Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 5

A: Naming conventions make that easier, but probably only XML DTDs (at least for terrestrial space and time and persons) can make it reliable. These would not require you to write XML yourself, but would serve as a medium for translation from free-text to the compiled forms, e.g. a timeline of all events in a given country, etc.. If exact correct compilation was required, you could add the XML tags inline, assuming there were no name clashes with the Wikipedia DTD. None of this is probably relevant until we build Wikipedia4, so in the meantime just following the naming conventions as closely as possible.

Q: Should you link every occurance of a term or just the first one in an article?

Q: Plural links: [[crayon]]s or [[crayon|crayons]] ?

A: Answers at Wikipedia:Manual of Style

Capitalization of military ranks

The stubs on military ranks are all capitalized (i.e. Brigadier General, Second Lieutenant). Is there any good reason for this, or should I go and rename them all? -Smack 19:42 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

That is how they are written. They are specific titles. I don't know if American english does something different but in British english it would be a major clanger not to capitalise them. If someone did it in a college essay, they'd find their essay would come back with all the lowercased letters circled in red with marks docked for 'ignorance of capitalisation rules'. FearÉIREANN 23:52 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Call it an American/British difference then. Chicago MoS (7.15 and 7.19) is very specific about only capitalizing ranks when used with the name of the person, as in "General Eisenhower", but not when they're by themselves, as in "the general deigned to notice the first lieutenant". Intuitively, when I see "Brigadier General" by itself, I want to harrumph, say "jolly good show", and reminisce about my experiences at Verdun... :-) For here, we'll want redirs to both versions. Americans can cope with the article itself being at the capitalized version, it's not as bad as some of the other indignities that NATO participation has forced upon us... :-) Stan 00:35 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Sounds a good solution. I must admit before coming onto wiki I never realised how many differences there are between BE and AE (and that's not taking into account HE ). The one thing that strikes me about the sentence "the general deigned to notice the first lieutenant" is how, from my point of view, capitalisation would aid comprehension. For example (and I know it is only part of the sentence, but that could be read "the general deigned to notice the first(ie 1st) lieutenant" or "the general deigned to notice the first lieutenant" Capitalising it as "the General deigned to notice the First Lieutenant" makes it unambiguously clear that 'first lieutenant' should be read en block as an office-holder, with the two individuals standing out visually in the sentence in a way that might not happen if the reader is tired and it is part of block text.

I know there have been times on wiki where capitals have not been used that I have found myself having to re-read things to work out the meaning. For example apostolic succession is open to a very broad meaning, Apostolic Succession a narrower one relating to the specific theological concept, with a formal name, hence the capitalisation. There are many many others, where I find not capitalising leaves an article title so open to such a broad interpretation that it makes it harder to know at first glance what an article is about. For example single transferable vote can be a broad general reference to a concept, or a specific reference to a specific system. Single Transferable Vote can only mean the system, because it is the proper noun of the specific system. That's why I sometimes am so irked by constant lowercasing - I am forever finding that the name in lowercase doesn't give the sort of automatic information I could get it it was treated as case sensitive. I can guess BE users' "preoccupation" with capitals (as one fiercely anti-capital user put it once) can seem strange. But we find them an invaluable help in clarifying text and meaning. Leaving them out seems the equivalent of leaving out full stops and commas; the words are still there; they just seem much harder to interpret and make head or tail of. FearÉIREANN 03:31 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I know what you mean. One very American example is the difference between pilgrims and Pilgrims. However, seeing something like "Brigadier General" capitalized without need is also quite jarring.

Capitalization in American history articles

Some of the articles on the history of the United States seem to have erroneous capitalization:

Is there a reason for this, or should I rename them all? -Smack 02:13 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Please rename them. --mav 02:25 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hispanic family names

In the Hispanic world, people receive as surnames both their mother's and father's. For example:

Máxima Zorreguieta Cerruti

However, in practice, only the paternal surname is used:

Máxima Zorreguieta

There are a number of articles in the Wikipedia for Hispanic people which use the full name (ie, both surnames). This makes finding them hard (especially with search, alas, switched off), since most of the time you don't know the second surname. I propose as a naming convention the short version, with the full name indicated in body of the article (this is now alrady the case in many articles), such as the above-mentioned.

An exception might be for individuals of the same name. For example, Eduardo Frei was president of Chile from 1964 to 1970. But his eldest son was also president, from 1994 to 2000. So:

Eduardo Frei Montalva (father)

Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle (son)

Of course, an disambiguation page could also be used.

Does this seem logical?

-- Viajero 08:38, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

You mean we're not doing this already? :-) The most general rule says to use "most common unambiguous form", which is consistent with what you're proposing. I suspect that in many cases people have used longer forms because they weren't sure if the paternal surname alone was appropriate. In any case, feel free to use the "Move this page" - the combination of shorter name and redir from the longer name will catch more references from elsewhere in the encyclopedia. In the case of Eduardo Frei, yes, it should disambiguate to two additional articles; see Matthew Perry for a similar situation. Stan 12:50, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I put this on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles). Andre Engels 13:50, 19 Sep 2003 (UTC)

What is the convention on perhaps using pinyin diacritics for names like yǔhángyuán or Yáng Lìwěi? -戴&#30505sv 04:45, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC) PS-- obviously this idea has problems. :)-sv

As far as I know, pinyin diacritics are not being used. Also, more generally, diacritics that are not in ISO 8859-1 are not used in titles, and it seems you have already seen why. See Wikipedia:Special_characters for a list of the non-ASCII signs that can be used. Andre Engels 06:53, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Odd capitalization in commercial names

I wrote

In some commercial names capitals are used by their owners as a matter of style, even though initials are not involved - e.g. ALSTOM, the "one" in BBC ONE. Unless it's very common to follow this usage, use lower case

Response from FearÉIREANN

rv. That is incorrect

So what is right? Should Alstom be moved to back to ALSTOM even though you never see it like that in the press? The company insists on ALSTOM in all of its publicity but for that matter it also insists on Futura-A Book Black Type font. I would have said the use of capitals was just a presentation choice rather than the "real" name.

On the other hand you have npower and NatWest, which I would say have to be like that.

Andy G 20:22, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Use of capitalisation is in many cases an important feature in defining corporate or name identity. For example, there is no such organisation as the True Catholic Church but there is an entity called the true Catholic Church, its lower cap t indicating an important factual analysis of itself, that it believes it is the true Catholic Church, not a separate catholic church with the word true being given equality in its title. BBC ONE, not BBC one or BBC One is the name of the station formerly BBC1. Writing BBC One is as wrong as writing United states of america or Coca cola. Its name is unambiguously BBC ONE and nothing else. If you are using the formal name of an organisation, you should use its capitalisation. In Ireland, for Nato (which is generally written as such in Europe) is the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. NATO is a different national organisation associated with tenants. Proportional Representation is a formal voting system, proportional representation is a broad collection of electoral systems who share principles of proportionality. SimilarlyNatWest is universally recognised as what used to be called the National Westminister Bank, Natwest is unrecognisable to most. Organisations use capitalisation to create a brand identity behind a word. If wikipedia is referring to that brand, it should recognise that fact, and not treat a brand identity which carries with it a recognition factor as merely a word. If Colgate calls itself that, we shoudn't decide that we for our own reasons want to call it cOLGATE. If Britain's main TV station calls itself, BBC ONE that is what we should call it, just as we should write about the true Catholic Church in articles, etc. Encyclopædias are based on reality, not fictionalising brand names to push an agenda. The suggestion that use of capitals is just a presentation choice is patiently absurd. FearÉIREANN 20:51, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Generally I'd agree. But - "Its name is unambiguously BBC ONE"? On the BBC's own TV listings web page [1] they use "BBC One". I think the on-screen logo "BBC ONE" is "BBC One" written in an all-capitals font. On Ceefax (teletext) they use "BBC1", but then they need to save characters there. Andy G 21:26, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)