Zen and the Art of Capitalized Titles

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zack24

Lifer
May 11, 2013
1,726
2
I had a couple of corrections to make to a post, and then realized there were a bunch of other titles that also weren't capitalized. Most of these were from some of our newer forum members who might not be familiar with the dreaded Rule #9.
The whole purpose is to give us a nice, clean consistent look...and for at least this moment in time, all the thread titles are PERFECT! If you're not familiar with this one- it's in the Forum Rules-
Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar
9. In order to maintain the quality of our forum and facilitate communication, it is the policy of PipesMagazine to encourage the use of standard spelling, punctuation and grammar.
Members are requested to proof read their posts before submitting them. Please capitalize words in the thread titles.
You may be contacted by moderators and asked to reword posts that we deem too difficult for many to read. If there are repeated violations that appear to be due only to laziness, you run the risk of having posts deleted or being submitted for moderation before appearing on the forum.
A list of common abbreviations and acronyms may be found at http://pipesmagazine.com/forums/topic/terminology. We can add to this list, but if you use new or obscure acronyms, please GUAH (Give Us A Hint).
British-English spelling standards are acceptable as well as American standards.
Perfect grammar is not required. We encourage everyone to do his or her best. Allowances will be made for those for whom English is difficult.

 

bassbug

Lifer
Dec 29, 2016
1,112
905
In fact, there are 4 styles of capitalization of titles that are considered acceptable.
1. Capitalize the first word of the title, the last word of the title, and all nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, subordinating conjunctions, and a few conjunctions. Prepositions are only capitalized if they are used adjectivally or adverbially. For example you’d capitalize the word “up” in a title that read “Squiggly Looked Up a Word” but not in a title that read “Squiggly Walked up the Mountain.”That is the short version of the formatting recommended by the Chicago Manual of Style (1).
2. Capitalize the first word of the title, the last word of the title, and all “principal” words (that’s essentially the same parts of speech I just listed—nouns, verbs and so on), and all words longer than three letters. That is the style currently recommended by the Associated Press (2). (You can see one of the major differences between Chicago and AP style is that in Chicago style, a long preposition such as “between” would not usually be capitalized, whereas in AP style, it would.) [Update: the Associated Press now uses sentence style, the style described next.]
3. Only capitalize the first letter of the first word of the title and words that would be capitalized in a sentence, such as someone’s name. This style is often called “sentence style” because it’s how you write sentences. (The Los Angeles Times website currently uses this style instead of the recommended Associated Press style.)
4. Capitalize the first letter of every word. (The MTV website currently uses this style.)

Is it fair to assume that this forum accepts all of these?

 

saintpeter

Lifer
May 20, 2017
1,158
2,632
Um...if dyslexic is it okay to just capitalize the last letter of each word? Just asking, ya know.

 

warren

Lifer
Sep 13, 2013
11,699
16,207
Foothills of the Chugach Range, AK
I believe Kevin relaxed the initial "caps" rule to now include the rules as set out in various print medium "style" books. For what it's worth I use the Chicago Tribune Manual of Style. Only because my wife came with one. There are others. Most major newspapers have them and some are available on line.
Simply stated, it's the rules we learned in English speaking schools (sixth, seventh grade?) with the usual differences between American English rules and English, as in Great Britain, rules, etc. I can't speak to countries such as those which write right to left or with different character sets or alphabets, etc.

 

jpmcwjr

Moderator
Staff member
May 12, 2015
24,568
27,074
Carmel Valley, CA
I can't believe that Google counts incorrect capitalization of articles and unimportant words. But is anyone certain one way or t'other?
So, "Zen And The Art Of Capitalized Titles" looks all wrong to me.
But "Zen and the Art of Capitalized Titles" looks great.
But I Will Follow All The Rules.

 

georged

Lifer
Mar 7, 2013
5,491
13,920
my name is e e cummings and i think that's a terrible rule designed to repress artistic expression
.
e-e-cummings.jpg


 

jpmcwjr

Moderator
Staff member
May 12, 2015
24,568
27,074
Carmel Valley, CA
Some kind soul sent me a web article that said that search engines don't care about caps.
More important is using good, solid and accurate tags to get more hits, which I think is what Kevin would like.

 
Ok ok ok, I've made a mistake. Kevin has corrected me. Use the regular American English Gramatical version of capitalization. You don't have to capitalize the small words. I must have just assumed all words were capitalized, because that was what everyone was doing when I first got here. I hope I haven't made this more confusing than it needed to be.
"Zen and the Art of Capitalization" would be correct.

 

warren

Lifer
Sep 13, 2013
11,699
16,207
Foothills of the Chugach Range, AK
Wow! Kevin corrected you! I am impressed. Dijhe hunt ya down lak a dawg? :clap: Or, did you wander into the office and naively seek clarity?
I want to read and understand posts. I'm not going to lean into the screen and strain though. And, I think the mods have other things to do than correct headers and such. They're main job is to suck it up and take the bullet when necessary.

 

jpmcwjr

Moderator
Staff member
May 12, 2015
24,568
27,074
Carmel Valley, CA
Eh, partly true! But if we wee folk do as much right as we can, there's less scut-work for our overpaid mods.
THANK YOU, Michael!

 
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