valid would be for MOS:PROPERNAMES to be deleted in its entirety (and the fallout of doing that would be immense, leading to the lower-casing of at least tens of thousands of proper names).

To get to the meat of the matter: Nothing about what I have presented is at all circular, and "whether to treat 'internet' as a proper noun is the entire question" is completely incorrect. Popcornfud is sorely confusing "proper name" AKA "proper noun" with "something that starts with a capital letter", and there simply is no such one-to-one correspondence. E.g. "ATM" is capitalized, for being an acronym/intialism conventionally presented that way ("scuba" and "laser" being acronyms that are not). This does not make "ATM" or its expansion "automated teller machine" a proper name. Meanwhile, "iPhone" and "tvOS" absolutely are proper names, but do not begin with capital letters (it's pure accident that they contain any at all); danah boyd is another (with none). The following is going to be quite long, because we have a lot catch-up ground to cover (though I just remembered this is covered in more detail at WP:Proper names and proper nouns).

See the article Proper noun: "A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (Africa; Jupiter; Sarah; Tesla, Inc.) as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (continent, planet, person, corporation) and may be used when referring to instances of a specific class (a continent, another planet, these persons, our corporation). "The Internet" by definition is a proper noun; "an internet" (AKA "an inter-network", "a WAN") is by definition a common noun. If you prefer the more esoteric approach of Proper name (philosophy) (which generally has no implications for WP titles and spelling, but we might as well cover it anyway): "a proper name – examples include a name of a specific person or place – is a name which ordinarily is taken to uniquely identify its referent in the world." Further, in direct reference theory (which now dominates in the philosophy of proper names) "the only meaning of a proper name is its referent". Even under this level of abstraction, "the Internet" is by definition a proper name and "an internet" cannot be one. (If you don't like our articles, see their sources and other reliable sources on the same matters; our articles are in fact summarizing them well.) There simply is no confusion about whether "the Internet" is a proper name except among people who do not actually understand what "proper name" AKA "proper noun" actually means. And it does not intrinsically have anything to do with capitalization; proper names exist in languages with writing systems that do not have letter case. People with no background in linguistics really should not try to get into linguistic arguments. This is often why MoS disputation is so recurrent, lengthy, and tedious. Everyone feels entitled to an opinion simply on the basis of being more or less fluent in the language, but they're usually operating on entirely subjective assumption, preference, and habit.

Where capitalization comes in is that English and most other languages with a cased writing system apply capitalization to proper names (though they do this differently in various ways, e.g. English usually capitalizes adjectival forms, like "European" from the noun form "Europe", while many other languages do not). What actually matters here is that Wikipedia has a MOS:PROPERNAME rule to apply capitalization to any proper name, and an exception to this (like any exception to any MoS rule) is made only when independent reliable sources nearly always make that exception for that specific case (thus tvOS, etc.). Near-universality of an exception for "the Internet", as "the internet" (same goes for "the web"), is already proven not to be the case. The lowercase version is simply an expediency preferred by some writers/publishers's house styles (mostly in news journalism and in business/PR writing derived from it). Lower-casing as "the internet" has the reader-confusing effect of implying that "the Internet" is not a proper name and that the Internet is not a singular thing with a proper name, but is instead a class of things with a generic common-noun, non-proper name like "the domestic cat" or "the airplane/aeroplane". The only difference between the argument to lowercase "the internet" and to lowercase "the pacific ocean" is that fortunately few lazy writers are going in the latter direction (though you can be sure that as soon as they do, there'll be a bunch of people demanding to lower-case it on Wikipedia; if you don't believe me, cf. previous attempts to lower-case the Western Hemisphere just because it can occasionally be found rendered "the western hemisphere" in some sources).

PS: "Are those guys [Microsoft, etc.] confused about how computers work, too?" Nothing in this discussion is related in any way to "how computers work"; reductio ad absurdum is silly and unproductive. Corporations follow "business communication" (a.k.a. "public relations") conventions, and these are almost entirely derived from journalistic style. (For example, if you get and read any US-published manual of business/PR style – as I have, e.g. The AMA Style Guide for Business Writing and several others – you'll almost always find it explicitly deferring to the AP Stylebook on any question not specifically addressed by the book in question, never to Chicago Manual of Style or other academic-leaning style guides that our MoS is actually based on).

In short, Microsoft is obviously a reliable source for how Windows, Excel, Skype, and Xbox operate, but is not a reliable source for how to write encyclopedic English, including about Microsoft and its products. This is covered in detail at WP:SSF.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:12, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

" A lower-cased "internet" is any inter-network (what is more commonly called a wide-area network or WAN these days), using any protocols." So, you are saying that the distinction you are drawing is actually made by using other terminology these days? Seems like this is exactly the argument FOR lowercasing internet.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:36, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

No, it's really not. Lowercase internet is still a valid term for any wide-area internet. Internet is *the* Internet, but not the only internet. -- Rockstone^{Send me a message!} 03:40, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Exactly. If, instead of trying to pop off with what they think is a snappy one-liner, Khajidha had actually read the discussion then they would have already seen proof that the generic meaning of "an internet" is still in documented use, including in the most reliable soures about the technology. Read first, post after (if necessary at all).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:12, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

• As an aside from my own personal opinions about capitalizing Internet, I'd really like to know how we could could reasonably enforce one standard? The only workable standard I can see is to require that articles are consistent with capitalization, following MOS:RETAIN. -- Rockstone^{Send me a message!} 03:40, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  Just say to capitalize it (when used in this sense) and that is sufficient. Ultimately, there is no "enforcement" of any MoS matter, other than cleanup activity by editors who like doing cleanup. Editors who don't read MoS and just write how they feel like writing will slowly come around to writing less often in ways that require other editors to do such cleanup (because the originally non-MoS-compliant editor finally reads the applicable MoS material after seeing that their original spelling keeps getting changed by other editors). There is nothing unusual or different about this case. Given the infrequency of "an internet" (much less the string "the internet" referring to a particular instance of "an internet" rather than to "the Internet"), just AWB/JWBing this as part of regular cleanup would be fine, as long as one checks the output for rare false positives before saving. The main way to get this done is to repair Internet and any other heavily Internet-related articles (Internet meme, etc.) to use the "Internet" spelling per MOS:PROPERNAME, and just see it propagate from there. We notice regularly that when a page is WP:RMed to change case, and its text cleaned up to follow suit, that the change slowly propagates to other pages. This can be sped up with focused cleanup efforts (e.g. the team effort to resolve over-capitalization of vernacular names of species).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:12, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Change of heart: I've sat on this for some time, and (I'm sure this will irritate a couple of people above), I no longer feel comfortable making the case for the Internet. I think the fact that MOS:PN is set up as an exception to the lead principle of MOS:CAPS is a problem instead of a solution, and that it needs revision to be an explication of how that principle applies to proper names. MOS:PN as it stands now has been a source of frequent heated conflict, with people using OR and PoV subjective ideas about what "is" and "isn't" a proper name (using whichever definition of the notion suits their present purposes) to argue in "internet forum" style, sometimes for years, to try to get the result that they want in a particular topic. Outside of parochial conflicts of this sort, the project has actually had little difficulty with proper names (under several definitions) that conventionally are lower-cased in most independent sources, from personal names like k.d. lang and danah boyd to commercial trademarks like iPhone and tvOS. It's getting harder and harder to treat the internet and the web differently, when source usage has strongly shifted toward lower-case, except mostly in a few tech-sector publications. It's complicated further by the fact that "an internet" is now rather obsolescent usage, and "the web" doesn't have any other referent. Plus, both terms are usable in a generic, lower-case sense all the time anyway ("web development" and "internet technolgies" can and often do apply to intranets and such), with the result that non-expert editors would not be certain when the capitalization should apply. I have a particular revision in mind to propose for MOS:PN, but need to think hard on any secondary implications of it and redraft as needed to avoid issues.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:26, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm glad you're coming around on this. But also note that Internet Protocol is a proper name for one of the standard protocols used on the internet. There can be other internet protocol suites, but does the Internet Protocol have a suite? Not sure. There will still be more details to work out. And as people keep telling me, not all such things are easily figured out from n-gram statistics; this will be one of those. But emphasizing the use of "consistent capitalization in independent reliable sources" is still probably the only way to practically define PN in a way that's relevant to WP style. Dicklyon (talk) 16:00, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Happy to hear that (obviously, as the one who started this section :-) ). When you propose that revision, I'd love if you could ping me so I can chime in. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 19:41, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

... This is actually annoying. Internet should always be capitalized when referring to the global network. I strongly disagree with your conclusion and still think MOS:Retain should be controlling, at the least. Otherwise I sense a formal RFC incoming, honestly. -- Rockstone^{Send me a message!} 17:14, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I think you meant to refer to MOS:VAR (not MOS:RETAIN, which applies to national varieties of English). If there's consensus here to change MOS, I don't see why VAR would block to a minor typographical change like this. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 17:26, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

No, I meant RETAIN; we should continue to retain whatever the current typographical convention used in the article is, rather than be disruptive and require that every article change from Internet to internet. The reason I mention RETAIN is that the point of RETAIN is to limit disruption, this would be similar. I really don't want (nor do I think it's appropriate) to change every reference to Internet to internet in long established articles that use Internet.

This said, I (and I realize this isn't a negotiation so this probably doesn't mean much) would be willing (as much as I might detest it from a personal perspective) to support a proposal that Wikipedia does not prefer either typographical style and that editors should not change an article from one typographical convention to another, but should keep an article consistent with one style. Alternatively, the policy could be that the distinction between Internet and internet should only be done within technical articles; thus a random article that mentions the Internet would not have it capitalized, but an article about the Internet itself would, since the distinction there matters. And I know, of course, that this isn't a negotiation so these statements don't hold much weight, but it is a thought, because (perhaps it's my OCD or my autism), I really do care deeply about properly capitalizing the word Internet. --Rockstone^{Send me a message!} 21:49, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

To make sure this is spelled out for others: MOS:RETAIN applies only to national varieties of English. It is located under the section title "National varieties of English", and begins with "When an English variety's consistent usage has been established in an article, maintain it in the absence of consensus to the contrary." As far as I can tell, it has no direct bearing on this discussion/proposal. MOS:VAR is what applies to this, and it gives us leeway to make a change like this after a MoS discussion: "If you believe an alternative style would be more appropriate [...] seek consensus ... at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style [if it raises an issue of more general application or with the MoS itself]". Per your second sentence, Rockstone, I'm 99% sure you already understand this but wanted to say something to make sure no one else gets confused!

To your first proposal, I'd have to oppose that. It would have the practical effect of locking in all current usage of "Internet" and would therefore defeat the purpose of the original proposal. I'd be open to your second proposal, as given my limited understanding there I can imagine that there would be specific cases where internet should be capitalized. I'd love to see a few examples of where that would be in practice! Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 22:07, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I think I'm being unclear, trying to follow the spirit of RETAIN, basically saying that the reason RETAIN exists is to minimize disruption, which is also the idea behind MOS:VAR. Per my second proposal, the article on Internet gives a particularly good example. For example, here it says They used the term internet as a shorthand for internetwork in RFC 675. Another good example is in the History of the Internet article, here, where it says In general, an internet was a collection of networks linked by a common protocol. In the time period when the ARPANET was connected to the newly formed NSFNET project in the late 1980s, the term was used as the name of the network, Internet, being the large and global TCP/IP network..

I'd propose that the rule could be: "In technical articles where the distinction between an internet and the global public Internet might otherwise be subject to confusion, Wikipedia prefers capitalizing the term Internet in the interest of clarity. Non-technical articles should rely on the language used in the sources the article cites. Note that many non-technical style guides do not recommend capitalizing internet."... or something like that. --Rockstone^{Send me a message!} 23:55, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

When to capitalize the name of an academic major or a department

@SomethingForDeletion: At this revert by SomethingForDeletion, the question is when to capitalize Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, in the context of a major field of study offered by a university. My thought was that we only cap when it's a full department names, as Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, but not in contexts like "... many of the same courses as the College of Engineering's Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS)". Normally, if someone has a degree in a subject (say physics), we say "BS in physics", not "BS in Physics"; is it different for a school offering a "BS in Physics"? I think the only thing I did wrong in this edit was to not also lowercase some other fields, such as Computer Science in a similar context. But what do others think? Dicklyon (talk) 16:46, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

We've certainly discussed this before (somewhere...). I think we should downcase always subjects and majors, even to the point of "...was a professor of chemistry at...", but it's trickier (for me) with department names: "Department of Chemistry", but "chemistry department"?

I agree with you on "...the College of Engineering's Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS),..." (where, BTW, the college is capped just like the department's proper name). I also note that electrical engineering and computer science redirects to computer science and engineering, which page has been (appropriately) lowercased since June 2020. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 02:05, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

I now find MOS:INSTITUTIONS, which includes examples like The university offers programs in arts and sciences. There's also some relevant discussion from 2021 in this archive. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 02:21, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes. I believe this edit is about right for Berkeley. There may be quite a few others still to fix. Dicklyon (talk) 06:05, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

My interpretation of "proper name" is the full name: I'll capitalize Oxford University Department of Chemistry, but not department of chemistry on its own because it's generic, and could refer to any number of chemistry departments. ~TPW 14:38, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

The proper name of a specific department at a specific institution is a proper noun, but the academic subject is not. There's confusion because institutions, which tend to capitalize for their own importance, will refer to their "Computer Science Program", but that should stay lower case, in contrast to the Department of Computer Science, or whatever the unit is formally called there. Same with academic majors or fields of study, they are commonly capitalized by institutions and on resumes, but not in general sources. For positions, I'd say "she was a professor of sociology at Fancy Pants University", but that "she held the John Smith Endowed Chair of Sociology at Fancy Pants University", assuming that's what the endowed chair is named. SchreiberBike | ⌨  11:47, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

I used to work for a university, in its administration. At most universities, a major is a proper noun, because it is a specific thing – a set of rules about which units you have to pass in order to graduate with that major. (Sometimes they are given other names such as "academic program".) There is generally a formal bureaucratic process to create, modify and discontinue majors - while it varies from university to university, very often Department of X just can't alter their majors at will, they need to send a request to higher in the administration for approval (exactly how far up it needs to go depends on the institution, but in some institutions it needs to go to pretty much all the way to the very top, even if only for a rubberstamp.) The major (or each successive version thereof–whether changes only apply to new students or also apply to existing students is a complex topic) is an entity in the IT systems, a separate row in a database table. To give a concrete example, Macquarie University in Australia currently offers a major called Entrepreneurship and another called Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Is "Entrepreneurship" a different academic discipline from "Entrepreneurship and Innovation". Not really. Majors aren't academic disciplines, they are rules about which units are required for graduation–indeed, if you compare the list of units required for those two majors, you will find that although there is a lot of overlap, there are some differences (the E&I major requires MGMT1002, "Principles of Management", plain E doesn't; whereas, the plain E major requires MGMT3000, "The Art of Negotiation", which the E&I major doesn't). Hence they are proper nouns not common nouns. It is true that sometimes there is a reasonably direct correspondence between majors and academic disciplines, but that isn't always true, and hence that correspondence cannot be the essence of the concept of "major". Also, while that concrete example is from an Australian university, I know universities in the US and Canada aren't fundamentally different – in fact, when I worked for an Australian university, we purchased a software package developed by a North American university to help us manage this stuff – so I have every reason to believe that at UCB it is largely similar. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 06:00, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

It's often ambiguous in our writing whether a term is the name for a specific degree program (a name, capitalized) or whether it is the name of the field that the degree program covers (a word, uncapitalized). To go back to SchreiberBike's example: one would write "she was a professor of sociology at Fancy Pants University" (lower case; that phrasing generally means it's the field of sociology) but "she was a professor in the Department of Sociology at Fancy Pants University" (but if you're doing it that way, make sure that it really is called the Department of Sociology rather than the Sociology Department or the J. Q. Richdonor Department of Sociology or whatever). —David Eppstein (talk) 06:46, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree it can be ambiguous sometimes, but I don't think there was any ambiguity in the specific edit we are discussing here. It started with this edit of User:Dicklyon which was about the College of Engineering's Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). When we are talking about a specific institution's "Bachelor of X in Y", the Y is a major/program not an academic discipline (even when it happens to have the same name as an academic discipline), so title case is correct (indeed UCB's own website puts it in title case), whereas changing that to all lower case is making it less correct. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 10:52, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Ok, in that case I agree that it was unambiguously the name of a program (should be capitalized) not the name of a field, because it was contrasting two differently named programs in basically the same field. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:09, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, while there are plenty of ambiguous cases, this doesn't look like one of them. Berkeley, for whatever reason, gives the degree name in the plural (Computer Sciences), so it really doesn't coincide with the generic noun for the field [5]. XOR'easter (talk) 19:44, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

I am wondering if the Manual of Style should mention this issue specifically? I think the distinction between an academic major/program (should be capitalised, at least in the context of a specific program offered by a specific institution) and an academic discipline (should not be capitalised) is one many editors don't seem to understand – and their ignorance is understandable, since unless someone has actually worked in higher education, they are unlikely to have picked up on it. And I agree the distinction isn't always clearcut, but certainly in some cases (like this one) it is. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 04:02, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't see any harm in at least thinking up a couple illustrative examples. XOR'easter (talk) 05:43, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Department of Computer Science (title). She majored in computer science (generic). Tony (talk) 05:53, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Sure, but "The UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science also offers a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science", because as discussed above it's being used as the name of a degree program, not the name of a field. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:31, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

I think when it's rendered like that it becomes a proper name, so capping is acceptable. But I too often see caps misused for majoring, for example. And "a PhD in mechanical engineering" should be normal, unless the PhD degree and coursework are specifically called "PhD in Mechanical Engineering". Usually not. Tony (talk) 12:32, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

I think "She has a PhD in mechanical engineering" is fine in a biography, although "PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Woolloomooloo" would also be fine if that is the actual title of the degree/program she graduated with. Whereas, if the article is about an institution, listing the degrees/programs/majors it offers, it should be "PhD in Mechanical Engineering", assuming that is the formal title of the degree/program/major. But suppose hypothetically the formal title was actually "PhD in Engineering (Mechanical)", then it wouldn't be right to call that a "PhD in Mechanical Engineering", it would have to be either "PhD in Engineering (Mechanical)" or "PhD in mechanical engineering". SomethingForDeletion (talk) 00:02, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

It's rare for a PhD to have a formal name that includes the field. A PhD is a PhD, simple as that. Tony (talk) 02:51, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

I think degrees and programs are different things. If the degree name includes "in Computer Science" or whatever, then OK, let's cap it. I'm not sure how often that's the case. For a program in computer science, though, I don't see how that becomes a proper name. And thanks, SomethingForDeletion, for letting me know about the University of Woolloomooloo – I lived for a month, earlier this year, at 1 Boomerang Place in Woolloomoolo (no kidding!), and hadn't been aware of the Monty Python connection. Dicklyon (talk) 05:23, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: I come back to my example of Macquarie University – "Entrepreneurship" is a major of the degree "Bachelor of Commerce"; "Entrepreneurship & Innovation" of the degree "Bachelor of Professional Practice". Both the major and the degree are proper nouns. At least as far as Macquarie University is concerned, "Bachelor of X in Y" means the combination of degree "Bachelor of X" and major Y; the "Bachelor of X in Y" is not the degree, it is the name of the degree/major combination. I remember (from 20-ish years ago) that one student enrolled in a "Bachelor of Science in Computer & Information Systems" at Macquarie University, and then complained upon graduation that their piece of paper just said "Bachelor of Science" – Macquarie University's position is that "Bachelor of Science" is the degree, "Computer & Information Systems" was just the major, and they don't print the major on the actual degree, only on the academic transcript–the student was so upset about this they tried to sue the university, but soon discovered the law was on the university's side. But you see how the university viewed both as proper nouns. And that is hardly specific to Australian universities–if you study the websites of US colleges/universities, you will find very many of them take the same approach, including UCB (just with "majors" instead being called "programs", which is an accepted synonym. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 09:46, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Coincidentally, I'm on staff at Macquarie U. Their page on E&I says "A major allows you to focus on an area of study, such as Entrepreneurship and Innovation, within more generalist degrees." So they cap it even when referring to a "field of study". I wouldn't think their style has much relation to ours, where we avoid unnecessary caps. Dicklyon (talk) 19:30, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

I used to work for Macquarie as well. I was never an academic, I was a general staff member, working on administrative IT systems. From my viewpoint – of course a "program/major" is a proper noun, because we had a database table called PROGRAMS (pretty sure that wasn't its actual name, I forget the database schema now), and every "program/major" was a row in it, and there were defined processes around adding rows to that table and retiring old rows (we never deleted data, we just "end-dated" things to indicate they were no longer current). Coming to "field of study", I should point out they actually use the phrase "area of study"–which is important, because historically at Macquarie "Area of Study" was also an entity in IT systems, there was a database table called something like AREA_OF_STUDY, and each Area of Study was a row in it. See for example "Accounting" Area of Study in 2004 Handbook: back in 2004, an "Area of Study" was a categorisation scheme for organising "Programs of Study", and every "Program of Study" had a primary "Area of Study" and zero or more secondary Areas of Study linked to it (which is where the "Other Relevant Programs of Study" on that page is coming from). There were two types of "Programs of Study" – "Coherent Study" (example: ACC01) and "Study Pattern" (example: DY002). The main difference, you will notice, is whether the requirements were expressed in a free-form text or in a tabular format. "Programs of Study" are not the same thing as "Degrees" – "Degrees" are a different database table again, and a single degree can have more than one program of study – see for example Bachelor of Commerce, which in 2004 had 14 programs. I'm sure it has all changed greatly by now, but the basic point that "programs/majors/etc are proper nouns not common nouns" hasn't. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 01:46, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Just for the record, I'm a contractor for Macquarie University. Sigh. Tony (talk) 02:13, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Jeez. Are we allowed to contribute here if we're not associated with Macquarie? — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 12:40, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

@Tony1: Right, but "PhD in Mechanical Engineering" isn't the name of the degree, it is the name of the program. And many PhDs do have formal programs of study, including required coursework. "PhD in Mechanical Engineering" is a different program from "BEng in Mechanical Engineering" because (1) it ends in the award of a different degree; (2) it contains different core units and electives. Also, when I worked for a university, we actually treated a PhD thesis as a notional "unit of study" – we had a notional number of hours a PhD thesis was supposed to take, so we enrolled all the PhD students in a "thesis unit" which was specified as taking that many hours. As far as the IT systems were concerned, a mathematics PhD student would be enrolled in a unit with a name like "MATH999: Mathematics PhD thesis", and while that was a very different unit from "MATH101: Introduction to Mathematics", as far as the student administration system was concerned, they were both just units. And the "PhD in Mathematics" program/major would have MATH999 as a mandatory unit, while "BSc in Mathematics" program/major might have a bunch of MATH1xx/MATH2xx/MATH3xx/etc mandatory units instead. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 10:02, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Department of Computer Science (title). She majored in computer science (generic). Absolutely correct. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:17, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

The real debate here though is about The College of Letters and Science (L&S) also offers a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science, which requires many of the same courses as the College of Engineering's Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), but has different admissions and graduation criteria.. In that sentence neither Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science nor Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science are generic. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 08:36, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes they are. The College of Letters and Science (L&S) also offers a bachelor of arts in computer science, which requires many of the same courses as the College of Engineering's bachelor of science in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS), but has different admissions and graduation criteria. What's wrong with that? It's just a bachelor of arts (level of degree) in computer science (subject of degree). It's not a proper name. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:25, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

No but that's my point – it is a proper name. For the university bureaucracy, majors/degrees/programs are specific abstract entities, with defined formal processes for creating/discontinuing/modifying them - from a university administration perspective, they absolutely are proper names not common nouns. The University of X's "Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science" may have rather different content from the University of Y's, or even the University of X's five years ago or five years from now, and the University of X may even have both a "Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science" and "Bachelor of Science in Computer Science" with different content (core subjects and electives), admission standards, etc. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 02:08, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

As someone who has had to evaluate whether course credit can transfer from one university to another, yes, majors/degrees/programs are specific abstract entities, and their names are proper nouns. XOR'easter (talk) 19:06, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Encyclopaedia Britannica website says ("Are school subjects proper nouns or common nouns?"): School subjects are common nouns when used generally unless they are the name of a language. Names of specific classes or courses are proper nouns. I agree with the editors of the Britannica here. So, as a subject/discipline, physics is lowercase. But in the name of a specific educational offering (course/class/unit/degree/program/major/etc), it is a proper noun and hence title case ("Physics" not "physics"). SomethingForDeletion (talk) 02:11, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

The central issue here is that while "Bachelor of Science in Computer Science" is the correct name of the degree and program, "bachelor of science in computer science" is also correct as a generic description. And it is not always clear which is meant in a particular usage. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 16:54, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

It might not always be clear, but if we are talking about a degree/program being offered by a particular academic institution, in an article about that particular institution – then I think in that context it is clearly being used specifically rather than generically. And that was the context of the edit which started this discussion. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 05:56, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

The original question was about: "... many of the same courses as the College of Engineering's Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS)". In that case, it is not clear if that is a named major or an area of study. It is capitalized and linked, but when clicked, it goes to the page Computer science and engineering which is not about the named program. I think it would be a surprise for a reader to click on what appears to be a proper name, then to go to the general page about the topic. It's not different in type from clicking on University of California and being redirected to University.

I have been persuaded by the discussion above that sometimes the name of a field of study can also be a major/program/etc., and hence a proper name, but more often those words are capitalized for emphasis. If the sentence had been "... many of the same courses as the College of Engineering's Bachelor of Science Electrical Engineering and Computer Science program ..." it would not be ambiguous.

As I think about it, I have probably, among the hundreds of times I have knocked down capitalization of majors or fields of study, knocked down specific programs when I shouldn't have. I will be more careful about that in the future and I will try to write better to make the difference between a specific program and an area of study (a proper name and a common noun) more clear. SchreiberBike | ⌨  13:29, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

@SchreiberBike: It is capitalized and linked, but when clicked, it goes to the page Computer science and engineering which is not about the named program Personally, I have never thought of link targets as relevant to questions like capitalisation: if we look at the sentence in its context, and it is clear that in that sentence in that context, a particular noun phrase is a proper noun, and therefore deserves title case – I don't see why that judgement would be changed by the fact that someone has wikilinked the phrase to an article whose title is a common noun. We are never going to have articles for every proper noun, and so linking a proper noun to a common noun which names some concept of which that proper noun is an instance is not necessarily wrong, but I don't think doing so is a counterargument to the case that it is a proper noun in that particular sentence and context, nor do I think it even ought to make the matter ambiguous. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 01:26, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

​​​​​​​​​​For a case that doesn't seem to fall quite on one side or the other, would you capitalize "Asian Theatre" in this case? —  AjaxSmack  03:10, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

As the name of a university course of studies? I would capitalize it. Note that their catalog does properly lowercase it ("Asian theatre") when using it in text to describe the theatre of Asia, rather than as the name of the major: [6] (in this link, there is a third use of the phrase, as part of a course title; it is in title case but would probably use a lowercase "theatre" in sentence case). —David Eppstein (talk) 06:46, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

@AjaxSmack: In that use, it is ambiguous. The phrase is: "The school offers Asian Theatre as a major and has ...". Based on that sentence, I can't tell if that is a named program or major or if it is a descriptive phrase. If instead of "Asian Theatre", it said "Chemistry", it would be equally ambiguous and I'd change it to lower case with little thought. It could be rewritten as "The school's Asian Theatre program has ..." and it would be clear that it is a proper noun. The university's main page on the program could use some copy editing, but generally refers to the field of study in lower case and the program in upper case. Further reading of the college's pages show that the major is in theater and the Asian subset is called either a concentration, focus area or a program, so it appears to be an error to call it a major. I hope that helps. SchreiberBike | ⌨  12:49, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

​​Thanks to both of you. I just noticed the factual problems with the statement after you posted your link. I'll leave the sentence alone for now. I agree that "chemistry" would be lowercased as chemistry exists as an encyclopedic entity and "chemistry program" could be a program that studies chemistry. On the other hand, "Asian Theatre" doesn't really exist as an encyclopedic entity except as a program name so it's more of a proper name. But that requires a lot of thought be put in to each case, hence my question. After years of Wikiconditioning to decimate capitals whenever possible, I would have lowercased it (unless it was written "Major in Asian Theatre"). —  AjaxSmack  13:14, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

"Asian theatre" is clearly not a term consistently capitalized in sources as a proper name [7]. Capitalization is common, almost certainly reflecting non-independent university/college materials, because it's a descriptive phrase most often used for departments/programs (which such institutions will always put in upper case) and not an actual genre (it's a cross-cultural categorization). But it's not so common that WP would capitalize it. It's most instructive to look at Google Scholar results, which include lots of arts journals hits, etc. [8]: usage is almost totally uniformly lowercase outside of title-case titles and headings, and a few proper names of particular venues and projects. And there would never be a reason to capitalize "major[ed] in Asian theatre" per DOCTCAPS, since fields of study are not capitalized and "academic major/minor" is also not capitalized as a proper name in sources [9][10][11]. See what happens when you combine terms like this: [12][13].  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:18, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

No, per MOS:DOCTCAPS. ~TPW 13:52, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

I think the capitals are acceptable there, since it's a particular school's specialization (with its own institutional history, course requirements, etc.) rather than the overall subject area. XOR'easter (talk) 17:48, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

No, since the cited source says "Students can focus on Asian theatre as part of graduate degrees..." Dicklyon (talk) 15:56, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Use lower case for all this stuff when possible. The entire problem with the idea 'I think "She has a PhD in mechanical engineering" is fine in a biography, although "PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Woolloomooloo" would also be fine if that is the actual title of the degree/program she graduated with' is that it would require WP:OR with primary sources to try to prove that one way or another, and even if you found, say, a PDF of a degree certificate from a particular university, you have no evidence that it precisely matches the one issued to the bio subject, since the names of these things vary over time, and sometimes people do custom majors/minors (I did), but may summarize them in more conventional terms. And even if you could prove it with regard to that specific bio subject, the capital letter sprinkling is meaningless to the reader and inconsistent with treatment everywhere else in our materials. As for departments, it's fine but not necessarily ideal to refer to "the Department of Basketweaving at Fancy Pants University" if you have RS proof that the actual name of the department is (and was at the pertinent time) "the Department of Basketweaving" and not "the Basketweaving Department" or "the Faculty of Basketweaving" within the "the Department of Textile Arts" or "the X. Y. Zounds School of Basketweaving", or yadda yadda yadda. And this, too, is something that may have changed over time. Even if the name that pertained to the period can be proven to be "the Department of Basketweaving", this is really descriptive, and it would not be wrong to simply write it as "the department of basketweaving" anyway, switching to purely descriptive wording that happens to coincide by pure chance with what the actual name is. This would be more consistent with other usage when the exact names of other departments is unknown (which is most of the time), would not confuse anyone, and uses fewer uppercase letters that are not strictly required, which is the WP way. PS: Yes, use "a professor of basketweaving at Fancy Pants University" but "the X. Y. Zounds Distinguished Professor of Basketweaving at Fancy Pants University"; such endowments are proper-named awards.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:23, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I continue to not understand the obsession of smccandlish and likeminded editors of lowercasing everything imaginable, even proper nouns. If you just abhor the appearance of capital letters, I'm sure you could find a font to install in your preferences that would change them all to lowercase. But names of departments are names; when used as a name, the proper form of the name should be determined and capitalized. My employer has three departments whose concern includes psychology, for instance; saying "the department of psychology" would be incorrect, because there is not a single department that covers that (lowercased) field. Instead, one must properly track down and refer to them by their names: the Department of Psychological Science, the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, or the Department of Cognitive Sciences. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:16, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

In 1973 or 1974 (sources I've seen are inconsistent on which year), the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sydney split in two – a "Department of General Philosophy" and a "Department of Traditional and Modern Philosophy". This split was done to resolve political infighting between left-leaning and right-leaning philosophers – the left-leaning philosophers were put in the first department, the right-leaning in the second. The split endured until 2000, when the two departments were finally merged again. This actually comes up in Wikipedia articles, since some of the philosophy academics involved in this split are notable – this very topic is briefly discussed in our article on David Malet Armstrong. And I think this is a good example of where uppercasing is essential. It makes no sense to speak of "general philosophy" and "traditional and modern philosophy", since those are not generally recognised academic subdisciplines. They must be uppercased as "General Philosophy" and "Traditional and Modern Philosophy", since they are phrases which only have meaning in the context of an understanding of the history of that specific university. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 23:41, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: There is no reason to make up imaginatively pejorative and bullshitty mischaracterizations of people you don't agree with on something. It is frequently said that MoS-related disagreements are "demoralizing" and "corrosive", and this kind of demonizing of "enemies" is an excellent example of why. Our standard is simple: 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. This is based on a strong lower-casing trend, to avoid unnecessary capitalization, across all major English-language style guides, on which MoS is based. If you think that this should be changed to something like "Wikipedia relies on editors' collective sense of what should be capitalized, to suggest importance or significance, and Wikipedia capitalizes anything found capitalized in a substantial minority of sources, especially those that are closely tied to a subject" (and MOS:SIGCAPS and MOS:DOCTCAPS should be deleted), you know how to open an RfC; same goes for everyone else in this thread and every similar one. There is usually no solid sourcing cited for what the proper name of something like this is in a specific time slot; rather, editors just assume that "Department of Foo" or "Foo Department" is the proper name without checking. Highly sub-specific and even unique department names like "Department of Neurobiology and Behavior" and "Department of Traditional and Modern Philosophy", if actually verified with RS, would surely be something to capitalize; I don't think anyone would argue otherwise. But if sources say someone is/was in the psychology department of some university, that shouldn't be capitalized without verifying it's the actual department name (or was at the relevant time period) and not just a descriptive label. Even if it was, what exact benefit is there to capitalizing it when it's that generic? What important fact is being signalled to the reader by "in the Department of Physics at Foobar University" that is not by "in the department of physics at Foobar University" or "in Foobar University's physics department" in someone's bio? Why would the reader care? And, to address other capitalization desires in this thread, why on earth would we ever write "the university's Physics department"?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:18, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

The Australian Government Style Manual, which is frequently accepted as a guide to good English style even in non-government settings, recommends the principle "Write the name as the organisation writes it". Applying that principle, the capitalisation of university departments should be based on how universities themselves capitalise them. Maybe American or British English is different? I don't know. But if it is, we should still follow Australian English capitalisation rules for articles on Australian universities. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 02:22, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Definitely. But judging from a sample size of one, I don't see any difference between typical Australian and US practice in this regard. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:18, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think Australian and US universities differ significantly in their capitalisation practices. My argument was about the importance of the rule "Write the name as the organisation writes it". Even if editors here think it ought to be disregarded in American or British English style (at least in this specific case), its status as part of Australian English style is a separate question, and a decision to disregard it in the former does not entail necessarily disregarding it in the latter. (And there are some real English style differences in this general area–for example, US English is much keener on putting dots/periods in abbreviations than Australian English is; e.g. many US sources will write "U.S.", "U.N.", "Ph.D.", whereas contemporary Australian English has a rather strong preference for "US", "UN", "PhD" instead–although admittedly the preference is more universal in the first two cases than in the second) SomethingForDeletion (talk) 08:14, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Capitalization in tables

MOS:LISTCAPS doesn't specify if capitalization applies to the entire table, or can change on a column-by-column basis. I.e. which takes precedence: Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization. – the very first sentence of the MOS – or If the list items are sentence fragments, then capitalization should be consistent – sentence case should be applied to either all or none of the items.? The particular instance is a table than contains fleet numbers (a mixed number-letter string), dates, status (a single word), and notes (the last being in full sentence case). Useddenim (talk) 14:44, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

To me, consistency by column makes sense, but it's not clear when that would differ from whole-table consistency. If proper names and full sentences are capped and generic fragments are not, that will tend to make patterns by column, right? Where is the particular instance you're referring to? Dicklyon (talk) 21:02, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: Toronto subway rolling stock#Work vehicles – I changed the  Withdrawn  column to lowercase, but Joeyconnick reverted it. Useddenim (talk) 22:35, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I'd say that having all cells start with a capital letter (as it is now) makes indeed most sense. Using leading capitals for some columns, but not for others, would be odd. Gawaon (talk) 22:57, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

100% all new cells should start with capitals... they are essentially separate new elements.

Note we also capitalize each new header cell, so why would we not do that with regular cells? —Joeyconnick (talk) 23:16, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

We always use sentence case for headings, including table row and column headings. But entries can be lowercase, if they are fragments (e.g. "active"); just need to be consistent. I agree all the columns with fragments should be mutually consistent, so not just within columns, which I hope answers OP's question. Of course, if some of those columns are lowercase fragments, and some contain proper names, it would still be consistent if the proper names were capped (even if not by column). Dicklyon (talk) 00:39, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Sorry... while it makes reference to table headers in a footnote explaining what sentence case is used for, MOS:LISTCAPS doesn't apply to tables... it only addresses lists. A table cell is not a list item, so I'm at a loss as to why we would assume initial terms in table cells would be treated as if they were list items and would follow the guidance for lists.

And while I get that it's not the strongest argument, I'm not sure I've ever seen a table with initial lowercase entries in cells... apart from Useddenim's edits to add those in this particular case. If I have, it would be in the vast minority of cases (like fewer than 1% of tables I've seen... possibly more like 0.1%).

Also worth noting the cells were initially capitalized... so there's also the issue of avoiding a change for change's sake, even if LISTCAPS did, for some unknown reason, apply. —Joeyconnick (talk) 03:14, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Well, if we do amend to say something specific about tables, I'd say treat columns as lists and apply MOS:LISTCAPS. Dicklyon (talk) 05:46, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

@Joeyconnick: It wouldn't be the first time that I started doing something differently, and it took a while for the rest of Wikipedia to catch up. Useddenim (talk) 15:05, 16 February 2024 (UTC)