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

[Michelle .]

>From: Mangled <viapanda at gmail.com>
>2006/9/2, Michelle . <jack_fairy at hotmail.com>:
>>- capitalised if the word it stands for would normally be capitalised
>>- not capitalised if the word it stands for would normally not be
>>capitalised
>
>Apparently, most people felt the "aphesis" should be lowercased
>(except when at the beginning of the sentence)...
>While of course it is not too late to discuss this again (and as
>stated I myself don't have a preference), I think it will take a
>stronger argument than "more consistent with other guidelines" to have this 
>accepted.

OK. Have thought about this further, and tried to logically lay out my 
arguments.


Arguments:

1. Consistency within the database (detailed in earlier email)

* 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 
(related to Argument 3).
* More consistent with other guidelines, in particular 3 and 5 of 
Capitalisation Style (http://musicbrainz.org/style.html) (related to 
Argument 2)


2. Consistent with a wider interpretation of existing English grammatical 
rules for Title Case
(aka. Abbreviations are words too!)

Most versions of Title Case grammatical rules have this, or some variation 
thereof:

[from the Australian Guide to Legal Citation, 2nd edn, similar found in the 
StyleGuide]

"In titles, the first letter of the following should be capitalised:
* the first word in the title;
*all other words in the title except articles ('the', 'a', 'an'), 
conjunctions (eg. 'and, 'but') and prepositions (eg. 'on', 'with', 
'before')."

Currently Capitalisation Guide 5. states:

"Capitalize contractions and slang consistent with the rules above to the 
extent that such clearly apply. For example, do not capitalize o' for "of", 
'n' or n' for "and""

The current problem can actually be solved without a new guideline, if we 
interpret the existing grammatical rules more widely.

Clearly, all words are to be capitalised with a few exceptions (articles, 
conjunctions, prepositions). Since abbreviations/aphesises are words, there 
is no real reason to place them in a separate class.


3. The Historical Argument

A great number of words in common use today began as aphesis.
A short list (from Wikipedia):
vanish from (now obsolete) evanish
squire from esquire
bus from omnibus
phone from telephone
plane from aeroplane

Technically, these words, if in titles, could be equivalently entered as 
'bus, 'phone, 'plane, 'mend, etc. (I think 'phone and 'plane are still in 
general usage, actually).

By historical accident (as seems to be the case with much of English 
development), the apostrophes have disappeared as the shortened form has 
entered common usage.

It hardly seems logical to distinguish between "Words Whose Users Have 
Become So Lazy They Leave Off the Apostrophe" and "Words Whose Users Still 
Take a Microsecond More to Add a Small Dash, But in the Future Are Likely to 
Not Bother Either".


Michelle (dirtyboots)

_________________________________________________________________
1000s of Sexy Singles online now at Lavalife. Click here 
http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Flavalife9%2Eninemsn%2Ecom%2Eau%2Fclickthru%2Fclickthru%2Eact%3Fid%3Dninemsn%26context%3Dan99%26locale%3Den%5FAU%26a%3D23198&_t=751140432&_r=emailtaglines_search_aug06&_m=EXT