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python

Administrator
Staff member
Apr 8, 2009
3,756
7,251
Maryland
pipesmagazine.com
Hello Everyone,

I would like to remind everyone that when you make a new thread to please... Capitalize The First Letter Of Every Word ....in the title of the thread.

Also, please be sure to start the thread in the appropriate sub-forum. If you are unsure where a subject might fit in, then just post it in the General Pipe Smoking section (if it has to do with pipe smoking).

This will help the staff spend less time on "housekeeping" and allow them to spend more time interacting with everyone and participating in discussions.

Thanks! :)
 

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
I scroll down the sub-forums now and then to maintain a feel for what goes where. This becomes important again when people want to go back to a particular discussion so they don't have to screen the whole Forums.
 
Hello Everyone,

I would like to remind everyone that when you make a new thread to please... Capitalize The First Letter Of Every Word ....in the title of the thread.

Also, please be sure to start the thread in the appropriate sub-forum. If you are unsure where a subject might fit in, then just post it in the General Pipe Smoking section (if it has to do with pipe smoking).

This will help the staff spend less time on "housekeeping" and allow them to spend more time interacting with everyone and participating in discussions.

Thanks! :)
Will do sir!
 

brian64

Lifer
Jan 31, 2011
9,603
14,669
“A” should not be capitalized.

Hmm...this is indeed a difficult question.

Is 'a' a word?

Is 'a' a word or a letter when used in 'It was a good day'?

It's used as a word - an indefinite article - in your example.

'a' is one of the three English alphabets with meanings that go beyond tautological references to the letters themselves. It becomes a word whenever it is used as an indefinite article that introduces a noun phrase; precedes a collective noun or a plural indefinite pronoun; denotes a quantity of one; or metaphorically compares two things. In the past 'a' has also been used as a preposition for 'of',and as a verb for 'have'.
 

paulfg

Lifer
Feb 21, 2016
1,567
2,933
Corfu Greece
You're probably correct, but after 7+ hours cleaning up the forums and fixing titles, I just capitalized every word. :)
perhaps some thing can be done about the spam posts that keep appearing every few week

not meant as a dig at any of the admins
 

admin

Smoking a Pipe Right Now
Staff member
Nov 16, 2008
8,764
4,932
St. Petersburg, FL
pipesmagazine.com
perhaps some thing can be done about the spam posts that keep appearing every few week

not meant as a dig at any of the admins

Perhaps you could not be too lazy to use your shift key, and use proper capitalization, which is also part of the same rule that this thread is about.

Also, if you couldn't tell, your comment is hugely out of line.

You have no idea how many spam posts are stopped before they go in, and how many more are deleted before you see them.

You didn't even bother to report the 3 spam posts that I cleaned up this morning that 2 others did report.
 
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ssjones

Moderator
Staff member
May 11, 2011
18,317
11,074
Maryland
postimg.cc
perhaps some thing can be done about the spam posts that keep appearing every few week

not meant as a dig at any of the admins

On the new platform we get a report of suspected spammers everytime we access for forum and can clean them on the spot. I see 4-6 reports daily and there may be more that the other mods catch. So for the ones that get thru while we're sleeping/off forum, 40-50 are caught. We do miss Javan's moderation of the forum as he was in a different time zone, which was helpful.
 
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peregrinus

Lifer
Aug 4, 2019
1,205
3,787
Pacific Northwest
You have no idea how many spam posts are stopped
As an admin/moderator on a different site (it’s an unrelated subject) I need to tell you that I can appreciate what you have accomplished here. Also, I have some idea what is required day-in and day-out to maintain this site and it takes a genuine love of the subject to maintain momentum and carry you forward. Unfortunately, admins and moderators often see a lot of what users don’t like, hear their grievances and occasionally are required to end the disputes that break out over the damnedest things. This can be disheartening some days to say the least and admins often struggle to find and then keep good moderators. Once you become a moderator you trade some of the freedom to post for the responsibility to maintain order and this feels like a better deal some days than others.
Kevin you are right, (some) people have no idea what’s going on in the background and that is because you are all doing a such a great job.
Thank you.
 

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
In journalism and other copy editing, this rule is what is called initial caps (capitalization) and is well established in style books with publications large and small going back at least a century or more. It's a courtesy not to the owner of the site but to the reader, to announce that something is a title and to slow down the reader just a moment to take that in. It's part of an intricate culture and system of grammar, punctuation, layout and typography that key us all to how written material is presented and what's meant. Many students and others resent these systems, but when you do away with them, you have to replace them with new, usually less efficient ones, so people can decipher what the hell they're saying to each other. You may disbelieve this; many do. And then they invent systems that are not commonly understood and more difficult to understand, or more likely, they just don't communicate very well ... and really resent that. Like table manners, they really look fussy and silly until they aren't observed. Then you wish they were.
 
Jun 27, 2016
1,273
117
So we're cool with emojis in thread titles? Because I've seen those popping up recently, & it's probably more annoying than improperly capitalized thread titles.
 
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mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
Some grad student is probably studying this even as I type, but I bet a study would show that people interpret emojis in totally different and contradictory ways, because it is a new set of hieroglyphs being introduced. Because I'm coming to them as a geezer, I can't tell what most of them are, much less what they mean. But a fourth grader does.
 
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augiebd

Lifer
Jul 6, 2019
1,267
2,564
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Like the Oxford comma, I support capitalized titles. I think MSO provides a well reasoned response that enriches my appreciation of the appropriate, “Kevin gets what Kevin wants.” A rule with a sound, reasonable foundation is much more than just a rule.
 
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