Capitalization of titles[edit]

The guideline[edit]

Offices, titles, and positions . . . are common nouns and therefore should be in lower case when used generically . . . . They are capitalized only in the following cases:

• When followed by a person's name to form a title, i.e., when they can be considered to have become part of the name: President Nixon, not president Nixon

• When a title is used to refer to a specific person as a substitute for their name during their time in office, e.g., the Queen, not the queen (referring to Elizabeth II)

• When a formal title for a specific entity (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.

—MOS:JOBTITLES

Common arguments against particular applications of JOBTITLES[edit]

• The government capitalizes the title without regard to whether it is used in conjunction with a name.
  • Wikipedia's style is controlled by the MOS, which is based on the styles used by reliable secondary sources, not primary sources like government publications.

• The title is a proper noun, and the article title capitalizes it, so you should do an RM if you want to lowercase it.
  • JOBTITLES in fact says that titles are common nouns, and thus lowercase, in most uses. The article title is correctly capitalized because not preceded by a modifier (e.g., the definite article "the"). In addition, the bolded article subject in the lead sentence need not exactly resemble the article title. See MOS:FIRST.

• The title is an official title and should therefore be capitalized. Government publications capitalize this title, so it should be capitalized on Wikipedia as well.
  • Although government publications frequently capitalize job titles, Wikipedia's style guide, the MOS, says that they must be lowercase unless before a name or in certain other instances.

• In almost all references in the (country) news, the title is capitalized, not lowercase.
  • In fact, most news publications worldwide and peer publications like Britannica lowercase job titles, so there is no MOS:TIES argument against a local application of JOBTITLES.

• I think job titles should always be capitalized.
  • Editors are always welcome to propose a change to an MOS guideline and to seek consensus for that change. However, we should note that the consensus behind the existing form of JOBTITLES is based on the fact that the vast majority of reliable secondary sources that Wikipedia uses lowercase titles in most instances.

• The MOS is a guideline, not a policy. We should override it locally for purposes of this article.
  • The MOS can be overridden locally. See MOS:VAR: "If you believe an alternative style would be more appropriate for a particular article, discuss this at the article's talk page or – if it raises an issue of more general application or with the MoS itself – at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style." However, for a local override of JOBTITLES, editors seeking the override need to explain why that override is justified on one article—for example, Secretary of Defense—more than another (e.g., President of the United States), which is hard to do.

• It's the name of the office.
  • As noted above, JOBTITLES provides that titles are lowercase in most instances, regardless of whether the referent is the office in a generic sense or a particular holder of the office.

Yes, I am interpreting it correctly[edit]

See this RFC.