Talk:Capitalization in English

Capitalisation - historically

What about earlier rules of capitalization in English? Reading this (“The Coffee houses particularly are very commodious for a free Conversation, and for reading at an easy Rate all manner of printed News”), it seems that English used to capitalise all nouns (house is an exception in the example, probably because it was one expression together with coffee which is already capitalised...? If anyone knows something about it, this would be an interesting addition to the article. --Scartelak (talk) 20:55, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I heartily agree. In fact, I only found this article while looking for information on the history of English capitalization, and I'm sure I'm not the first reader to be disappointed by its absence here.

My understanding is that the habit of capitalizing most nouns (while arbitrarily considering some too unimportant) was a fad in English orthography that arose sometime in the late Seventeenth Century and died out in the Nineteenth with the success of standardized spelling. But I don't have clear authority for that, and would love to see it nailed down here.

Mandrakos (talk) 01:27, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Capitalization - categories

"When to capitalize" ... {This topic should be expanded for clarity & completeness. Is there a useful distinction to be made in 'the name of' vs 'the word for' something?}
. "Geological & astronomic features": 'Antarctica', 'Pleiades' . "Personal names": should include nicknames('Ice-T'), pet names('Rover'), pseudonyms ('Santa Claus', except 'e e cummings')
. "National and regional": should read more generally for completeness: The individual/organization names for governmental or community jurisdictions, like 'America', 'Virginia', 'Reston' (originally 'RES town'), or 'Union, Ohio', 'Colloquial Estates' (neighborhood name), 'Riverside' (part of a city).
. Add "Titles of art or creative works": Written(Poems, Pros), painted(La Giaconda), sculpted(Pieta), directed(movies,plays,videos), composed(music), compounded (cosmetics), ... and some architectural(I.E.: 'Fallingwater') works of creativity (artistic, creative, biological?)
. Atomic elements: 'Hydrogen', etc
. common parts of speech that derive from capitalized names: 'Americans' (denizens or citizens of the USA or any of the Americas, 'American muskrat'), 'Jeffersonians' (Followers of Thomas Jefferson's thinking.)
--Wikidity (talk) 21:06, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

It writes that “the sun”/“the earth”/“the moon” are not capitalized. I disagree. Informal texts often don't capitalize them, but more-formal ones usually do. After all, it is logical to capitalize said terms; they refer to specific things. And the rule that said names should be capitalized is used on English Wikipedia (see Sun, Earth, and Moon). Same in other-language Wikipedias, even languages (e.g. Finnish) that use considerably fewer caps than English (in the case of Finnish, in my opinion, fewer caps than would be desirable for optimum legibility); I've looked on other-language Wikipedias.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 21:18, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Is this article needed?

At the moment, there actually seems to be less information about "Capitalisation in English" in this article than in Capitalization or Letter case. For this article to be viable it should be the other way around. Those articles should have summaries, and the full detail should be here. At the moment, this article seems a bit pointless. 86.179.2.210 (talk) 14:36, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

True but no alternative. The generic (correctly) has a globalize tag on it.

That effectively requires a break out English specific article. Just hasn't been done fully. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:18, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I think we should have this article. It is about a significant subject.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 21:11, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Move to American spelling

inevitable In ictu oculi (talk) 04:18, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
English by American vs British vs Australian vs Cajun users?
--Wikidity (talk) 21:13, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

"Hoover", "Biro" capitalised? Not necessarily

"Hoover" and "Biro" are bad examples because they're indeed capitalised when used as brand names, but these two names are also used as common names for any brand of vacuum cleaner or ball point pen, and when used as common names, they're not capitalised:

• "Why is the hoover making a strange noise?"
• "I think there's the lid of a biro stuck in it."

But:

• "What type of vacuum did you buy?"
• "A Hoover."

I'll change the article. Gronky (talk) 02:18, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Meaning of "APA" and "MLA"?

Are(n't) these abbreviations? What do they stand for? 2A02:3035:C12:FED3:1:0:BB0C:F3BC (talk) 10:59, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

later addition: I found out by going to the acronyms list Wikipedia page and from there further... only managed to put in direct link to "APA Style" page, but no idea how to manage with "Modern Language Association" or the page to their former style guide, ?now handbook?, and also wondering

about the history/ etymology of the name "Chicago" style...

I would really really love to see "complete name written fully in first mentioning, with abbreviation in parentheses behind", instead of just throwing around unexplained abbreviations.

I wonder if anyone has an idea how to do it, it would be nice.

Or am I in the wrong tracks and should just acknowledge that these letter combinations seem to be (widely) recognized (by native speakers?) as equivalent to proper names, needing no explanation ("translation")? To me, not living in one of the countries where English is the/ a main language, they clearly meant nothing until now, so I don't know...

And: How generally handle uncommon abbreviation appearing for the first time or even *only* in a TITLE? (Having it only in the title makes handling 'MLA' so complicated for me (although I am not really completely happy with my 'APA' solution either).)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:3035:C12:FED3:1:0:BB0C:F3BC (talk) 14:50, 30 April 2022 (UTC)