[mb-style] RFC: english capitalization of shortened words beginingwith a single quote

Michelle . jack_fairy at hotmail.com
Sat Sep 2 03:03:42 UTC 2006


>>From the opinions expressed on the thread, we suggest the following:
>- abbreviated words begining with a quote, when in the middle of a 
>sentence, must have their first letter lowercased
>- abbreviated words begining with a quote at the begining of a sentence 
>must have their first letter capitalized

I think I must have missed the discussion, but wouldn't it be more 
consistent with other style guidelines to have abbreviated words:

- capitalised if the word it stands for would normally be capitalised
- not capitalised if the word it stands for would normally not be 
capitalised

i.e. "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree" rather than "Tie a Yellow 
Ribbon 'round the Old Oak Tree"

("'Round Midnight" is still the same as for your proposed guideline, because 
"Around" would have been capitalised as the first word of the title.)

Also, a lot of titles in the database are grammatically incorrect, with 
missing abbreviation apostrophes (eg. Round instead of 'Round). This version 
of the guideline would keep the capitalisation consistent across these 
versions:

i.e.
Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree
&
Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree

in the database rather than

Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'round the Old Oak Tree
&
Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree


This also seems more consistent with the guideline/consensus that words like 
"da" (the) and "o'" (of) are lowercase because their equivalent is.

Michelle (dirtyboots)

_________________________________________________________________
Find your old friends and discover what they're doing now. 
http://ninemsn.com.au/share/redir/adTrack.asp?mode=click&clientID=389&referral=HM_tagline_SEP06&URL=http://ninemsn.schoolfriends.com.au




More information about the Musicbrainz-style mailing list