FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Talk:The Players Championship#Requested move 23 November 2017. At issue is whether a capitalized "The" should be retained in the title and in running prose when one is favored by many (perhaps a majority) of specialized (in this case golf) sources, but not reflected across reliable sources more generally. Various pro and con arguments are presented including traditionalism versus WP:THE, disambiguation, consistency, whether special rules for publication titles and band names (subject to distinct guidelines) can be extrapolated to other topics, what is and isn't a "proper name", and most of the other stuff we come to expect of one of the louder rows at WP:RM. The outcome of this RM will probably affect two other golf event articles with similar "The" names.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  08:41, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

The proper and common name of The Players Championship is The Players Championship. One of the "two other golf event articles" it "will probably affect" is The Open Championship, the most historic and iconic name in golf! If Wikipedia comes to the point where it changes the name of The Open Championship we may just as well roll up the welcome mat and lock the door, for we will no longer be an encyclopedia. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:32, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

But the Open Championship is more commonly discussed with lowercase "the" (see books). Doesn't that mean they don't consider "The" to be an essential part of the name? What is the basis for the funny exception you have re-inserted? Dicklyon (talk) 05:52, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Meta-discussion

When someone posts a {{FYI|pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere}} that means "please discuss it at that location". It is not an invitation to WP:DISCUSSFORK. And re-iterating the same argument here that's already been rebutted with actual sources over there isn't constructive. Please see WP:IDHT.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  12:34, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Agreed, except when the pointer is making the case for one-side or the other by the use of such charged language as "most of the other stuff we come to expect of one of the louder rows at WP:RM". With this language I would think that a discussion has also been opened up here. And your "actual sources" is one guy on a website paraphrasing the accepted name (although there exist other sources from websites which paraphrase the name). This nitpicking of some sources to change a common familiar name is why, in my opinion, this "consistency" guideline is so absurd and harmful to the encyclopedia. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:53, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

You're inventing an inference that is not implied. I've said nothing whatsoever pro or con either/any outcome, only indicated that the debate is heated and multi-pronged, which is an accurate assessment. This is also among the proper venues for notice, as it's full of "to capitalize or not to capitalize" regulars, who are not topically tied to the subject (in the aggregate – I'm sure a few golf fans/players are among the regulars). PS: No, the actual sources consists of innumeral news sources using no "the" at all, much less a "The"-capitalized one in mid-sentence (though that style is also attested, especially in golf-specific publications). I have no idea what "one guy on a website" you are referring to.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  03:36, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

On the other matters: The consistency guideline you don't like was introduced by fans of WP:COMMONNAME in the mid-2010s, to impose its "follow the sources" nature on the MoS material that had a strong effect on article titles; this was after quite a bit of negotiation. What was there before was stricter rules that amounted to simply "never capitalize this or that", without any room for exceptions not specifically enumerated. I.e., you're complaining about a rule that is now much more flexible and basically amounts to agreement with the WP:CCPOL, when before there was "obey our house style, period".

I don't see how you can be satisfied, other than with "don't even follow majority source usage, just use whatever style you like best [probably based on a combination of specialist sources and decades-old sources] and fight to keep it that way if you are convinced it is WP:RIGHT and that changing it would be a WP:GREATWRONG." That you may be bringing a perspective tinged with this is strongly evidenced by wording like "so absurd and harmful to the encyclopedia" and (at my talk page) "the changing of what I see as iconic names ... I truly believe doing that is not good for the overall project", and similar "right and good versus wrong and harmful" thinking (rather than "used by the majority of RS independent of the subject, vs. less used") arguments you brought in the MOS:JR debates. No offense intended; it's just hard to come to a conclusion other than that this is an WP:NOT#ADVOCACY matter, about particular style nit-picks for which you have a deep sense of traditionalism that disregards current publishing practices. From another perspective, it looks like you're misinterpreting a descriptive rule as prescriptive, because you're strongly prescribing something yourself and it doesn't match the descriptive results.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  03:58, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I certainly perceive that a guideline demanding consistently sourced material, not even close to a majority, just that if some sources lower-case then the Wikipedia title gets lowercased/lessened, as harming the encyclopedia. Even if the title is the real name of an event, such as The Players Championship, or The Open Championship - undoubtedly one of if not the most iconic name in sports which you publicly say is next on the list, if some sources paraphrase a name, then, as written, on Wikipedia the paraphrasing prevails. If The Players Championship is changed you are set to have an RM on The Open Championship, and you likely have paraphrased examples to make your case. That's the crux of the matter, that you and others would even contemplate such a thing. And if a luck-of-the-draw closer accepts the absolute-consistency wording, and one of the most iconic names in sports is altered here, of course it would further harm the public perception of Wikipedia - the encyclopedia that anyone can edit and anyone can take a two-iron and blast an iconic name into the next fairway and call it right-down-the-middle. Encyclopedias are expected to use familiar and common names, names which the public understands as being the correct name. Some of Wikipedia's guidelines, as written or perceived by some nominators and some closers, do the opposite. When they are used to change names such as The Open Championship, as you would like to do, the use of guideline language should be concerning and seen as an institutional problem. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:57, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

These edits concern me... some of them may support Talk:The Players Championship#Requested move 23 November 2017 which the editor proposed. Not cricket if so, surely. Andrewa (talk) 19:35, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: Russian railway line article titles.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  04:31, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Could someone please check Mayor of New York#Deputy mayors: It looks to me like there should be more caps in this section. However, I'm not sufficiently confident to make those changes, especially since there are several. DavidMCEddy (talk) 02:59, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

My feeling on this is "Fuleihan is first deputy mayor" but "Deputy Mayor Fuleihan". The article is now the former. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:16, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Should the academic titles like "assistant professor" and "associate professor" be written with capital letters? Ali Pirhayati (talk) 11:34, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

@Pirhayati: Generally no in Wikipedia, as explained at MOS:JOBTITLES. If used before a name as part of the name, it would be "Professor Smith said ..." or "Assistant Professor Smith said ...", but "Smith, an assistant professor at Jones University, said ...". Many academics and some university style guides capitalize these words and others because they are so important in their context (see WP:SPECIALSTYLE), but Wikipedia doesn't. Thank you.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  18:10, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

• Perhaps we should. there is a difference between the generic concept of an assistant professor--a rank tha tat various countries at various times has been implemented in various job titles, and the specific rank of Assistant Professor in the US system of higher education (and its models). DGG ( talk ) 23:20, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

  Better to use prose to illustrate that. Capitalization as disambiguation has been fairly rejected. Primergrey (talk) 01:54, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Is there a preference for lexical sets to be using {{sc}}, as in GOAT, or {{sc2}}, as in GOAT. I'm still a bit confused when do use one vs the other, but it seems that there has been a recent push to use the latter. Does one use the latter so the capitalization is preserved when copy/pasting? Hope this is the right place to ask. Umimmak (talk) 00:24, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

@Umimmak: Yep, this is the place, to the extent anyone's worked it out. I have no idea why so many of these templates were created, but they're deployed all over the place. Would be nice to merge them and just do what they do with parameters. Anyway, please see the revised (a month or so ago) MOS:SMALLCAPS section and its footnotes. It explains what each one does with examples.

The short version that when smallcapping an acronym, which we usually don't do but there seems to be consensus to do it with post-nominal letters, you want it to copy-paste as, e.g. "OBE" not "obe", so use {{sc2|OBE}}, which presents it in a reasonable size and has that copy-paste effect: OBE. When the smallcaps are a stylistic variant applied to regular text, you want it to copy-paste as normal text, e.g. "Kentucky Dawn" not "KENTUCKY DAWN", and for case to be distinguishable in the rendered version, so the template to use is {{sc1|Kentucky Dawn}} → Kentucky Dawn. The rest of the cases are specialized usage, like quite small caps that copy-paste as lower-case no matter what's put in – {{sc|adj}} and {{sc|ADJ}} render and copy paste the same, as "adj": ADJ, ADJ.Tht's the one historically used for grammatical morpheme abbreviations in interlinear glosses.

The closest thing to a mnemonic I've worked out for it is "Start small with sc1 for lower (or mixed) case, go up to sc2 for upper case, and cut it off to sc if you want stunted letters and case decapitated permanently." I'm tempted to forget the third part on purpose, because the main use for that was those morpheme abbreviations, but now there's a custom template for this, {{gcl}}. This stuff doesn't cover {{LORD}}, but that one's obvious. For Unicode codepoint names, just use the {{unichar}} (or sc2 if you really need the name on its own; those are conventionally given in upper case when smallcaps isn't available, so they should copy-paste that way; they're basically analogous to ISO unit symbols like GHz and mA, or language codes like en-AU, so they're just used the way they are even if they're ugly). There's also {{tdes}} for botanical trade designations. The ultimate solution is probably identifying every accepted use of SC style and giving it its own template so no one has to remember sc1, sc2, sc differences.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  23:22, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Okay, well I guess from this conversation that the editor who made the changes to the formatting of lexical set names is choosing sc2 so that it remains uppercase when copied? That makes sense, thanks. Umimmak (talk) 23:28, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

I can't find a guideline indicating a preference for "... to encourage black and Latina young women to pursue careers ..." or "... to encourage Black and Latina young women to pursue careers ...". (This is from Powtawche Valerino.) Is there one? Largoplazo (talk) 14:50, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Most RS give it in lower-case most of the time, and most of our articles do as well (same with "white", "people of color", etc.). This has been discussed many times before [2] apparently without consensus. My own feel on it, and what I do in off-WP writing, is use the lower-case version except in a context when doing so is awkward or confusing. The lack of symmetry in "black and Latina" is a good example. It may also be important in the context that "Black" in that particular construction is a shorthand for "African-American" specifically, not "people of African descent around the whole world". It's a specific ethnic reference like Coloured is in South Africa, not a general blanket classifier (nor is this news; Richard Pryor worked that distinction into his stand-up comedy routine as early as the 1980s). This is just my take; given that there's no rule about it, but a general rule against unnecessary capitalization, I would think that capitalizing it is always going to come down to a contextual analysis at the article in question. In this specific case my opinion is for "Black", or to rewrite the entire thing as "to encourage young women of color to pursue careers ...". It might even be more accurate – does the program exclude Asian Americans, Native Americans, etc.?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  17:45, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

I just checked, and the sponsoring organization's site says nothing about ethnicity or race at all [3]. Mission statement: "The PowHERful Foundation gets young women to, and through, college. We provide financial assistance, mentorship, and wraparound services to help our scholars achieve their highest potentials. We reach an even broader audience through our Summit series, where we bring day-long conferences to major cities across the country for young women." So, the proper wording in our article should surely be "to encourage young women to pursue careers".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  17:49, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

For Valerino, sharing her knowledge with the next generation of students is natural. She knows that in telling her story, she’s providing valuable exposure to a profession many women and minorities aren’t usually encouraged to pursue. She has worked with Soledad O’Brien to encourage Black and Latina females to pursue careers in STEM at the PoweHERful summit. Umimmak (talk) 20:55, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

The wording in that article in particular is under further discussion at Talk:Powtawche Valerino.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  19:05, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Capitalization of "federal" and "government" seems to be all over the place for these terms and their variants (U.S. federal government, United States government, and the like). These don't appear to be proper names; the name of the republic is "United States of America", and its government is simply the government of the United States of America, or the federal government. I think the MoS should provide some guidance for this. Maybe we could get a federal grant (not a Federal grant) to finance the construction of a bot to fix all these. ;-) Chris the speller ^yack 17:28, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

• My opinion: capitalize “Government” when discussing a specific nation’s government. Lower case “government” when generic. So: “While many governments around the world do X, the US Government, and the Government of France do Y.” Blueboar (talk) 18:50, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I think when referring to the United States, it's always lower case for federal or government, but other countries have different conventions. I'm not sure if it's an EngVar thing or if I might even write "Government of India" in a US English article, since that's the standard in India.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  18:59, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

What is the recipe for writing "fellows" and "fellowships" (for example in the "Bradley Foundation Fellows" or "Bradley Foundation Fellowship")? Capital or small? Ali Pirhayati (talk) 06:44, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Tricky... I think we would write "In 2018, he was made a Fellow of the Bradley Foundation"... and I think we would also write "In 2018, he was made a Bradley Foundation Fellow" ... however, I think we would write: In 2018 he was granted a Bradley Foundation fellowship". I could be wrong, however. Blueboar (talk) 13:16, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

But "fellow" is a common noun. See macmillandictionary.com: "a fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge". Or oxforddictionaries.com: "he was elected a fellow of the Geological Society". I see no reason to capitalize, as the meaning is the same in upper case and lower case. In "a Bradley Foundation fellow" we simply have a proper name modifying a common noun, no different than in "a Bradley Foundation employee". Chris the speller ^yack 15:14, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

I see it the same way as Chris the speller. The person is a "Bradley Foundation fellow", while the "Bradley Foundation Fellowship" is a named program and hence a proper noun.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  18:56, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

What about “Fellow of the Royal Society”? Blueboar (talk) 16:01, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

@Blueboar: I'd read MOS:JOBTITLES as saying it should be lower case. It says we capitalize "When a formal title (or conventional translation thereof) is addressed as a title or position in and of itself, is not plural, is not preceded by a modifier (including a definite or indefinite article), and is not a reworded description". List of Fellows of the Royal Society and the lists under it definately go against that. If we say that Newton was a president of the Royal Society we wouldn't capitalize "president", why would we capitalize his title when we say he was a fellow? We don't capitalize something because it's important, we capitalize it if it's a proper noun. A specific fellowship can be a proper noun, but a fellow is no more a proper noun than a plumbler. I recognize that defining a proper noun/proper name gets complicated around the edges, but that's how I see it.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  22:55, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

And yet, I think you would get a LOT of push back if you tried to decapitalize “Fellow” and “Fellows” at the Royal Society article. It is a VERY prestigious designation... one that is routinely capitalized in the real world. Blueboar (talk) 23:34, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Unfortunate, if true, that fans of a such an intellectual society would be ignorant of what having a house style means. Primergrey (talk) 00:07, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Same rule as always applies: if RS don't consistently capitalize it, WP doesn't either, and you have to pay attention to the grammatical and semantic context. Fellow is consistently capitalized only when tacked onto a name as a post-nominal (and such things are usually abbreviated, FSTS, etc., except on résumés). There's virtually never just a single fellow in any fellowship program, so it it is a common noun by definition. This is basically the same as professorships - they're only capitalized when tacked directly onto a name:

• According to Professor Jane Q. Doe, an economist at Foobar University ...
• Jane Q. Doe is a professor of economics at Foobar University.
• According to J. C. Thompson, Fellow of the Scottish Tartans Society, ...
• More likely on Wikipedia: According to J. C. Thompson, {{post-nominals|list=[[Scottish Tartans Society|FSTS]]}}, ... which renders as: According to J. C. Thompson, FSTS, ...
• J. C. Thompson, a researcher of Highland cultural history, was made a fellow of the Scottish Tartan Society.

We shouldn't capitalize "fellowship" unless the fellowship program itself is the subject and we're using the word in a proper name:

• Doe also received a Bradley Foundation fellowship as a post-graduate student. Or:
• Doe also received a fellowship from the Bradley Foundation as a post-graduate student.
• The foundation established its Bradley Fellowship Program in 1986.

"Fellows" is the same case as a board of directors or similar body, and again only capitalized when treated as a proper-name subject in its own right:

• Two other professors in the department were also Bradley Foundation fellows.
• Seven graduate and post-graduate students at the institution are are also Bradley fellows, and 12 have scholarships from the Fullbright Program.
• One of professors is today on the board of directors of the Bradley Foundation.
• The Bradley Fellows, as a body, number in the thousands and do not meet in person.
• The organization's charter requires that: 1) the Bradley Foundation Board of Directors must meet at least once annually with a quorum; 2) it must be constituted of at least 15 elected members; 3) ....

Sponsored endowments are capitalized when given in full as proper names:

• David J. Farber was appointed Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunication Systems at the University of Pennsylvania.
• David J. Farber is a professor of telecommunications systems at the University of Pennsylvania.

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:45, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

We should probably clarify that "law", "statute", "act", "bill", "regulation", etc., are not capitalized when not used in an actual title of a legal work (or a conventional short name thereof, e.g. Peel's Acts). E.g., use "There were two separate sets of broadly identical acts for England and Ireland", not "There were two separate sets of broadly identical Acts for England and Ireland". There are thousands of over-capitalizations like this; it seems to be the same "the Party of the First Part to this Contract" habit of lawyers.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  19:04, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Agree completely. Chris the speller ^yack 17:42, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

• One exception... “Law” is usually capitalized when discussed as an abstract concept (as in “Magna Carta established that even monarchs were subject to the rule of Law.” or “Force gave way to Law as the basis for society”.) Blueboar (talk) 19:08, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

  Nah, that's an affectation. It's precisely the same one as "fighting for Truth and Justice". I read tremendous amounts of history and culture material, and things like "gave way to Law as the basis of society" (why didn't you capitalize "Society"?) are no longer typical in English, including in the relevant fields. (I don't read a lot of legal theory material; it may be that law journals tend to use "Law" when they mean it in the broad conceptual sense, but I'd want to see proof of that before I believed it, and it would still just be a specialized-style fallacy WP wouldn't use anyway, for the same reason we don't use "Theory of General Relativity" or "a Romance novel" or "She is an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics.")  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:11, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Our article at L'Hôpital's rule inconsistently capitalizes the the "L" in the name here. It seems that when the name is used by itself (as in the article on Guillaume de l'Hôpital himself), the "L" is written lower case. However, if you take "L'Hôpital's rule" to be a proper noun, perhaps the "L" really should be capitalized. I'm really at a loss about what's better/correct here. Can anyone provide any advice? Thanks, –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 15:40, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

I see only one inconsistent use at the mathematical article ("l'Hôpital's rule may be used to determine that"). Otherwise, I see inconsistency in print sources. My print Britannica uses "L'Hôpital" when referring to Marcel, the 16th century statesman (but shows nothing on the mathematician, and Wikipedia seems to have nothing on Marcel). Thomas's Calculus has it as "l'Hôpital", when discussing the rule, but another calculus book has it otherwise. So, as might be appropriate, the usage is indeterminate. Dhtwiki (talk) 22:24, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

• This is the same question as whether it should be de Anza or De Anza, von Braun or Von Braun, van der Schaaf or Van der Schaaf (or even Van Der Schaaf), when used without the given names. Since usage is mixed, go with lower case by default (except at start of a sentence or some other place we always start with a capital letter); the first rule of MOS:CAPS is don't capitalize something unless almost all the RS do so consistently for that particular case. For particular individuals for whom a particular pattern is overwhelmingly the most common, use that pattern. And apply common sense. Writing "according to L'Hôpital's rule" is like writing "within The Chicago subway system"; why on earth is the definite article being capitalized in mid-sentence? I'm not sure where people get the idea that proper names should be monkeyed with after they're turned into eponyms. If something bore my name [31], would it be okay to rewrite my name as "mac Candlish" when referring to it, just because you prefer traditionalist orthography for Scottish names? I don't think so. (Adjectives can sometimes be an exception, modelled on things like Cartesian from des Cartes; perhaps Candlishian would evolve from McCandlish, and Hôpitalien from l'Hôpital?)

  A few external style guides suggest capitalizing such names when they stand alone (L'Hôpital, De Anza, Van der Schaaf, etc.). I think this works poorly here, because we have zillions of editors who are not going to internalize the distinction, and who will then go write Guillaume de L'Hôpital. I've seen one style guide that wants to do it differently based on the root language (IIRC, it would have von Braun but Van der Schaaf, based on differences in typical German and Dutch usage), but this strikes me as a bad idea, because we're writing in English, not German or Dutch, and again the average editor will not grok the difference, so will go around changing things to Wernher Von Braun or whatever. We also have the complication of Americans, Canadians, and others with such surnames, treating them differently. E.g., Googling "van der schaaf" I encounter van der Schaaf, Van der Schaaf, and Van Der Schaaf, plus Vander Schaaf and Vanderschaaf, all in current use. For modern subjects (especially living ones) we should prefer the spelling used by the person in question, per WP:ABOUTSELF. For historical ones, use what the majority of English-language sources use, since orthography was not a settled matter when people like Juan Bautista de Anza were living. This also applies to organization names and other trademarks; the name of the institution is De Anza College with a capital D; if you start a company named de Anza Film Studios and it become notable, we should render the name with the lower-case d.

  We may need to add something to this effect, probably to MOS:BIO. I can't find any mention of it at MOS:BIO, WP:NCBIO, MOS:CAPS, or WP:NCCAPS.
   — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:33, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Checking "Walter de la Mare" in Google Books, I find De la Mare, de la Mare, de La Mare and sometimes De La Mare. There is a certain logic to each of these. Robert J. Van de Graaff's machine is a Van de Graaff generator but the rock group is Van der Graaf Generator. I don't think we can define any logical rule, just whatever in mostly commonly used. I would say the rule should be "whatever capitalization is found most often in English-language results from a search of Google Books". Aymatth2 (talk) 23:32, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

That's probably a poor choice because it includes obsolete material (often super-duper obsolete, like from 1847). This came up in discussion of PLOS One. They used to render it PLoS One, but haven't in years, and the current journals that cite it generally use PLOS One, but Google Books results prefer PLoS One because they're saturated with older publications (meanwhile news writers tend to imitate the logo stylization and render it as PLOS ONE, as if the "One" part is also an acronym, which it is not). We generally have to look at sourcing more broadly.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:38, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Good point. Maybe something like "whatever style is found most often in reliable sources, giving greatest weight to recently published sources. If there is no dominant style in these sources, the style used by the first main contributor to the article should be followed." Something like that. This seems like a broad principle that would apply to a lot of style issues. It seems that there should be a standard formula. Aymatth2 (talk) 18:07, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish:: "This is the same question as whether it should be de Anza or De Anza, von Braun or Von Braun..." Not quite. I agree with you that nobiliary particles should be lower case by default, but French names incorporating de La or de L' are a slightly different matter. In the vast majority of these names only the "de" is the nobiliary particle, and the definite article is an integral part of the place name from which the family name is derived. As the article is capitalised in the place name, so it is capitalised in the family name: François de La Rochefoucauld (of La Rochefoucauld); Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne (of La Tour-d'Auvergne); Louis Jean Marie de La Trémoille (of La Trimouille). We don't really do this with place names in English, but when you say "writing 'according to L'Hôpital's rule' is like writing 'within The Chicago subway system'", a better comparison would be "within The Hague tram network". I don't know from which of several places called L'Hôpital the mathematician's family took its name, but they all use capital L, and because of this I would spell his name with a capital L too, and by extension the rule as well.

Having said that: there is of course inconsistency even in French usage. The French Wikipedia has fr:Guillaume François Antoine, marquis de L'Hôpital and fr:règle de L'Hôpital as article titles, but uses capital and lower case L inconsistently within both. I just wanted to make the point that L' isn't the same as Von or De. Opera hat (talk) 01:51, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

But if even fr.wikipedia can't get it "right", then there's not an actual rule there we should try to follow. This is English, and if we start making an exception for French, the something like 40% of people who think about it will want a Dutch exception, and x% will want a Spanish one, and we'll end up having to have a page that's a list of these particles and what to do with them, and no one will remember any of it. On this site, we should do something consistent with all of them, since the real world just does whatever the writer at hand feels like, even in French.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:23, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't really understand why you would want to impose a consistency on Wikipedia that you admit doesn't exist in the real world. Surely your earlier suggestion to use whatever reliable sources use on a case-by-case basis is the better one. Opera hat (talk) 23:22, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Imposing consistency on willy-nilly variation is the main reason style guides exist, and it's pretty much the sole purpose of WP's MoS. We've tried the other approach and it leads to more dispute than it resolves, except in a few narrow areas that style guides that MoS is based on cannot help us with, other than by an arbitrary rule. About the only solid example is what to do with excessively stylized trademarks – there is no authoritative list 100,000+ of them and how to stylize each, and they're too different for blanket algorithm, so our rule is to not do anything unusual in rendering a trademark unless almost all reliable sources also do it consistently for that particular trademark. Trying to apply this approach to capitalization in general has been an abject failure. I don't think a single thing we've tried with regard to MoS has wasted more time or led to more dispute, especially at WP:RM. It's a daily, often multiple-times-daily, source of a strife, because everyone is going to game the sourcing to try to get the version they want, and the entire exercise of trying to figure out what a preponderance of the sources are doing is patently original research, with easily manipulated and often statistically invalid corpora (e.g. hits in various Google searches) that are difficult to do appropriately even when people are not trying to fudge them intentionally.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:41, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

@Opera hat: I have Louis Le Provost de Launay^(fr) on my "to do" list, but now I am unsure about the right capitalization. Aymatth2 (talk) 02:36, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Well, I would use a capital L, but I'm sure you could find sources that didn't. Opera hat (talk) 23:22, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Returning to the original question: if you spell his name with a capital L, spell the rule with a capital L. If you spell his name with a lower case L, spell the rule with a lower case L. Opera hat (talk) 23:22, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Yep. Though we need an algorithm to answer that "if" in the first place. We're being too inconsistent and it causes too much "WTF do I do with this?" confusion, and disputes.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:31, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Scouting/Style advice directly conflicts with MOS:DOCTCAPS, and demands capitalization of "scout" or "guide" in constructions like "a group of 50 scouts" (the Wikiprojects wants "a group of 50 Scouts"). This also conflicts with MOS:JOBTITLE and everything else we do. The wikiproject advice page is fine when it calls for "Eagle Scout" and other specific awards being capitalized as proper names. But it's flat wrong on "scout" and "guide" for exactly the same reasons as being discussed above for "airman" and "marine". While scouting-related publications like to capitalize, just as military ones do, this is the specialized-style fallacy, the imposition onto Wikipedia of an off-site concern's insider, aggrandizing house style. The capitalization of "Scouting" as a movement is probably permissible (in reference to organizations that are actually formally a part of it, not just similar to it), because it's not a vague movement like "house-music DJing" or "anti-gun activism", but a hierarchical and organized system, like the International Olympic Committee and all the international sport federations it comprises. However, "Scouting Movement" is over-capitalization again; it should be Scouting movement, or simply Scouting, or (depending on context), Scouting organization, Scouting organisation, Scouting leadership, Scouting facilities, etc. You can't just capitalize very word that follows "Scouting" because you think capital letters look nifty. The actual proper name of the Scouting movement as a defined thing is World Organization of the Scout Movement, which of course does get capitalized.

The over-capitalization has been present since the original version of the essay in 2007 [32] and is not the product of any kind of discussion, but simply what the writer of almost all of it, Gadget850, preferred.

Some of this has been argued over previously, without resolution, in March 2017:

• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 190#Since when can project pages overrule languages and the WP:MOS? (March 2017)
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scouting/Style advice#Very slight modification to the wording in the MOS

Disclaimer: I was a scout from around age 6 in the UK to 18 in the US, and continued in the Explorers until 20. I have the furthest thing from a prejudice against scouting.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:59, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Update and self-correction: Actually, the case for capital-S "Scouting" is also weak, because there are numerous scouting organizations with no affiliation at all to international bodies for the movement (see Category:Non-aligned Scouting organizations, List of non-aligned Scouting organizations, Non-aligned Scouting and Scout-like organisations); i.e., this is a diffuse movement, like veganism, not closely tied to a particular international organization (the proper name of which doesn't contain "Scouting" anyway).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:17, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

My take... in this case, the capitalization of “Scout” is used (and needed) to distinguish a member of these kids organizations from the military job of “scout”. It is similar to the distinction between “republican” and “Republican” noted in WP:DOCTCAPS.

Another example of this is the way we distinguish between a “mason” (ie one who builds buildings out of stone or brick) and a “Mason” (ie a member of the fraternal order of Freemasonry). Blueboar (talk) 00:26, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

That doesn't make any sense at all to me, since a) no one is going to confuse a 13-year-old with with a military man; b) the over-capitalization doesn't mean anything to anyone but people deeply involved in one WOSM affiliate or another (the main reason to not use it here); and c) the express intent of the creator of the kids'-club movement was to model it on military scouting in the first place. It's like wanting to capitalize "High School Football" in the context of kids's sports to distinguish it from professional, adult activity.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:27, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

• Agree with Blueboar, profoundly disagree with SMcCandlish and his mischaracterization "because you think capital letters look nifty", vide Rotary vs. rotary, Lions vs. lions, etc.--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 01:49, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
• I'm leaning towards Blueboar's view, finding the Mason argument convincing. If I were to refer to a member of the Miami Marlins baseball team as a "marlin" instead of a "Marlin", it would look like I was calling him a fish. Closer to the subject, I don't know about elsewhere, but in the American Girl Scouts, the younger girls are called Brownies. They certainly aren't small-b brownies. And Scouts, after all, aren't really scouts. No one is sending them into the wilderness to find suitable land for a new settlement or to spy on the enemy. And Guides aren't giving tours of Westminster Abbey. The names really are comparable to big-R Republicans. Largoplazo (talk) 02:12, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

  "Brownie" isn't descriptive, but methaphoric/evocative, so it's a proper name. Scout is descriptive of the activity set and the purpose. Brownie is also entirely specific to a particular organization (like "I'm a Democrat" in reference to the US Democratic Praty), while "scout" is a generic term applied to participants in all scouting organizations, including those not affiliated with the international federation that includes many of them, and unaffiliated with anything else at all.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:17, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

  You're not comparing similar things. Scouting is an activity. Marlining is not, nor is Masoning or Rotaring or Lioning. More the point, you're all missing that the names of these things – except Scouting – are figural and evocative, not descriptive. Masons, in the sense of Freemasonry, have nothing to do with bricklaying. The Rotary Club is not related in any way to turning something. The Miami Marlins don't do anything underwater. The Lions Club has no connection to roaring on the plains and chasing antelope. Scouting is a descriptive label, however; it's primarily about learning skills that would be applicable to the military role. That was the very reason the Baden-Powell created the organization in the first place.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:36, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Sure... Baden-Powell originally created Scouting to teach boys skills they would need for scouting. Read that last sentence carefully. Without the capitalization the sentence makes a lot less sense. Blueboar (talk) 12:58, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

But no one's been arguing against "Scouting" [I will start to do so below, given new information], only against "Scout", for the same reason we have the US Marine Corps (and the Spanish Navy Marines, and the Syrian Marines, and ...), but "A. B. Ceesdale is a retired marine" (not "Marine"). But if we did object to capital-S "Scouting", the material and the distinction would still not be problematic in any way, we'd just apply common-sense clear writing: "Baden-Powell originally the created scouting youth movement to teach boys skills they would need for scouting in the military." How is this not super-duper obvious?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:17, 19 February 2018 (UTC); revised: 08:26, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

• All of this hinges on the fact that a verb "to scout" was derived from "Scouts" to describe the activities in which Scouts engage? If the Masons started referring to their activities as "Masoning", Wikipedia would move quickly to lower-case all references to them?

Also, I already noted that "Scouts" and "Guides" are no more scouts and guides than Brownies are brownies, so those names are just as figurative. Baden-Powell wasn't running a school that was intended literally to turn out scouts. Or, if he was, his success rate was atrocious. I don't think a single Scout I've ever known used their training to become an actual scoutLargoplazo (talk) 02:53, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Just to inform the discussion... the activities of the fraternal order are referred to as “Masonry”... as opposed to the activity of “masonry” (stone and brick laying). interestingly, I have only seen the adjectival form, “Masonic”, used in the context of the fraternal order (does the profession even have an adjectival form?)... and there it is routinely capitalized.

Getting back to Scouting...SMcC... could you address the “Republican” vs “republican” example in WP:DOCTCAPS, and how it might (or might not) relate to “Scouting” vs “scouting”? Blueboar (talk) 11:53, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

It's exactly the same as "a Lutheran" and "a Roman Catholic", labelling an adherent to an ideology that is treated as a proper name and is tied to a specific organization, while many others are usually not ("capitalist", "yogin", "flat-earther", "cladist"); and note that "catholic" still survives as generic term, like "republican", though the former is rarely used today. By contrast, "scout" is descriptive of a persuer of a set of activities or approaches, like "home brewer", "scientist", "pool player", "marine", "method actor", etc., and the movement around Scouting (which is not always capitalized in this context), is actually rather diffuse; while there is an international organization for it (two, actually, counting World Assn. of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts), if you look into it, the national bodies are all independent and there are scouting organizations that are not a part of the international one; we have entire (clumsily named) articles on this, at Non-aligned Scouting and Scout-like organisations and List of non-aligned Scouting organizations (the capitalization here can't be correct, since there's no tie to the centralized organizations that allegedly give rise to capital-S Scouting in the first place, and "Scout-like" is just an abuse of language, since no organization is like an individual youth). I.e., there are lots of youth scouting organizations that are proper names, just as there are lots of marine infantry bodies, pool leagues, science organizations, and home-brewing clubs that are proper names, but it's doesn't make the personal labels proper names. Note also how deeply buried in the Category:Scouting tree Category:World Organization of the Scout Movement member organizations is.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:17, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

All of these examples appear to fall to "capitalisation" for distinction, rather than whether they are truly a matter of being used as proper nouns. This is not something subscribed to by the MOS. One might suggest that "Scout" is a shortened form of the full and proper name. As indicated in the discussion of marine v Marine, such would only apply if the shortened form could be replaced for the full and proper name without other change to the sentence construction and without an error in fact arising from such a substitution. The MOS does not subscribe to shortened forms being capitalised in general. They are not "proper names/nouns" Shortended forms are not the same as capitalising "Londoners" or "Toyota cars".

Doctrines, philosophies, theologies, theories, movements, methods, processes, systems of thought and practice, and fields of study are not capitalized, unless the name derives from a proper name: lowercase republican refers to a system of political thought; uppercase Republican refers to a specific Republican Party (each being a proper name).

The advice here refers to capitalising "republican" in the case of "Republican Party", which is a proper name, as opposed to the "gay rights movement". I read the example as a distiction between "the republican party" v "the Republican Party". If it means something else, then, it should be clear as to what it means. There is also the mater of the "distinction" between military scouts and members of the "S|scouts" (of America or somewhere else, where the name is not given in full). There are military units "designated" as "scouts", such as the Alamo Scouts. How does capitalising scout distinguish the youth movement from these if capitalisation for distinction or shortened forms becomes the norm and this (one or the other) is the basis for capitalising in respect to the youth movement. If there are "general" exceptions to the MOS, these cases should be clearly articulated. In short, if this is what the community wants, then it is a major shift in the guidance given, that would require a consensus - which is, frankly, unlikely (as a realistic observation). I don't have an "axe" to grind, except to make things clear an unambiguous. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 14:33, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps the MOS needs to pay more attention to capitalization used for distinction. After all, there is a huge semantic difference between “During the Trump administration the US had a republican goverment” and “During the Trump administration the US had a Republican government.” Both are accurate statements, but they MEAN very different things. Blueboar (talk) 15:09, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

But that's not capitalization for distinction (signification, a form of emphasis); it's capitalization in the latter case because it's a proper adjective, referring directly to the the proper name [the] Republican Party. It's exactly the same as Roman Catholic (frequently abbreviated Catholic) versus the generic adjective catholic. The more you look at it, the less youth scouting appears to be a proper name at all. Cinderella157's nailed this: If the Alamo Scouts and other proper-name military units have people in them referred to as scouts not Scouts (just as the US Marines, Syrian Marines, etc., are made up of marines not Marines in normal English), then why would the Boy Scouts of America, Scouting Ireland, etc., etc., be comprised of "Scouts"? It's pure vanity capitalization. As noted above, it couldn't rationally be applied to "non-aligned" scouting organizations that are not part of the loose international federation at all, since that federation is the (weak) justification for ever capitalizing "Scouting" in the first place.

The same rationale offered for capital-S "Scouting" would also result in capital-B "Basketball" (another invention by a particular person of a youth-oriented group activity which has turned into an international and somewhat standardized set of actions and practice of them, rulebooks, standard-issue equipment, and hierarchical structure from local to international level, and has spawned formal, incorporated organizations that employ adults in considerable numbers). There are just two reasons people want to capitalize scouting: to emphasize it, a rationale we do not accept, and to disambiguate it from the military activity, which is far better done with plain English ("youth scouting" or more specifically "boy scouting", "girl scouting", or "the scouting movement", versus "military scouting" or something more specific in context, e.g. "an Israeli Army scouting mission into Palestine" or whatever) than very incorrectly supposing that readers are going to magically understand that "Scouting" refers to kids and "scouting" refers to solidiers.

It's a silly false dichotomy anyway, since "scouting" has other meanings, and talent scouting (e.g. in sports and performing arts) is probably more familiar to the average, modern, entertainment-media-saturated reader than either military scouting (more often called recon) or the youth scouting movement (which is in a serious participation slump, probably an all-time low, though I've not researched that in detail). There is nothing unusual or different about this specialized-style overcapitalization case compared to the all the others we've been over before.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:17, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Well, looks like we are both firm in our opinions and won’t convince the other. You see my take on it as a case of over-capitalization... I see your take on it as a case of over-decapitalization. We should probably both sit back and let others decide. Blueboar (talk) 21:43, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I can't think of anything further to add, and trying to reply to multiple parties at once had me saying some of the same things twice. PS: However, there's a bit of a false equivalence here. I've endeavored to refute your argument, and you're now remaining silent, without addressing my rebuttal.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:57, 20 February 2018 (UTC); revised: 14:45, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

I figured that I had responded and that we were both just repeating ourselves... but let me try again... Because the word "scouting" is ambiguous (referring to many different activities), it is my belief that the clarification in meaning and understanding gained by capitalizing the word "Scouting" in the context of discussing the Boy Scouts (and related orgs) outweighs your more grammatical concerns. In addition, I also see a parallel with the similar clarification in meaning achieved by the routine capitalization of words like "Masonic" and "Republican" in similar organizational contexts. Blueboar (talk) 16:13, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

• I'm in full agreement that, in the context of how we already treat very similar subjects, there really is no exceptional circumstance here that justifies capitalization of this particular activity. Primergrey (talk) 22:28, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
• Scout and Scouting capitalized, I just saw this, are we really going to act on good faith and lower-case Scout or Scouting? For example: "the scout became a scout after training with an old scout and another scout and then went back to camp to teach his fellow scouts to scout". Upper-case is used throughout the Scout universe, from the names of organizations to how other Scouts personally address their fellow Scouts. Randy Kryn (talk) 21:23, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

While I can see the argument for Scout, I'm honestly baffled by Scouting being capped. It was asked earlier if Masons had an activity called masoning, would we downcase it. Of course we would. The President of France presides, the Prime Minister of Canada ministers, members of the Auto Workers' Union work on autos, the King's Singers sing, etc. Primergrey (talk)

However... unlike Presidents who “preside” and Ministers who “minister”... the Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, and Brounies don’t actually “scout” (nor do the Girl Guides actually “guide”)... so we use capitalization to indicate that they do something different. Blueboar (talk) 22:10, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

21:49, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Agree with Primergrey and struck out 'Scouting' in my comment. Randy Kryn (talk) 21:52, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Talk:African-American civil rights movement (1954–1968)#Requested move 18 February 2018.

This has turned full-on WP:PERENNIAL at this point.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:28, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

I actually had to look up the edit history, as I thought that someone had put the announcement up and forgot to sign, and you commented. But it seems you put a pointer announcement up, got it a bit wrong (user Coffee has proposed that the name be changed to simply "Civil Rights Movement", capitalized) and then added the "full-on" good faith kind-of-an-insult to the announcement (as well as the unneeded "- again" in the section head). This is a very relevant discussion with a large amount of evidence in favor of capitalization brought forward by the nominator, Coffee, and by user Mitchum, and it has received good support. Coffee has made it into an RfC. I would ask that those interested in exploring this topic read the entire nomination and comments, including the discussion section. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 21:08, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi SMcCandlish. Relating to your term "full-on WP:PERENNIAL", I don't think it that has anything to do with this RM suggestion. The term in the title 'Civil Rights Movement' had been stable for a long time, and then at the end of 2014, if I've got the timing right, there was an RM to decapitalize the term. That RM failed as a 'no consensus', and the term Civil Rights Movement remained capitalized for nearly three more years, until mid-late 2017, when a new RM, which included many other articles along with this one, lower-cased it . That was almost three years since the last RM, and I don't know when an RM was held previous to that. I don't think WP:PERENNIAL applies here, and maybe you'd consider striking it, as well as 'again' in the title. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:06, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

If you want to quibble with me about my post wording, please use user talk. "Perennial" is the exact WP jargon for re-re-re-arguing the same thing indefinitely, and people have been arguing in the same vein about the title of that and related articles for years. We have an entire WP:PERENNIAL page about it (though for site-wide matters, not micro-topical ones, or the page would be 100 × longer – it's illustrative not exhaustive).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:42, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

The title was stable for a long time, including during and after the 2014 RM which kept the upper-casing, until November 2017 when the page was lumped into a large move and became lower-cased. There is no perennial issue here, and your section title above ("again"), and the announcement of the RM itself (now an RfC), do seem biased. Maybe from your viewpoint you don't see that, or from mine I'm seeing something that's not there (but it's there, no?). Randy Kryn (talk) 13:42, 28 February 2018 (UTC)