[publican-list] [Bug 486520] Preface headings and revision history should use sentence caps

[bugzilla at redhat.com]

Please do not reply directly to this email. All additional
comments should be made in the comments box of this bug.


https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=486520





--- Comment #3 from Brian Forte <bforte at redhat.com>  2009-06-17 00:23:30 EDT ---
Title Case rules in English vary wildly.

1. ALL CAPS
THE WATER DAMAGE IS IN HER FAUX ARMENIAN CATHEDRAL WING

2. Initial caps for everything:
The Water Damage Is In Her Faux Armenian Cathedral Wing

3. Initial caps for everything, except non-initial articles, prepositions and
conjunctions:
The Water Damage Is in Her Faux Armenian Cathedral Wing

4. Initial caps for everything, except non-initial articles; prepositions;
conjunctions & ‘to be’ forms:
The Water Damage is in Her Faux Armenian Cathedral Wing

5. Initial caps for everything, except non-initial closed-class*
The Water Damage is in her Faux Armenian Cathedral Wing

6. Initial caps for nouns and the 1st word:
The Water Damage is in her faux Armenian Cathedral Wing

7. Standard sentence case (ie first word takes an initial cap as do proper
nouns):
The water damage is in her faux Armenian cathedral wing

8. all lowercase
the water damage is in her faux armenian cathedral wing

Of these eight, numbers five and seven are the most common. Very roughly
speaking, style five is US editorial practice and style seven is Commonwealth
editorial practice.

It gets complicated, however. Even in places where style five above is the
rule, long closed-class words (eg ‘between’) sometimes taking an initial cap.
The *New York Times* used a ‘five with occasional long closed-class exceptions’
style for many years, for example.

And there are numerous UK publishers using style five (especially with the
‘long closed-class words are a further exception’ variation) and numerous US
publishers using style seven.

Also, scientific publishers, regardless of where they are, tend to stick with
style seven (sentence case).

ALL CAPS is generally a sign of very good or very poor typesetting and design,
mostly the latter. It takes a real eye for type and presentation to make ALL
CAPS titles work. More important, from our perspective, it takes typefaces we
don’t use. All this is equally true for all lowercase titles.

Initial Caps For Everything (two above) is mostly a sign of typesetter
uncertainty. The person setting the type doesn’t know styles three, four, five
or six even exist but does know that Titles Are Somehow Different To Standard
Text When It Comes To Capitals. Consequently, and by way of obviating the
problem, they stick Initial Caps on everything.

The *New York Times* variant on style five noted above — initial caps for
everything, except non-initial closed class words, unless the non-initial
closed-class word is particularly long — is popular, albeit accidentally so.
Most people using it are actually using a naive version of it: initial caps for
everything except short words, unless the short words are nouns or names or the
like.

Given the complexity even the simplest of these rules introduce, the argument
for sentence case is compelling. It reduces the editorial workload and doesn’t
materially effect the look of the published material.

The half-decent justification for anything other than sentence case is that
titles are not contrasted clearly from body copy unless set otherwise. A better
solution to that problem is to re-set the titles, not introduce complicated
house rules that people will invariably forget. Titles in Red Hat books *are*
set in clear and contrasting style, so we don’t have that half-decent
justification for using other than standard sentence case.



*‘closed class’ word types don’t get new members all that often. For example,
prepositions, postpositions, determiners, conjunctions, & pronouns. Nouns and
verbs, by contrast, are open class words, taking on new members all the bloody
time.

-- 
Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email
------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
You are on the CC list for the bug.