[mb-users] Capitalization of o'clock?

[Mike Morrison]

On Tue, 22 Apr 2008, Olivier wrote:
> This topic was debated earlier at least twice (in a larger context
> than the single "o'" example though) - and IIRC never went through a
> real resolution.
> There were sound arguments on both sides.
>
> If you can find some solid references either way, cover the different
> cases and feels like digging/scanning the original threads, I would
> really like to see this issue settled.
>
> IIRC, Michelle (dirtyboots), nikki, and Joan all provided interesting
> input and should be knowledgeable about all this.
>
> - Olivier

Are you referring to this thread? (started on mb-users, moved to mb-style)
http://lists.musicbrainz.org/pipermail/musicbrainz-users/2006-August/013497.html
http://lists.musicbrainz.org/pipermail/musicbrainz-style/2006-September/003640.html

That thread (I haven't read all of it) seems primarily to address the 
question of words starting with an apostrophe, e.g. 'round or 'Round. 
Since that is a contraction of "Around", which would normally have a 
capital A, I can see how there would be debate over whether the R should 
be capitalized. dmppanda's 2007-02-02 comment on 
http://musicbrainz.org/doc/CapitalizationStandardEnglish (hereafter CSE) 
says that a capital R seems to have been the consensus. I would point to 
the "dialect" argument at 
http://lists.musicbrainz.org/pipermail/musicbrainz-style/2006-September/003654.html 
as a strong one in favor of a capital R.

But in the case of "o'Clock", the o is from "of", which is normally 
lowercase, and the word Clock is normally capitalized in titles. Here 
(unlike with 'Round or 'round) the apostrophe is not replacing a letter 
which would have been uppercase. So I think point (4) of CSE 
(contractions) can be applied in a more clear-cut way.

Unless, that is, one feels that "o'clock" is truly a single word and 
therefore should not have a capital C in its middle. Do any of you feel 
this way?

Also there is this offshoot thread, which asks about two issues: 
"Script-o-Rama" etc. and "a-Running" etc:

http://lists.musicbrainz.org/pipermail/musicbrainz-style/2006-September/003643.html

IRC discussion of the "a-" topic here:

http://chatlogs.musicbrainz.org/2006/2006-05/2006-05-26.html#T05-14-04-579506

To that discussion I would just add that the "a-" prefix on verbs can mean 
"in the act or process of" according to Merriam-Webster, which gives 
examples of "a-hunting" and "atingle". Since "Atingle" would have a 
capital A (not aTingle), I can go along with a capital A in "A-Hunting" as 
well. I believe the "A" here is not the indefinite article "a". As for the 
capital H, point (3) of CSE (compounds formed by hyphens) says to 
capitalize as if they were two separate words. Was "A-Hunting" the 
consensus? Olivier, in his reply to the above list post, mentioned some 
edit notes where this issue was discussed but I did not find them.

Some relevant links on "-o-Rama":

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-orama
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-rama

The first of these says this suffix is a back-formation from words such as 
"panorama", deriving from the Greek "horama" meaning "sight". So the "o" 
here is not a contracted "of" but should properly be joined with the 
"rama" as one item. Therefore I would argue for "O-Rama" (capital O and R) 
on the basis that parts of words, once split up by hyphens, become 
separate entities, as with "A-Hunting" or "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive" 
(or should it be "Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive"?)

Sorry to raise so many other issues. I too would like to see these settled 
and written into CSE.

Mike