Talk:Capitalization

Edit request on 11 December 2024

I request that you change "American spelling" to "North American spelling" because the -ize spelling is standard in the US, as well as Canada.

Classical languages

In Latin and ancient Greek, only proper nouns are capitalized.

How is this possible, in a script without minuscule?

[If I am reading the history correctly, the above comment was appearantly made my Josh Grosse on or about 24 October 2003.]

When written in such a script, it isn't. There's certainly a lot of Latin that has been written in scripts that do have both majuscule & minuscule letters. In modern times, it is my experience that the writer most often uses the capitalization & punctuation rules of his native language. I haven't, however, seen enough manuscripts from the transitional times to say much about that.

I do feel that this sentence (from the article quoted above) needs some expansion, but I am not qualified to do so.

--66.179.208.36 19:05, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Latin didn't have miniscule letters however when written in modern times, we capitalize all proper nouns. I know English speakers, when writing Latin, capitalize proper adjectives. My personal experience I've seen that in places where Romance languages are spoken, proper adjectives are not capitalized.Arthurian Legend 04:48, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

In most of the pre-Enlightenment Latin and Greek I've seen, the text is either carved in stone in all-majuscule or handwritten in a book or scroll in all-minuscule (cursive), except for decorative forms at the beginning of chapters (often illuminated). Likewise Arabic and Hebrew. Capitalization would seem to be a recent development. -- Craig Goodrich 98.226.77.29 (talk) 22:12, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

In modern times, it is my experience that the writer most often uses the capitalization & punctuation rules of his native language. Disagree. Germans, when writing Latin, use English capitalization (but more or less German punctuation) rules.--2001:A61:260D:6E01:A865:1FCA:DA8A:D95E (talk) 20:39, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

American versus British English

Is there a difference between the treatment of capitals for nouns in english versus american English? I was always taught that it was only proper nouns that have capital letters. Is this correct for english English and not for american English? If this is correct, are there any other differences? Natalie Miller 4th January, 2007

In British English (en-GB), I was told that words such as nation aren't capitalised, but in American English (en-US) they are. I find this dubious, but was also told that it is capitalised when in reference to the American nation. Daniel 21:40, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

That's odd. I'm certain that we don't capitalize nation either. While there are differences in the languages, I don't think that's one of them. 68.4.165.120 22:17, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

In Britain, at least in some contexts, it seems to be customary to treat a normal noun like a proper noun in order to clarify that you mean one particular item. This applies in particular to organizations. For example, if within the University of Cambridge someone writes about "the University", the capitalization implies that "ours" is meant, not any other university. I always thought of this just as an application of the rule that proper nouns are capitalized. The Nation, the City, the University, the College, the Department all imply that the writer's nation, city, university, college or department are referred to here, and that these words are actually just short forms of the corresponding full names of these organizations. I work in the Computer Laboratory, not a computer laboratory. The capitalization makes a big difference in this context, and it pains me to see British journalists getting it wrong quite regularly. Markus Kuhn (talk) 14:00, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I believe this actually follows the same convention (in regards to the word "nation") and may also in many other respects. For example, when someone is referring to "a nation", you would not capitalize the word. However, when saying "This is my Nation" I think you would. In Markus' example, the words "University of Cambridge" is actually the full and actual name of the university in question, and does qualify as a name. Hope this helps out, and sorry if it just confused the issue more for you. 69.182.174.55 (talk) 23:34, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Hyphenated proper nouns

At Talk:Light-sport Aircraft we are having a discussion (I hope) to determine if the "s" in "Light-sport Aircraft" (the proper name of an FAA-regulated category of aircraft) should be capitalised. [The hyphenisation is a little weird but that's what the FAA does. And it has the benefit of distinguishing it from the English phrase "light sport aircraft".] What is the general rule? Paul Beardsell 22:47, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Importance

A good deal of legal and older philosophical writing seems to utilize capitalization to emphasize the importance of the concept referred to by the word being capitalized. Is there a name for this phenomenon?

I believe the phenomenon is named "capitalizing to emphasize the importance of a concept". I am kidding. I do not know if there actually is a name for this concept, or even if it is following proper English language standards or not. 69.182.174.55 (talk) 23:36, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

ALL CAPS in contracts

Why do many contracts use all caps for some words? Like: "NOW, THEREFORE, in consideration of the AGREEMENT..." Is there a legal purpose to this? Keep in mind I'm not asking about entire clauses written in uppercase, just single words, scattered throughout the document. — Eric Herboso 05:00, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

This seems to be limited to contracts written by U.S. lawyers. I've never seen this anywhere else. Markus Kuhn 15:55, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Really? I also see this frequently in the UK, and my first guess is that it refers to words referenced in the glossary of legal documents:

• "WE, OUR, or US: Refers to Barclays Bank PLC trading as..."

Although I accept that in the UK it is more commonly written like:

• "...you agree to the terms and conditions of use (herein referred to as 'Terms')..." and is from then onwards written in the document with initial capitalisation: "...these Terms are binding under law...". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fakelvis (talk • contribs) 10:06, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Incorrect definition?

"Capitalization (or capitalisation) is writing a word with its first letter as a majuscule (upper case letter) and the remaining letters in minuscules (lower case letters), in those writing systems which have a case distinction."

I think capitalization can also refer to the general usage of capitals: Oxford American: capitalize 4 [ trans. ] write or print (a word or letter) in capital letters. • begin (a word) with a capital letter. DERIVATIVES capitalization |ˌkapətl-əˈzā sh ən| noun

For example the Internet capitalization conventions article talks about all caps as well. Or if I was correcting a writing with capital letters in the wrong place, I would likely say: "There's a problem with the capitalization" and this wouldn't be restricted to just errors like This, but errors like THIS as well. Macgruder 17:38, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Help with capitalizing World and Earth please

I am ashamed that I do not know this, but what are the rules for capitalizing (or not, as the case may be) World and Earth please? Soccerman58 19:54, 24 September 2007 (UTC)Soccerman58

Are you talking about a world full of wonders or the World of Warcraft? A hand full of earth or the planet called Earth? All you need to understand is the difference between a common noun (not capitalized in English) and a proper noun (capitalized in English). Jomsborg (talk) 18:07, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Proper names of persons?

I looked through this whole article and didn't see one of the most important uses of capitalization: namely the proper names of particular persons (e.g., George Washington). Did I miss this? Surely this usage should be included. Hult041956 (talk) 19:12, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

From the Nouns section: "In nearly all European languages, single-word proper nouns (including personal names) are capitalized..." –Henning Makholm 23:45, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I just missed that, I guess. Thanks. Hult041956 (talk) 07:09, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Feminist capitalization

We need a section (at least with links to other appropriate articles) on the feminist practice of no-caps. I'm trying to figure out where this practice came from, and have had little success. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.219.27.24 (talk) 17:44, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I, for one, have heard of no such practice. Given that female names are capitalized the same as male ones (E.G. William and Tiffany), there is certainly no sexual bias in the rules of capitalization. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 07:05, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

The explicitly gender-neutral Binnen-I (e.g., StudentInnen), popular in some in left-wing German writing, might count as a feminist capitalization form. Markus Kuhn (talk) 13:29, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't claim to know German, but aren't all its nouns capitalized no matter what? Also, is the word "Binnen-I" that you mentioned singular or plural? The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 02:14, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

All German nouns have a capital first letter, but Markus' example refers to words having a capital letter in the middle, which is grammatically wrong also in German. StudentIn(nen) can be used in both singular and plural (in singular it refers to a student of unknown sex, in plural to students of both sexes). --Roentgenium111 (talk) 15:20, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

I've heard of it, indeed knew women who didn't capitalise their names, and was just looking for info on it..but with no luck. April 2013 88.96.226.6 (talk) 23:27, 3 April 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.96.226.6 (talk) 23:24, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

All-uppercase Of Names: McCoy, DeForest ("MCCOY" or "McCOY"?)

1. Is there some rule how to write names like "McCoy" or "DeForest" in all-uppercase letters? I seem to recall some titels and/or final credits where almost all letter were all-uppercase except for "c" in Names like "McCoy" or "e" in "DeForest":

(a) McCOY, DeFOREST

instead of

(b) MCCOY, DEFOREST

--87.183.166.234 (talk) 09:42, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for pointing out the obvious: if you write McCOY, DeFOREST, what you do is obviously not "all uppercase". I don't know what your capitalization convenition (a) is called and who (if anyone) uses it commonly. Markus Kuhn (talk) 15:49, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Another way is use "small caps," like this: MCCOY, DEFOREST. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 07:10, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

The only place I have seen all capitalization of names like that is in the military from when I was serving in the U. S. Navy. That format was usually used on lists, and had no specific purpose that I am aware of, other than keeping different ways of someone spelling their name (with regards to the dual capitalized last names used largely in French and French ancestry names) to one specific format for everyone. I do not believe that there is a specific rule for this, I think it is more a convention adopted in certain cases. 69.182.174.55 (talk) 23:41, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Setanta Ó hAilpín is another name with odd capitalisation. I saw that listed as O'hAILPIN on television. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Astonvilla91 (talk • contribs) 11:54, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Article rename?

This article is only about capitalization rules, not about the history of capitalization or anything else of the social context, which is all at letter case. I think a better name for this article would be "capitalization rules" or "capitalization conventions". -- Beland (talk) 18:12, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

That seems like an unnecessary, fussy distinction. You could add a History section with a {{main}} linking to letter case. The amount of relevant history there is a fraction of the amount of information here. jnestorius^(talk) 20:32, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I differ with your reasoning Beland. Yes this article is about the rules of capitalization, but the reason why those rules are applied are as relevant as the rules themselves. Most of them are used for examples of proper capitalization as well. 69.182.174.55 (talk) 23:44, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Sentence case

I've removed the redirect here from Sentence case and restored its previous version because sometime in the past three months since Beland's merge into this article, the prominent mention of "sentence case" (which should exist for any unobvious term or topic with a redirect into an article) was either gradually or abruptly removed. The result is that the only place where you can find "sentence case" in this current article is the (until now) circular "See also" link.

"Sentence case" is far too important a subject (especially for Wikipedia) for it not to have a clear, prominent paragraph of explanation. (The Wikipedia use is, of course, part of WP:MOS, but the concept itself is important, too.) If regular readers and editors of this article wish to restore the redirect, I highly recommend reviewing this article's history to see how a "sentence case" paragraph can be restored to it in a logical fashion. Thank you. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:30, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Slavic languages (especially Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian)

This article needs to expand its scope beyond coverage of only the Western European languages' capitalization conventions and should also feature the capitalization norms, practices and style guides of Slavic languages (based on the Cyrillic alphabet, e.g. especially Bulgarian, Macedonian & Russian languages), since these are poorly understood even by the general public which uses them. Please, do provide specific details for the capitalization rules in those languages as well. This will definitely make the text more internationalized/multilinguistic. It should also be noted that the "linguistic Europocentrism" view presented in the article should be shifted towards a broader overview of capitalization conventions worldwide. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ve4ernik (talk • contribs) 21:53, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Knowledgeable and well-written contributions are always welcome ... Markus Kuhn (talk) 15:52, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

TfL

TfL (Transport for London) is given as a special example where the f is not capitalised. This isn't really a special example. Many acronyms do not capitalise the letters for minor words such as for, the, of. I'm thinking of examples such at "LotR" "for Lord of the Rings". In fact, I'm going to be bold... - David Forster —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.191.85.128 (talk) 13:40, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Having been bold, I'm now not sure it's appropriate. I've added a new section on Acronyms, but should that really be present or does this article only deal with capitalization of the first letter of a word. I've added a section to the Case section of the articles on Acronyms too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronyms#Case

- David Forster —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.191.85.128 (talk) 13:53, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

David, it is said that "fortune favors (en-GB favours) the bold", I believe. I think the convention is not a standard in all places, but rather more the person's preference for using caps. I have seen, as is said in that section, LASER, RADAR, etc. spelled in all caps and all lower case as well, and the same with your example of LotR. I have also seen it capitalized as LOTR as well. It would seem to depend more on the certain person's preference, than any hard and fast standard. 69.182.174.55 (talk) 23:49, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

TfL and LotR are not acronyms, but initialisms (a distinction noted elsewhere in the article).

Bitbut (talk) 09:05, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Title case in non-English

Can people who know add a section on whether title case is or is not used/valid in non-English? ¤ ehudshapira 23:36, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Abstraction

"French often capitalizes such nouns as l'État (the state) and l'Église (the church) when not referring to specific ones." -- this is rather awkward. The actual meaning here is more that of an abstract entity personified, and we use the same convention in English:

"The State has always historically sought to increase its power over the individual."

"The Church provided a counterbalancing center of authority over local monarchs."

as opposed to "The state [e.g. Wisconsin] has always prided itself on clean government."

or "The church [e.g. St. Mark's Episcopal] was active in local Democratic politics." -- note in this example that Democratic refers specifically to the party, while "democratic" would be appropriate if the local issue was between, say, royalists and democrats, which could have been the case in, say, the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. -- Craig Goodrich 98.226.77.29 (talk) 22:34, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Non-English Reverential Capitalization

Does anyone know of any non-English languages that also practice reverential capitalization? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.220.221.222 (talk) 02:45, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Odd language specificity

This article shows some strange language specificity. Primarily, it deals with English and, to a slightly lesser degree, French and German. But it also inconsistently refers to other (western European) languages. Moreover, do no other alphabets but the Latin alphabet have capital letters? (The article once or twice refers to Slavic languages, suggesting Cyrillic does.) RobertM525 (talk) 04:30, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Cyrillic and Greek have capitals, making up a sort of family with Roman. Don't know about other alphabets, apart from Arabic & Korean, which don't have them; your point is well made. Rothorpe (talk) 14:43, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Reverential Capitals

If following the rules of orthography, reverential capitalization is somewhat illogical. We know that in the English, and many other alphabets have lower and upper case letters in them. Certain words, especially nouns, need to begin with upper case letters, in order to serve a sign post, so to speak, for the reader to understand that the word is being used as a noun. Also, sentences begin with an upper case letter, so that the reader can more easily understand that a new sentence has begun. Therefore, since upper and lower case letters look somewhat different, it would be a good way of telling that a new sentence has begun. What does not make logical sense is the idea that writing a noun with an upper case letter, especially a name, gives reverence or importance to the person. How is it possible to give reverence to a person with letters? And, if that's the case, then why is only the first letter capitalized in the name, and not all the other letters? That may sound like we are giving importance or respect to the first letter of the name and not to the other letters in the name. What is illogical about this is that the letters are still the same, whether lower or upper case. They have exactly the same sounding and meaning.

Following this kind of logic, it seems like the set of upper case letters is of greater importance than the set of lower case letters.

Another problem is that if there is a discrimination amongst lower and upper case letters, then why should certain words be in upper case and others not? This is where linguistics meets psychology and philosophy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DAVIDY (talk • contribs) 16:06, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a forum

Um, see WP:NOT#CHAT. The Talk pages are for talking about the article, not talking about the topic of the article. RobertM525 (talk) 07:09, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Users please also remember to sign their comments.--Kudpung (talk) 02:07, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

English-language street addresses

I have always, always seen Street, Ave., Court, Rd., etc. capitalized in street names. (I live in the US.) Is this a regionally variant thing? If so, better make note of it; current wording implies universal noncapitalization among English speakers.

Proof: Just go to any American university website and look for the address at the bottom. Or get driving directions from Google Maps. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.205.26.253 (talk) 03:19, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I just looked up various addresses for Oxford and Cambridge universities and they cap the street-type too. Does the no-caps claim have any basis at all? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.205.26.253 (talk) 03:23, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Historical practice in English

I was very disappointed that there is only passing reference to the fact that capitalization of virtually all nouns seems to have been common for works in English published in the 17th and 18th century. I would like to know how prevalent the practice was, when it started, when it stopped, whether it was universal or recommended, whether it was borrowed from practice in other languages, etc. DCDuring (talk) 16:45, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree. I came to this page to find out more about the usage of capitals in historical language e.g. wikisource:Constitution of the United States of America-- Brainy J ~✿~ (talk) 18:27, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Asian language proper nouns

I think there should be a specific topic on the article about occurrences where Latin alphabet names of proper nouns in Asian languages where the letters appear in a non-standard case, that a proper noun is often typed in whatever case it is originally stylized/typeset in by the original artist/author/creator/etc. on a release so as to preserve the original typesettings (artist intent usually the excuse). Example: "h.NAOTO" is often capitalized "h.NAOTO" in Japanese scripts rather than "H.Naoto" or what have you like in English language scripts. It's kind of funny to observe IMO. Arashi nightmare (talk) 01:59, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Bold statement about title casing

Section Titles states:

In English, the first word and the last word of titles should be capitalized. In addition, all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions should be capitalized. Articles and coordinating conjunctions are not capitalized, while sources disagree on the capitalization of prepositions.

Is that really true in all cases? For instance, the English Wikipedia itself uses sentence casing (WP:STYLE). --Mortense (talk) 15:29, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Our article shouldn't ever, except in a quotation, have the word "should" in it, anyway, per WP:NPOV and WP:NOT#HOWTO. It is correct that English-language style guides differ on this matter, and our article needs to reflect this properly. In the course of doing other research on a capitalization question, I've noticed that the vast majority of style guides advise title case for titles of works, then they diverge at various points after that, permitting or "requiring" sentence case (if at all) for different things, such as subtitles, chapter titles, headings, subheadings, etc., and they are not consistent with each other in any way on this. About the only thing that can be said with certainty (other than that there is this uncertainty) is that sentence case is almost never recommended in English for the title of a major work (i.e. one that would be in italics, not quotation marks, such as a book, periodical, album, movie, TV series, play, etc.). It will be shown that use of sentence case for minor works (articles, episodes, songs, etc.) and for subtitles and divisions of a work (chapters, sections, headings, etc.) is on the increase, but I will not bother doing that sourcing here, since it should be at Capitalization in English. The article here should not dwell in excessive detail on English-specific style matters.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:20, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

For universities

Better going to reliable sources, for instance [1]. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 177.4.61.19 (talk) 04:24, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Honorifics

In reference to this from the article "Most English honorifics and titles of persons, e.g. Sir, Dr Watson, Mrs Jones, His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh. This does not apply where the words are not titles; e.g. Watson is a doctor, Philip is a duke." It is my understanding that honorifics are only capitalised if immediately before a name, and that when they stand alone are lower case. Which is directly supported by this;

"Honorifics

Let’s start with what we call honorifics – “doctor,” “professor,” and “dean” are honorifics you might find on an academic campus. Then we have “mister,” “judge,” “deacon,” “sergeant,” and so on. Some of those are professional designations; others are courtesy titles. When they directly precede a name, honorifics should be capitalized.

For example, when we write Judge Joseph Smith or Deacon Fred Rutherford, we capitalize “judge” and “deacon” because they are honorifics that come before the name. Some also get abbreviated: Prof. Irwin Corey, Dr. Marcus Welby, and Sgt. Joe Friday.

“Mr.” and “Ms.,” of course, are uppercase before a name. “Mrs.,” which is less commonly used than it was several decades ago and which derives from the honorific “Mistress,” is also capitalized before a name. Same goes for “Miss,” which is usually reserved for a younger girl. A boy takes “Master” (if anything) before his name. (It's a little antiquated, but still kind of cute.)

In cases where these words stand alone, even in direct address, they are lowercase. “Hey, mister [small m], look out for that pelican!” “Gee, doctor [small d], it hurts when I stick out my tongue.” "

and university usage guides I've seen.Number36 (talk) 00:22, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Yep. There is a tendency in insider publications (house style) to capitalize honorifics away from names if they refer to someone within the organization, e.g. "according to the memo from the Provost last week ...". The no-punches-pulled way to put this: This is people trying not offend their bosses and get canned. It should not be confused with formal writing style just because some documents that use it are officious. This is also common in fiction writing in the last of the cases that Number 36 outlined, where an author might write "Johnny snarled, 'Hey, Doctor, why don't you take some of your own medicine!' He leapt from the operating table and ..." blah blah blah. The "theory" is that it's a stand-in for the real name of the character. This is not plausible usage or a rationale for it, in standard English in any register, easily proven by two obvious facts: We don't capitalize pronouns (other than "I" and, in some religious circles, those referring to certain religious figures) yet they are such stand-ins; and we would not capitalize a stand-in epithet if it were not respectful, e.g. no one would ever write "He shouted, 'Hey, Butt-munch, don't sit on my car!'" The desire to capitalize them is nothing but a subjective intent by the writer to emphasize deference when it is offered.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:01, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

French and other languages

More coverage of non-English languages is needed; here are some good starters for French: [2] [3]. Of course, this article in the other languages is also probably a good source, after translation. -- Beland (talk) 17:46, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but in a separate section please. It's more likely that people come here to read about capitalisation of everything in a particular language than for capitalisation of some specific entity in every language. Gronky (talk) 01:25, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Acronyms

We're *wrong* on this point. We say "acronyms are capitalized unless they've become words". If it hasn't become a word it *isn't* an acronym, it's an initialism. It's *initialisms* that are always capitalized; acronyms always are not. Rebuttals?
--Baylink (talk) 21:09, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

It's more complicated than that. Most reliable sources on English usage do not distinguish between acronyms and initialisms. "Initialism" is a neologism introduced in a paper in the early 1970s. Some thought the distinction useful and adopted it, others did not. Regardless of the terminology used: 1) There are strings of letters that are sounded out one at a time, as in "UK" and "AFL-CIO", which are acronyms of one sort, or initialisms (depending on source); and 2) there are those that are said as if they were words, like "NASA" and "Amway", which are acronyms of a different sort ("word acronyms", "pronounceable acronyms", etc.), or the only thing we should call acronyms (again, depending on source). Most sources on style in English capitalize all of these fully, except a) where they have been assimilated into the language as everyday words ("scuba", "laser", "radar"); b) where they are proper names that in particular cases are not given that way by convention ("Nabisco", "Anzac"). A few style guides, almost exclusively for news journalism, prefer to use only-first-letter-capitalised style for all pronounceable acronyms, even when the official usage is the opposite ("Nasa", "Unicef" when they are really NASA and UNICEF), even for things that are not proper names and even when it produces confusingly ambiguous results ("Aids") that don't make sense semantically ("Aids" again – the name of the disease it not "Acquired immune deficiency syndrome" with a capitalized A).

That's a summary of the situation. As I work this stuff into Capitalization in English and , I'll source the hell out of it, since I have almost every reliable English-language style guide in print (and many that are not, for historical research), and I've already done and posted the work, at Talk:Acronym#Massive sourcing run. Since the present article is about capitalization in general, not English in particular, it's sufficient for it to note that English-language approaches differ.

At any rate, the distinction between an acronym and an initialism, when the distinction is drawn at all, is only and entirely about pronunciation, and has nothing to do with whether the string has been assimilated as a word like "sonar". It's easy to see where the confusion arose, though, since all the assimilated ones are in fact pronounceable acronyms. You thus end up with a situation in the distinguish-between-acronyms-and-initialisms camp where all assimilated ones are a subset of "acronyms" and none are "initialisms", but not all "acronyms" are assimilated as words ("UNESCO"/"Unesco" is not a word, but a name, yet is an acronym in all sources). No source anywhere would refer to UNESCO as an initialism, whether they agree with the acronym–initialism distinction or not, since it is never sounded out as yu-en-ee-ess-see-oh.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:54, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Multiple-Letter Capitalization

Can you please provide references for the claim in “In languages which capitalise alls nouns, multiple letters can be capitalised as in German GOtt and GOTT (God), HErr and HERR (Lord), JEsus (Jesus).”?

So far (native speaker) this looks inaccurate.

—j9t (talk) 20:06, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

@Jens Meiert: It's sufficiently dubious you can just remove it. I have a suspicion this is based on styles found in old manuscripts; I've seen illumination take this approach, and it's clear that outside of English it's common to abbreviate with some letters taken as a single symbol, e.g. "Th." for names like "Theophile" and "Theodore"), but it's original research to extrapolate from that into an imagined rule that Gott can be written "GOtt" in German. "Gott" and "Herr" is an emphasis convention used by some bible publishers to represent the tetragrammaton YHVH, usually rendered "LORD" in English editions; it's unrelated to the question.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  03:08, 7 March 2016 (UTC) HerrORD

External links modified

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External links modified

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I have just modified one external link on Capitalization. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070928001953/http://www.worldbirdnames.org/rules-caps.html to http://www.worldbirdnames.org/rules-caps.html

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Capitalization in Hebrew?

Hebrew also has two writing systems: Capitalized letters and regular ("small") letters. Yoelpiccolo31 (talk) 16:37, 12 October 2018 (UTC) .

@Yoelpiccolo31: Not really. Hebrew does have two writing systems, but not capitalized and small letters. You're probably confusing this with the two script styles, the square script and the cursive script. This would be analogous in English to the dichotomy between printed letters and handwritten, cursive letters. But this has nothing to do with capitalization, which Hebrew does not have. Mathglot (talk) 11:05, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

DuBois

"In French, nouns in surnames following the plural article "Du" is always capitalized."

This is simply not true. Hardly any of the Francophone people listed on Dubois (surname) use camelcase. Narky Blert (talk) 15:31, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree -- I've (almost?) never seen camelcase in any French name (and I'm living in France), by the way "Du" is not a plural article, it comes from contraction of "de" + "le", that's singular masculine; plural is "de" + "les" = "des". But maybe "Dubois" or the most common "Dupont" (frequency-equivalent of "Smith" in English) isn't what the author meant, was he rather thinking of a separate "de" as in "De la Vallée-Poussin" or in "Bertrand du Guesclin"? But then, it is usually capitalized because it's not a simple noun but rather a name... (I think). — MFH:Talk 22:38, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Capitalization of "Chapter", "Section", "Theorem", etc.

Where can I find information / reference concerning capitalization as in, e.g., "From Theorem 3 of Chapter 1 we have ... In section (or: Section?) 4 we will see that ..." ? My feeling is that if "Theorem 3. (Here goes the theorem...)" is spelled out where it appears, then "Theorem 3" becomes the "proper name" of this theorem, and we use it capitalized. Same if the 5th chapter has the title "Chapter 1", then this becomes the name of that chapter and we write "Chapter 1". But if section titles are "1. Introduction" rather than: "Section 1: Introduction", then we should maybe write "section 1" because that section is never given the name "Section 1". Or is that wrong? Should it still read "In Section 1 ..."? Then why not "On Page 9..." etc? And should it be "in the next Section", then, or "in the next section"? Thanks in advance - just a link to a reliable source would be already very helpful! - — MFH:Talk 22:23, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

"Capitalization (temporary)" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Capitalization (temporary). The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 February 2#Capitalization (temporary) until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 08:50, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

"Capi (temporary)" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Capi (temporary). The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 February 2#Capi (temporary) until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 08:53, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

"Compound name" unfortunate, does not cover subject

The title of the subsection "Compound names" is unfortunately chosen, as the surnames it deals with are not compound words. On the contrary, they are examples of noun phrases. The Dutch language has many such names, and also real compound names. Examples of the latter are names with the prefix Ver- (a "contraction" of van der), like Verkerk, Versluis, Vermeulen. Other examples are names with suffixes like -sen and -ma (both relics of patronymics) in names like Jansen, Jansma, Pietersen, Pietersma etc. The type of Dutch surname the subsection deals with contains one or more separable affixes (a technical term I would prefer to the term particles used in the subsection) and one or more nouns. Affixes and nouns are (still) separate (though the affixes have lost their grammatical functions as prepositions and definite articles.) In other words, the subtitle does not cover the contents of the subsection. I would suggest as an alternative "Names with family name affixes" as an article with the title List of family name affixes already exists. This could be referred to with a wikilink in the subsection. Ereunetes (talk) 21:49, 25 January 2023 (UTC)