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Which is the correct naming convention of the three samples below?

Example (DVD)
Example (dvd)
Example (video disc)

The manual of style doesnt say much on this. Leanne 04:15, 18 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I'd go with DVD if I had to choose from only those three. It isn't a video disk (video disks are a different technology from DVD, with a larger disk size). DVD was originally promulgated as Digital Video Disk and is now being changed to Digital Versatile Disk. DVD masks that change of full name. However, was it also released for SVCD (popular in Asia), VHS or Betamax video tape, television or cinema? Will it ever be released with any later video technology, like a successor to DVD 5 or 50 years from now? If the answer is yes, describing it by category of work (documentary, movie), year of creation or first publication, creator or publisher (with care - different publishers in different countries and over time) would probably be more prudent than using one specific technology. Best to avoid the technology if at all possible because we know that many works will be republished in different technology over time. Jamesday 17:41, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Q: Is there any provision for automatically compiling all references to a name or place?


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)

Yeah. It is a classic example of an organisation creating a variation in its name/title and then having a slow evolution towards acceptance of it; think of how many people still call the Lib Dems the 'Liberals' or when talking about Pope John Paul say 'Pope Paul'! Personally I detest BBC ONE, but then I grew up with my beloved BBC 1! Don't get me started on that annoying ITV1. And fifteen years after it was rebranded Network 2 I still occasionally call the Irish station RTÉ 2 (and the Irish radio station 2FM, I still accidentially call Radio 2!). However as far as I know BBC ONE (goddamnit) is the correct version. Maybe someone should call the BBC press office and check. I'd offer to, but
  1. I spent enough money ringing up Buckingham Palace, Áras an Uachtaráin, the Quirinale, 10 Downing Street, etc checking correct terminology for wikipedia articles;
  2. my new job means I'm away from 8am until 8pm so I can't making my wiki-ing telephone calls anymore.
So I'll let someone else make the call this time. :-) (In my experience, email is dodgy, as it may not be replied to very quickly. A personal phonecall to a press officer usually gets a quicker response and builds up a contact for other contact on wikipedia issues later.) FearÉIREANN 22:05, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The companies house database of UK company names[2] is all in capitals - I suspect that whether letters are upper or lower case isn't an official part of a company name. Of course, a trademark is "official", but an all-capitals trademark doesn't mean a name is all-capitals in running text (according to their web sites , it does for BAE SYSTEMS and AREVA but not for Sony, Xerox and Nescaf&eacute). And conversely the ITV1 logo is in lower case - itv1. Maybe the only sensible advice is to make sure there are redirects between plausible versions.

I see we can't have page names that begin in lower case so we have K.d. lang which is a bit of a shame. Let a thousand redirects bloom! Andy G 23:41, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

For more on commercial names, see Talk:Alstom.

Musical Works

I removed the example "Piano Sonata, K. 331 (Mozart)" from the article (Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions bcz it at least is confusing as an example: "Piano Sonata, K. 331" is already unambiguous, since only Mozart compositions have "K." numbers, referring to the catalog numbers assigned by the accepted authoritative cataloguer (ah, there he is, Köchel). Thus it fails to be an example of that principle, interfering with making the point of what the principle means.

Going further, that is the actual article title; is it a good one? You have to be a devoted fan to use K. numbers to find entries, but for them, a page title (or redirect) of Piano Sonata, K. 331 (which isn't even a redirect) is easier to type and just as informative. I would argue for

  • title alone, where unambiguous; otherwise
  • title and composer, where that eliminates the ambiguity of simply title; otherwise
  • title and catalog designation (for Bach, Mozart, Scarlatti(or whoever has Hoboken #s), and any others with equally known cataloguers), or
  • composer title opus-#

Thus

(The K. 311 article makes clear that other disambiguation approaches are available, namely key, and explicit number (11 in this case) in the title, Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major. I assume they are less widely recalled than form (Sonata), instrumentation (Piano, or as another example, (String) Quartet) and occasionally even opus or cat #.)

This is really a question for Wikipedia:Naming conventions (pieces of music) - I'll move this to the talk page there and respond. --Camembert

Black or black?

Is there a Wikipedia consesus on the use of first-letter-capitalized or first-letter-uncapitalized "black" when referring to persons of that race/ethnicity? Is it "noted Black author W. E. B. DuBois" or is it "noted black author W. E. B. DuBois", or is there no consesus?

I think the term "African American" may be more NPOV? mabey not ... -- reddi
1) "African American" would be a poor way to describe Diane Julie Abbott, given that she's MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington in the UK House of Commons. 2) Most American blacks would describe themselves as "black", not "African-American". 3) The term "African-American" seems more suited to (recent) immigrants, and is ambiguous if it descibes both recent immigrants and Americans of long standing who happen to be black. 4) The term "African-American" reeks of euphonism.
1) Yep ... "African American" would be a poor way to describe Diane Julie Abbott, given that she isn't american. Not sure what the EU calls citizens of african descent. Anyone know?
Black. FearÉIREANN 23:41, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
2) Most American blacks would describe themselves as "black"? Hmmm ... ok ... but I think that the line on the US census (IIRC) is that ... there probably is a few other "types" that can be included ...
3) I was under the impression that "African-American" was a descriptive term of both recent immigrants and Americans of long standing who happen to be black.
4) Euphonism? hmmm ... [stares blankly]
I'd use the most apt description of the individual tha'tis possible .... Sincerely, The Mutt
Ok, I wrote "euphonism" (which actually is a word, it turns out) when I meant "euphemism". You got me. I r edumacated. orthogonal 23:07, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Also, what about white/White when referring to race/ethnicity?

Mabey Caucasian? mabey not. -- white trash
Maybe not. I'm from India, ergo I'm Caucasian. I'm not White. Ambarish 23:30, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

On a tangential note, spaces or not after initials in names: "W. E. B. DuBois" or "W.E.B. DuBois", "P. A. M. Dirac" or "P.A.M. Dirac"? orthogonal 20:05, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think initials without spaces (W.E.B. DuBois) looks nicer and The Economist style guide also says without spaces. -- Viajero 20:13, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's my (hopelessly uninformed) understanding that caps belong on proper nouns (and initials, sentence starts...). So I'd say:

  • J.K. Rowling is a british author, who lives in Britain
  • W.E.B. DuBois is a black writer, who likes Black Sabbath, black pudding, and Blackpool
  • I am heading south to Alabama, which is in the South
  • Jane's eyes glittered in the light of the Moon, but Jack could think only of Ganymede, his favourite moon of Jupiter. -- Finlay McWalter 23:18, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm consistently reverted on all of these, so plainly plenty of folks don't agree with me. -- Finlay McWalter 23:18, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

  • J.K. Rowling is a british author, who lives in Britain. Locations are capitalised, and British means 'of Britain'. So it would have to be British, never ever british.

Re - black vs African-American. It reminds me of a story about a US TV presenter interviewing Nelson Mandela who worked for a company that threatened anyone who called someone black with immediate dismissal. She wanted to ask Mandella "so how does it feel to be South Africa's first black president?" but couldn't. So ended up asking the South African statesman "how does it feel to be South Africa's first . . . em . . . eh . . . . em . . . African American president?" Mandela's comment on such ridiculous Political Correctness after the show was finished, was apparently rather sharp. FearÉIREANN 23:41, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

  • I had a professor in one class where we were watching the Spartacus and Gladiator movies, and she referred to the black characters in both as "African American." I don't know about the guy in Spartacus, but I know that neither Djimon Honsou nor his character are American! Anyway...I would say "black" and "white" uncapitalized, personally. Adam Bishop 23:50, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think "black" can be used in most cases, but if the person has used another term that is generally accepted such as "African-American", we should use that instead. I'd be careful about how it's mentioned, though. Some black authors might rather be known first as authors. Mentioning race in the first sentence of only articles for people who are non-white is very POV. W.E.B. DuBois is known as a black author, so it would be okay in his case, but just be careful. Daniel Quinlan 23:27, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)

P.S. I believe it's "black" or "white" (lower case) and "African-American" (upper case since it's based on place/country names). Daniel Quinlan 23:28, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)

Nationalities are always capitalized, "british" is plain wrong. (That's an error often made by some Germans here - I can't count how often I have changed "german" to "German".) As to black, you could treat it in the same way (though the implications might be problematic, since there is no one "Black race" etc.), but it's more often used just like a colour, i.e. uncapitalized. --Wik 00:09, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, black and white are adjectives describing colour, while Black and White are ethnic/racial designations. But in practice both forms are used and I don't think WP should try to make either of them mandatory. But we certainly should ban Caucasian, which is based on a long-discredited racial theory. Caucasians are people from the Caucasus. Adam 01:14, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

We use 'Black' and 'White' (I work in the British public sector). Caucasian is bizarre (is this person from Armenia?). We subcategorise black into Black African and Black Caribbean (two different communities). You sometimes see Black British used. Secretlondon 12:27, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

From my experience in American English, Caucasian can be to describe someone of primarily European descent very clinically. But it really depends on context. When authors use the word 'black' as a adjective to describe a person, are they using it in the context of describing their ancestry, their physical or cultural characteristics, or place of origin? Thunderbolt16 05:25, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)


The American Anthropological Association (AAA) recommends black instead of Black. silsor 20:14, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

The Chicago, Oxford and Globe and Mail style manuals all prefer the lower case on "black". ☮ Eclecticology 08:47, 2003 Dec 17 (UTC)

Sexual Minorities

I have not been able to find any guide or convention on naming and describing sexual minorities. Many style guides include this information, and excerpts dealing with gay/homosexual can be found on my user page. I think that this should be a larger product including the above "Black or black" discussion, on creating guidelines for Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (minorities) or :Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (diversity) or even :Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (identity politics).Hyacinth 00:11, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Arabic names

The convention for arabic names presented here may be popular, but however is wrong. The arabic word for son is better transcribed as Ibn (ابن - Alif Ba Nun), not bin. Daughter is Bint (بنت), not binti (i is genitiv). --elian


Definite articles in article titles

We've been having a lively discussion on Talk:List of Marvel Comics characters about whether to name articles of superheroes whose names have traditionally included the definite article "the" in their name. Examples:

  1. The Scarlet Witch
  2. The Vision
  3. The Wasp
  4. The Incredible Hulk
  5. The Avengers
  6. The Sandman (vs. Sandman (comics) - these pages need to be merged sometime, but that's another issue)

We seem to have reached an impasse, and with only 3 people actively debating (myself, User:Lowellian and User:UtherSRG) I don't think consensus can be reached. (For points from both sides of the debate, see Talk:List of Marvel Comics characters/Archive 2.)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions doesn't seem to provide any guidance on this issue, as far as I can tell. The only relevant advice seems to be Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names), however there is even debate about which form is the "common" one.

My feeling is that there are certain characters - including those above - whose article titles should include the definite article. Others, such as (The) Batman have evolved to the point that the definite article is optional or has fallen into disuses, and leaving it off those pages is fine. And in particular, names which are also names of actual comic book publications which include the definite article (The Avengers, The Sandman) should include the article in their article titles.

One point for me is that it's generally much more natural to write about these characters using the definite article (e.g., "The Scarlet Witch married The Vision", as opposed to "Scarlet Witch married Vision"), and it therefore seems more natural to linkify The Scarlet Witch rather than The Scarlet Witch.

What is the general feeling about this issue? --mhr 21:38, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

No one has been consistent on this over the years - least of all the publishers. Every Managing Editor's attempt to achieve consistency has devolved into a Tower of Babel. As a searchable database, however, consistency is something we do have to achieve. Omitting definite articles seems definitely more intuitive for searching. Making links look nice can be achieved by [[Vision|The Vision]] which comes out as The Vision - unkamunka. 23:46, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I say use "the" where it's a part of the name or title. The only reason I can see to drop it is to appear in the right place in alphabetized lists. Since this is not an issue really (and even if it was, redirects would fix it), there's no sense in living them out. Zocky 03:26, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Not in every case. The Tasmanian Devil points to the Loony Toons charactor, while Tasmanian devil points to the actual animal. The same is true for The Tick and Tick, and I'm sure many others. Gentgeen 07:27, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I don't think you would write "The Scarlet Witch married The Vision"...you might write "The Scarlet Witch married the Vision," with lowercase definite articles...Anyway, most of my arguments are already summed up at Talk:List of Marvel Comics characters/Archive 2, but what I wanted to say here was that how about this compromise: for something like the Avengers, have The Incredible Hulk point to an article about the comic book volume/title, while Hulk (comics) points to an article about the comic book character. --Lowellian 19:45, Dec 20, 2003 (UTC)

I'm indifferent on using lowercase definite articles. Capitalizing it I think is a valuable visual cue that the article is part of the character's name, but to be honest I don't vacillate on that issue myself.
I'm not really interested in separate articles about individual titles, unless they have historic significance on their own (e.g. Action Comics). Separate articles on each, say, each Spider-Man title seems truly like splitting hairs.


It's specifically the characters whose names include definite articles where I'd like to see the article included in the article titles. The film may have been Hulk, but the character has always been The Hulk, just like it's always been The Shadow, The Beatles and The Tonight Show.
Sadly, there seems to be no consensus on this issue. sigh -mhr 07:18, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

In addition there is the problem of names of newspapers, television programmes, etc. The Irish Independent, for example, does not use the definite article in its mast head, so the article is in as the Irish Independent. But The Irish Times always uses the definite article so it is in as The Irish Times and never at as "the Irish Times". The television show is called The Late Late Show, not the Late Late Show, so the article is in as The Late Late Show. I think the masthead rule is a good guiding principle: if the masthead used the definite article, use it, if it didn't, don't. FearÉIREANN 00:46, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Is '&' a forbidden character?

Is the character '&' forbidden in article titles? This page says yes, but Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions) does not include it, and I note that it appears to work with no problems. I wanted to confirm this before removing it from this page, though. —Morven 01:25, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Could its absence reflect searching problems (see intro to Wikipedia:Special characters), perhaps bcz of its role as many users' best option for inputting characters like ü via syntaxes like the one i used here, which can be seen by editing this section? --Jerzy 14:03, 2004 Jan 12 (UTC)
It also should be noted that the two sources you cite are not using the same criteria, and thus should not give exactly the same list. --Jerzy 14:16, 2004 Jan 12 (UTC)

Names of Maya Ruins

For ruins of the Maya civilization I am currently favoring the format standard of the Corpus of Maya Inscriptions (a standard scholarly reference work): Spanish language place names get accent marks as in Spanish; Maya language place names only as in Maya. Thus I would like to move Chichén Itzá back to "Chichen Itza". I argue that "Chichén Itzá" is the Spanish language name, while "Chichen Itza" is both the Maya and the more common English language name. For further discussion, see also: Talk:Chichén Itzá. -- Infrogmation 21:52, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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