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:Ah, . There was support for this option: "Option 3. Shall The word 'universe' be capitalized when used in an astronomical context to refer to our specific Universe?" So now you just need a rationale way to decide what makes it "an astronomical context". ] (]) 01:20, 4 January 2016 (UTC) :Ah, . There was support for this option: "Option 3. Shall The word 'universe' be capitalized when used in an astronomical context to refer to our specific Universe?" So now you just need a rationale way to decide what makes it "an astronomical context". ] (]) 01:20, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
::So what do you suggest? --] (]) 01:39, 4 January 2016 (UTC) ::So what do you suggest? --] (]) 01:39, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
:::There's only one universe. ] (]) 01:40, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

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Related guidelines

Surnames beginning with non-capitalized letters

I've read the project-page article, but I'm not entirely sure I understand how to apply it in a particular situation. Consider the name Juan de Solis, where "de Solis" is the surname. If a sentence begins with the surname, is it "de Solis was born on ..." or is it "De Solis was born on ..."?

Any help you can provide will be appreciated. NewYorkActuary (talk) 01:19, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

This situation exists in several languages ("von", "van", "da"). IMO, all these ought to be capitalized when they start a sentence. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:01, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
I agree. I used to have to regularly remove the {{lowercase}} template that was (mis)applied to articles like von Neumann universe or de Rham cohomology. That doesn't seem to happen very often anymore.
It is visually confusing to start a sentence with a lowercase letter. There are some things that can't be capitalized, ever (say the mathematical constant e), and these articles legitimately get {{lowercase}}, because if you did start a sentence with them, you would still lowercase them. But in these cases, we generally try to avoid starting a sentence with them. You wouldn't want to have to avoid starting a sentence with someone's name. --Trovatore (talk) 03:13, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
I think that would be the general rule for virtually all uncapitalized words when they are used to start a sentence. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 03:11, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
That was helpful. Thank you all. NewYorkActuary (talk) 03:20, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
I agree with Dirtlawyer1 except for one detail: The use of a capital letter to start a sentence in English is such a basic rule that I see no need to ever depart from it. I see no reason why the same rule would need to apply to the titles of articles. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 11:40, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
Titles of articles are in sentence case, so the first letter should be capitalized if it would be capitalized at the start of a sentence. There is no excuse to slap {{lowercase}} on articles whose title start with such names. If we capitalize the D the title of the article dog, which we do, there's no reason not to capitalize the V in the title of von Neumann architecture.
On the other hand, we don't capitalize eBay or iPod or e, regardless of their position in a sentence, so those articles deserve to be lowercased. --Trovatore (talk) 20:12, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
Capitalising the name of the article dog is a poor choice (in my opinion) because it serves no useful purpose and creates ambiguity, because you cannot distinguish it from the name of the film Dog. It is true that starting a sentence with a capital letter creates similar ambiguity but here you get something in return. It conveys information to the reader that he or she is embarking on a new sentence. Starting a sentence with lower case "e", whether the mathematical constant, "eBay" or "e.g.", is confusing and completely unnecessary. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 21:03, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
Well, poor choice or good one, it's made and it isn't going to change. The time to make that argument was in 2002 or whatever year that was. It's pretty hard to change something like that. I'd like to change to serif fonts (because they would be better for math articles), but that isn't going to happen either. As long as that's the case, there's no need to make a special exception for articles starting with "von Neumann". --Trovatore (talk) 21:18, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
There's a difference between stating an opinion and advocating wholesale change, which I agree is unlikely to happen any time soon. So be it. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 22:17, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
Responding to the OP: For a name like "Juan de Solis", use "De Solis was" at the beginning of a sentence. We don't capitalize "apples" normally, but you still write "Apples are" at the beginning of a sentence; it's the exact same rule (of formal English orthography universally, not just on WP). Some have argued that a trade name like "iPod" should be an exception, with "iPods are popular." being a valid sentence. That idea isn't supported by anything concrete, and the result of its application is confusing in practice, so just rewrite to avoid: "The iPod is popular." There are essentially no constructions of this sort that cannot be rewritten to avoid beginning a sentence with a lower-case letter.

Responding to the rest of the thread: I'd agree with the observation that it's legitimate to use {{Lowercase}} with the article iPod, but not with Von Neumann universe, because even in the academic literature the latter would be capitalized at the beginning of a sentence, while virtually no one seems to want to capitalize IPod for any reason, ever. This is a case where the real world is telling us we have to make an exception, as with the constant e (which also should not be used to begin a sentence in Misplaced Pages). As for WP title policy, I've always hated our use of sentence case for titles (of articles and of headings). It was done for technical reasons, I'm told, and I recall that it was also done, or had additional support, because of the supposition that people can't agree on what to capitalize in titles/headings (is it "about" or "About"?) However, I'm skeptical that, in 2015, whatever the technical issue was cannot be easily circumvented with a MediaWiki plugin (hell, I could probably write it myself), and we actually have stably settled on capitalization of prepositions at MOS:CT (though this took a long time, and there are some rare-case disputes about certain songs), so this could be subject to some kind of referendum for change, presumably at Village Pump. I note that Wiktionary lowercases every title that's not a proper noun, and so do most other online dictionaries. But, WP:NOT#DICTIONARY. I'd prefer that WP used title case for titles and headings, like almost all other publications do, aside from academic works in some fields and some percentage of newspapers for headlines (especially secondary ones). I doubt this will change here, though. It's on my top-ten peeve list, so I'd !vote in favor of that change, but I wouldn't bet on it.  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ⱷ≼  16:38, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

I doubt that technical reasons have anything to do with using sentence case for article titles and headings. Title case for titles is most common in American English. Sentence case for titles is most common in British English, scientific writing (including American), and some other scholarly writing (including American). The Library of Congress uses sentence case for titles. If there is a trend, it is toward sentence case. The MOS prescribes sentence case for article titles and sections headings, but prescribes title case for titles in citations. I see this as an WP:ENGVAR compromise: 1 for the British, 1 for the Americans. I personally prefer title case, but that is only because, as an American, it is more familiar to me—which is irrelevantFinell 00:19, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
I have just come across a surname problem with the Swiss family of which Auguste Arthur de la Rive is the most prominent member. Reviewing authoritative and contemporaneous French-language sources, it seems that "Auguste de la Rive" is correct, but when he is referred to more formally as "De la Rive", or "De la Rive, Auguste", the D is in caps. The l is never in caps in a French language context. But some professionally-edited English language sources use different approaches; the Congressional Record (19th century) has Auguste De La Rive, and the modern Encyclopaedia Britannica has "Auguste-Arthur de La Rive", referring to him in the article as "La Rive" (no "de"). My impression is there is no standard convention in English text, and I can find no exceptions to the capitalizations I listed in French text, so I'm going with the French method. This is also congruent with MOS:CT. But is there other guidance in any formal English language style guides for writing names like this in an English context? David Brooks (talk) 02:44, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
Another example from Bush shoeing incident:

al-Zaidi was subsequently grabbed, kicked and hurried out of the room by former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's guards.

I assume the surname should be capitalised as "Al-Zaidi" at the beginning of the sentence? Perhaps this should be clearly referenced at Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Items that require initial lower case which mentions the personal preference of individual (e.g., k.d. lang) but not surnames with prefixes that usually take a lowercase letter (e.g., al-, de la, von, etc.). sroc 💬 16:42, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Capitalization of a-prefixed words in titles

Several WP song titles use "a-prefixing" inconsistently: "Hear My Train A Comin'", "Train Kept A-Rollin'", "The Times They Are a-Changing", "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", "Keep A-Knockin'", etc. According to several sources, it appears that the hyphenated usage is most common, but do not mention capitalization in titles. Is there a preferred style for WP? —Ojorojo (talk) 20:37, 14 December 2015 (UTC

Personally, I don't have a strong opinion on the matter, but since the a- is a prefix rather than a separate word, I'd be inclined to capitalize it (and lowercase the part after the hyphen), as in "Here We Come A-wassailing". Deor (talk) 11:24, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
So, wouldn't "Hear My Train A Comin'" at least need to have the hyphen in it? Chapa1985 (talk) 15:15, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
It doesn't appear that there is a grammatical basis for "a-Rollin'" versus "A-Rollin'" and @Deor: has raised a third possibility, "A-rollin'" (I think we agree that "A Rollin'" is not a usual construction). Since all are potentially "correct", it probably comes down to stylistic preference. Maybe a proposal for a MOS:CT guideline be drawn up for WP:RFC. —Ojorojo (talk) 16:55, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
My view is that we should use, in each case, the wording originally used (or most often used in reliable sources), and entirely ignore questions of consistency between different article titles. But, where there is doubt or inconsistency between sources in a particular case, the default preference should be "a-Rollin'" (etc.). Ghmyrtle (talk) 17:29, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

FourFive options have been identified so far:

  • Titles should reflect what is found in a preponderance of reliable sources, regardless of capitalization or use of a hyphen. For one song, it would be "Hear My Train A Comin'".
  • Titles should be standardized to "a-Comin'" (lower case "a" and hyphen)
  • Titles should be standardized to "A-Comin'" (upper case "A" and hyphen)
  • Titles should be standardized to "A-comin'" (upper case "A" and hyphen, but lower case second part)
  • Any combination of lower and upper case is acceptable, as long as a hyphen is used

Any comments before adding Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment? —Ojorojo (talk) 19:40, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

All I'm shooting for is to at least add the hyphen to it, I don't care about the uppercase or lower as the likeliest scenario is that all three different forms (a-Comin'; A-comin'; A-Comin') are probably acceptable. For me, the best move in this case seems to be accepting all three versions with the hyphen as the standard. Chapa1985 (talk) 20:32, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

@Chapa1985:, @Deor:, @Ghmyrtle: Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#RfC: Should an "a-prefixing" guideline be added to MOS:CT? has been opened for comments. —Ojorojo (talk) 16:29, 21 December 2015 (UTC)


Composition Titles section

I think this section is in dire need of featuring more in depth explanation to avoid some heated discussions I've seen. It needs to address the tricky issue that sometimes seems to arise regarding the capitalization of the word 'over' in songs. Also, it needs to add more examples next to each rule, especially on the phrasal verbs rule. In fact, the phrasal verb example of 'walk on' is actually one of the more confusing examples one can give and it is actually bound to confuse people even more! In my opinion, better and more common phrasal verb examples are: Hold On, Keep On, Turn On, Tune In, Come On, Turn Off and Bring On. It also needs to more clearly address the issue with compound prepositions like 'into', 'upon', 'onto', whether they should be always capitalized or provide some examples with exceptions. Chapa1985 (talk) 16:17, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Into, upon, and onto are not compound prepositions. Since they consist of four letters, according to our style manual they are not capitalized. Compound prepositions are those consisting of more than one word, as the examples in the manual make clear. Deor (talk) 15:50, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

So according to the manual here, how would you capitalize the following titles?: (I'm not 100% sure about any of them)

'once upon a time in the west' 'walk upon the water' 'once upon a daydream' 'let me put my love into you' 'i'm into you' 'got to get you into my life'

Chapa1985 (talk) 16:34, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Accoding to the style manual, they should be "Once upon a Time in the West", "Walk upon the Water", "Once upon a Daydream", "Let Me Put My Love into You", "I'm into You", and "Got to Get You into My Life". That doesn't mean that everyone who has written Misplaced Pages articles containing those titles has followed the style guidelines, though. Deor (talk) 16:57, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! That's how I would have written them too...except for "Got to Get You into My Life"...'get into' is supposed to be a phrasal verb..so wouldn't it have to be uppercase? Chapa1985 (talk) 17:11, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

I wouldn't parse "get into" as a phrasal verb there. Into clearly has a prepositional function in the title, with my life as its object, while you is the object of get. With a phrasal verb, there's only one object, and often the quasi-adverbial particle can either precede the object or follow it (compare "I tried on some clothes" and "I tried some clothes on"). "Into my life" specifies whither the "you" is to be gotten, whereas "on some clothes" does not specify where anything has been tried. Deor (talk) 23:52, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for taking time to answer! So, would this be correct?: "Just to Get into It". Chapa1985 (talk) 18:31, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes. Deor (talk) 18:44, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! Chapa1985 (talk) 19:10, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

What about "Look on Yonder Wall", "Blues with a Feeling", "Ramblin' on My Mind", "Further on Up the Road", "Ain't That Just Like a Woman (They'll Do It Every Time)", "If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day", "The Things That I Used to Do"? —Ojorojo (talk) 20:09, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
The first three are OK, as is the last one. The fourth should be "Further On up the Road" (on is an adverb and up a preposition). Like and over should be lowercase in the fifth and sixth according to the MoS (though I'm aware that like, in particular, has been a topic of a good deal of disagreement). Deor (talk) 20:44, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, any thoughts on the "a-prefixing" question? (more discussion at Talk:Hear My Train A Comin'#Title of the article). —Ojorojo (talk) 20:56, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

RfC: Should an "a-prefixing" guideline be added to MOS:CT?

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Should an "a-prefixing" guideline be added to WP:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Composition titles? Currently, different constructions are used for WP article titles: "Frog Went A-Courting", "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", "Hear My Train A Comin'", "Here We Come A-wassailing", "Hold On, I'm A Comin'", "A-Hunting We Will Go", "Keep A-Knockin'", "The Times They Are a-Changing", "Train Kept A-Rollin'", etc. The current guideline addresses capitalization for composition titles, but not for "a-prefixing" ("a-Comin'" vs "A-Comin'", etc.).

A recent discussion has identified several options ("Hear My Train A Comin'" is used to illustrate the differences):

1) Titles should reflect what is found in a preponderance of reliable sources, regardless of capitalization or use of a hyphen – "Hear My Train A Comin'"
2) Titles should be standardized to a lower case "a" and hyphen – "Hear My Train a-Comin'"
3) Titles should be standardized to an upper case "A" and hyphen – "Hear My Train A-Comin'"
4) Titles should be standardized to an upper case "A" and hyphen, but lower case second part – "Hear My Train A-comin'"
5) Any combination of lower and upper case is acceptable, as long as a hyphen is used – 2), 3), or 4)

Which of these is preferable for a guideline for all composition titles? —Ojorojo (talk) 20:34, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

For me, option #5 is the most reasonable by far. That's the one I support. Chapa1985 (talk) 15:03, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Support #1, but where there is disagreement or variation over what most reliable sources say, default to #2. Incidentally, this raises wider issues over "incorrect" or variable song titles - it would probably not be hard, for instance, to find an example of "Hear My Train a-Coming"; and I started an article on "I Walk on Guilded Splinters", the original but "wrong" title of the song. So, because of the variability element and because we should report what sources say rather than rewrite them according to our own "rules" or attempts at consistency (not something for which the English language is noted), we should stick to the most used version wherever possible. Ghmyrtle (talk) 16:50, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
The problem with #1 is that since Misplaced Pages has its own page about capitalization rules, we should always try to have consistency. If not, then why even have this page with capitalization rules here at all? If people continue to use outside websites for song title capitalization references, they are going to contiune to clash against Misplaced Pages's rules, and we'll continue to have lots of arguments over and over. Chapa1985 (talk) 21:43, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
Not "rules", "guidelines". As with any guideline, "...it will have occasional exceptions." Ghmyrtle (talk) 10:23, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
Then in that case, the exceptions regarding capitalization of song titles need to be pointed out in the MOS:CT page. Chapa1985 (talk) 19:50, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
Atsme, I haven't been able to find anything under "a-prefixing" or "a-verbing". Could you quote the appropriate section? —Ojorojo (talk) 21:10, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Capitalize universe?

This has been inconsistent, since half of the articles capitalize it and the other half do not. So I'll ask: should "universe" be capitalized when referring to our universe? Should it be capitalized in "physical universe", "Gold universe", "zero-energy universe", etc.? Should similar ideas like "multiverse" be capitalized? Personally, I suggest Universe be capitalized when referring to our universe, just as "Moon" is capitalized when referring to our moon. However, models or features of the universe, like static universe, should be left uncapitalized as they do not refer to the Universe itself, but a concept of it. --Are you freaking kidding me (talk) 00:39, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Moon is capitalized only when referring to the astronomical body. You can write "the moon rose" with lowercase, since it's more about the appearance, not in an astonomical context. Similarly with earth. We had a megadiscussion about universe not long back, and I think it came to a similar conclusion, though I don't recall how the consensus was expressed (if there was one). Dicklyon (talk) 01:14, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
Ah, here it is. There was support for this option: "Option 3. Shall The word 'universe' be capitalized when used in an astronomical context to refer to our specific Universe?" So now you just need a rationale way to decide what makes it "an astronomical context". Dicklyon (talk) 01:20, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
So what do you suggest? --Are you freaking kidding me (talk) 01:39, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
There's only one universe. Drmies (talk) 01:40, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
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