On 8/1/06, Chris Bransden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 31/07/06, Bogdan Butnaru <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Third, "the rules should be such that those who know the language are
> able to capitalise correctly" does not define "correctly". In English
> there is a _widely_ accepted standard for what "correct
> capitalization" means,
i'd strongly contest that! there's many - see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalization
You didn't read that page carefully enough. It enumerates
capitalization rules in general (like "I" or "February" should always
be capitalized). Also, it has a special section that enumerates
"conventions [...] used for capitalizing words in publication titles
and headlines, including chapter and section headings". It doesn't say
anything about song titles. There is exactly one reference to song
titles, an external link at the bottom of the page. (It doesn't seem
very authoritative, but as it happens, it has about the same rules as
we have.)
Incidentally, songs in the English Wikipedia seem to use guidelines
like ours, though I can't find the guidelines that say that
specifically.
if anything, sentence case is more popular these days, for english.
not that i'd argue for us to change to that, mind, but it completely
comes down to personal preference.
I really didn't notice that :)
right, so i think the fairest way to choose would be a vote.
- only native/v good french speakers should vote (it's impossible to
say what looks best if you aren't either)
No, it's not :)
- their vote should be on the aesthetic quality of the capitilsation,
not the ease of application (as before, keeping it simple is easy, but
if it looks crap then whats the point?)
Nothing prevents us from a trade-off. Remember, we do use the "standard" way
of English capitalization, _with simplifications_, and the
simplifications were chosen
specifically to make automatic capitalization possible.
I don't really contradict my previous argument: there is a standard
way of capitalizing English (everything capitalized, except
unimportant words), but there is indeed a lot of variation with
specific details (what are unimportant words: closed class,
prepositions, articles, etc.), and we chose among them one that's easy
to automatize.
In a way, we could say the same thing about French: the standard way
is "capitalize only initial words", with a lot of variation about what
are initial words. We should chose the one that's easiest to
automatize, i.e. just the first one.
Note that proper nouns (names) can't really be automatically
capitalized. We could make a big fat list of names, but that wouldn't
cover all cases, no matter how much we try. (In particular because
there are names that are also simple nouns.)
-- Bogdan Butnaru — [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"I think I am a fallen star, I should wish on myself." – O.
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