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Capitalization discussions ongoing (keep at top of talk page)

Add new items at top of list; move to Concluded when decided, and summarize the conclusion. Comment at them if interested. Please keep this section at the top of the page.

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Concluded

Extended content

Memes and aphorisms as titles

Capitalisation and Lists

Let me preface this by saying this is a somewhat niche case, though it could extend to other similar items in concept.

As far as I can tell, the concept of a fully capitalised list is not covered within this guideline. The item that comes closest to it is the All Caps section, but even within that there is no specification of a case. The reason I bring this up is in reference to Port Adelaide Honour Board. It is currently represented in full caps, having been edited this way as a representation of the club's own honour board. I've been directed to open a discussion in reference to this, and believe that a clear indication of lists should be covered under the guideline in some capacity. Empoleonmaster23 (talk) 03:34, 31 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Port Adelaide Football Club may format their own list on the walls of their club or on their website in whatever way they prefer, but if it's a list on Wikipedia, it would be formatted in accordance with Wikipedia's Manual of Style. So, almost always, lists would be in sentence case. SchreiberBike | ⌨  04:29, 31 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
No worries. It was worth bringing it up as I couldn't clearly see it falling into the list category alone, nor really anything else, so it was worth investigating what to do in this situation. Thanks! Empoleonmaster23 (talk) 05:06, 31 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
There's no reason that lists or any other "thing" would be exempt from a rule to not use SCREAMING ALL-CAPS, unless there were a line item at MOS:ALLCAPS making such an explicit exception. Anyway, the article is not presently using an all-caps list. However, the list was auto-collapsing, and this is not permissible for accessibility reasons; see MOS:DONTHIDE. If the thought is that the contents of the list are too much for that article, the WP:SPLIT to a new article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:02, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Slogans

Should "[v]ictory or death" be capitalized in the following sentence on Ali Alexander? I think it should not be, because it's a phrase, not a proper noun. Nightscream, per Special:Diff/1000375775, thinks that it should be. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 21:14, 14 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Guardian named Alexander as among the people active in inciting the crowd outside the Capitol that day, leading chants of "Victory or death".
Doesn't seem to be a proper noun, doesn't even seem to fall into the grey area of an "official slogan" of a company or organization. Looks to me like it lands squarely in the realm of "unnecessary capitalization". Primergrey (talk) 20:25, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
However, if it is being presented as a quoted statement, capping the first word, I think, is an option. Primergrey (talk) 20:28, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. Here, it's being presented as a phrase that people were repeating. If it were presented as a quoted personal-statement sentence, it would be different: J. Q. Pubblik, just before before being shot by the Elbonian dictator's guards, shouted "Victory or Death!" And, yeah, people will argue about whether there should be a colon (or comma) before the quote because it's technically a full sentence, under some definitions of "sentence"; I tend not to use one when it's so short and it flows that naturally.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:40, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ancient Greek philosophy and MOS:DOCTCAPS

I’ve encountered an issue about the capitalization of the names of the ancient Greek schools of philosophy. In the literature on these philosophies it is conventional to capitalize their names. While some of these names derive from the names of founders, such as Epicurean, or places “Megarian”, others do not, such as “Peripatetic,” “Cynic,” and “Gnostic.” Some involve adjectives, such as Middle Platonism and Modern Stoicism. Unlike in the academic literature, where the convention is to capitalize all of these, due to some interpretations of MOS:DOCTCAPS some of these names are being lowercased. A particularly egregious example on Wikipedia involves the widespread inconsistency involving “Neoplatonism,” “neoplatonism”, and “Neo-Platonism.” While there is the bright-line the interpretation that the names of the ancient philosophies have all long ago come to be accepted as proper names that should be capitalized (even my spell-checker didn’t want to allow me to write “neoplationism” without the capital N), there are interpretations that these are not proper names and therefore should not be capitalized. This, of course, opens scores of issues. If “Neoplationism” is not to be capitalized, why then do we have Neostoicism capitalized? And for that matter, shouldn’t it be “stoicism” and “modern stoicism” and “middle Platonism” etc.? And if we do that, why is it that Wikipedia’s capitalization on these articles is so different from that used in the sources the articles are based upon? Teishin (talk) 16:21, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Teishin, the Oxford English Dictionary indeed has:
  • "Neoplatonist",
  • "cynicism" (1. (with capital C.) The philosophy of the Cynics"),
  • "stoicism" (1. (With capital initial.) The philosophy of the Stoics.),
  • "peripatetic" (1. Philosophy. Usually in form Peripatetic. A student or follower of Aristotle, an Aristotelian; the sect of such followers; (more generally) a scholastic philosopher.),
  • "gnostic" (A 2. (With capital initial.) Pertaining to the Gnostics; having an occult or mystic character. B 1. Historical. (With capital initial.) Chiefly plural. The designation given to certain heretical sects among the early Christians who claimed to have superior knowledge of things spiritual, and interpreted the sacred writings by a mystic philosophy (cf. gnosis n.).)
The pattern seems to be that yes, while possible to write words like "stoic" and "epicure" in lower case in their general senses, when referring to the actual philosophical schools and their members, an upper case initial is used to make this plain. GPinkerton (talk) 16:40, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that's what is done outside Wikipedia. However, in Wikipedia we have this in the MOS, which is being used support not capitalizing these normally capitalized terms: "Doctrines, ideologies, philosophies, theologies, theories, movements, methods, processes, systems or "schools" of thought and practice, and fields of academic or professional study are not capitalized, unless the name derives from a proper name." Teishin (talk) 16:54, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Teishin, that is illogical in these instances; "gnostic philosophy" means something different to "Gnostic philosophy", and a "Peripatetic philosopher" is very different thing to a "peripatetic philosopher". GPinkerton (talk) 17:00, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There's nothing in the MOS to allow for exceptions based on such logic. Teishin (talk) 17:12, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Teishin, there ought to be. It's more than obvious that "democrat", "republican", "labour", and "conservative" all mean different things when capitalized and are not related to any proper nouns. GPinkerton (talk) 17:17, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not to mention "catholic" and "orthodox" meaning very different things when capitalized! GPinkerton (talk) 17:18, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think that per the MOS that upper-case "Catholic" and "Orthodox" are accepted when referring to those churches. The MOS here specifically uses "republican" as an example: "E.g., lowercase republican refers to a general system of political thought (republican sentiment in Ireland); uppercase Republican is used in reference to specific political parties with this word in their names (each being a proper-noun phrase) in various countries (a Democratic versus Republican Party stalemate in the US Senate)." So, by this we should be using lower-case "stoicism" to refer to a general system of philosophical thought. Teishin (talk) 17:28, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Teishin, Exactly. GPinkerton (talk) 17:41, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
GPinkerton, right. It's a huge area in which what is standard practice among most editors is contrary to some interpretations of the MOS, causing substantial inconsistencies. Teishin (talk) 18:36, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve found some previous discussions related to this:

  • Objectivism discussion [1]. No clear consensus, but “Objectivism” is capitalized contrary to arguments otherwise based on MOS.
  • Me_Too_movement discussion [2]. No clear consensus, but “Me Too” is capitalized contrary to arguments otherwise based on MOS.
  • A discussion about similar capitalization inconsistencies in Paganism [3] that appears to be unresolved, and is another instance of inconsistent capitalization. Teishin (talk) 20:48, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Your repeated characterization of this as "inconsistent capitalization" and "contrary to arguments otherwise based on MOS" prejudices this discussion. It is clear that there is a difference in meaning between a peripatetic philosopher (a philosopher who wanders around, following the common English meaning of the word) and a Peripatetic philosopher (one who belongs to the Peripatetic school of philosophy). In one case we are using the word as a common English word and in the other we are using it as a proper noun. This seems to be entirely consistent both with standard English capitalization of proper nouns, with MOS:COMMONNAME, and with the examples above like democratic/Democratic, catholic/Catholic, etc., where the capital is meaningful and indicates association with a specific group of people for whom this is a proper noun. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:22, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      David Eppstein, yes, there is the interpretation that the names of philosophies have all long ago come to be accepted as proper names that should be capitalized, but that’s not what is said in MOS:DOCTCAPS, at least with regard to a common interpretation of the MOS. While it’s true that a philosopher described as a “peripatetic” might just be someone given to walking around rather than one who is a follower of Aristotle, is anyone more likely to make that inference than in the corresponding case of a philosopher described as a “feminist,” as they happen to endorse feminism, rather than one who is directly involved in Feminist philosophy? Yet, according to MOS:DOCTCAPS we have lower-case feminist philosophy whereas we do not have lower-case peripatetic philosophy. While the editors of ancient Greek philosophy largely act in agreement with your interpretation, the editors of most modern philosophies are doing the opposite. These style differences start butting up against each other in places where ancient meets modern, such as in Late Antique philosophy. An extreme example of this can be found with Neoplatonism where usage even in single articles is inconsistent. It can also be found with modern Neo-Aristotelian philosophies such as Objectivism, where Objectivism gets capitalized just like ancient Greek philosophies. Similarly, both “Modern” and “Stoicism” get capitalized in Modern Stoicism, but we get lower-case Neomodernism and Postmodernism. Teishin (talk) 16:38, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      I concur with David Eppstein. See also Platonic idealism versus platonic relationship. The Objectivism case is more like Scientology and Dianetics; it's something of a combination of published work and brand/trademark, commingled with a religion-style belief system. It's an odd, outlying case, an "exception that proves the rule" as they say, by how rarely it comes up. It is not evidence that the guideline is broken. The reason this is a guideline and not policy is explained at WP:P&G: "Guidelines are sets of best practices supported by consensus. Editors should attempt to follow guidelines, though they are best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply." (And no, that doesn't me "ignore any guideline just because I feel like it"; it means consensus may conclude that a guideline needs an exception for a particular case, and Objecitivism would clearly qualify. See also first rule of MOS:CAPS: WP capitalizes that which is found capitalized in the vast majority of reliable, independent sources. Most sources capitalize "Objectivism" but they do not capitalize "communism" or "conservatism" or "existentialism" or "nihilism" or "denialism" or .... In short, you're trying to argue that because consensus decided in a handful of cases to not apply a guideline where it didn't make good sense to apply it, that the guideline is faulty, when policy actually tells us explicitly that guidelines should not be applied where they do not make good sense to apply them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:51, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
SMcCandlish, okay, that explains why there should be an exception for "Objectivism", which I only brought up because I had found a related discussion on it, but it does not give guidance on what should be done with ancient Greek philosophy. The majority of our sources capitalize these philosophies, treating them like they are organizations (which for the most part they were only in the loosest sense). The problem is that we're not consistent with the style of most sources, nor are we consistent with ourselves, nor do we appear to have a rationale for why particular cases are being handled as they are. On what basis can we support having "neoplatonism" yet having "Modern Stoicism"? Or for that matter, "Stoicism" and "Peripetiticism" - both are based on common nouns. On what basis are these good sense? Teishin (talk) 01:09, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
'On what basis can we support having "neoplatonism" yet having "Modern Stoicism"'? None that I can think of, but I'm not deeply steeped in those topics. David Eppstein may have better input on that. At first glance, though, it just looks like someone didn't follow the guideline. The reason MOS:DOCTCAPS exists in the first place is that various adherents or students of any number of philosophies, industrial practices, academic schools of thought, artistic schools of practice, etc., have a strong desire to capitalize them and anything associated with them (thus also MOS:GAMECAPS, etc.), and use the WP:Specialized-style fallacy to try to justify it (i.e., sources written by other people who are adherents of those things tend also to capitalize them). WP has not been, by any means, entirely cleaned up yet of such over-capitalization, so you may have just stumbled upon some. I don't personally wallow in the philosophy articles; there may be RfCs that concluded to capitalize certain things, the way we decided (wisely or not) to permit capitalization of various music and other arts genres if we decide they are "major movements", whatever that means (thus "rock 'n' roll" and "jazz" but "Classical"). There may be reasons to capitalize certain philosophical schools that I have not pored over (aside from really obvious ones like eponyms; Platonism and neo-Platonism will have a capital P because of Plato; we don't decapitalize eponyms unless they become rather "divorced" from their namesakes, as in "their platonic relationship" or "her employer's draconian rules", versus "Platonic idealism" and "the Draconian constitution of Athens"). PS: On "neoplatonism", that runtogether no-caps style seems crappy to me, but it's well-attested enough we shouldn't try to "prohibit" it. We now have a footnote about this style, though I think maybe it should move to MOS:EPONYM, as it's presently at MOS:PEOPLANG but actually has more general applicablity.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:24, 6 February 2021 (UTC); note added 05:33, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

With regard to Greek philosophy is that the names of many of the philosophies have come to develop meanings that differ from what the philosophies proposed. For example, the meaning of "cynicism" is a derogatory caricature of Cynic philosophy. Perhaps MOS:DOCTCAPS should be amended to account for this situation. Perhaps something like "in cases of definitional differences in which a non-capitalized term differs in meaning from that of the philosophy, the name of the philosophy should be capitalized." Teishin (talk) 22:08, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Here's an article [4] about the importance of capitalizing the names of the ancient Greek philosophies because the philosophies are so different in meaning from the lower-case versions of the words. Teishin (talk) 22:17, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion about capitalisation of Black (people)

Although I disagree with the outcome, I'm not suggesting raising a new discussion right here right now, but I would like to see this discussion referenced, summarised and noted on this article page, perhaps under Peoples and their languages. Unless I am missing something, there is no mention, and therefore no guide at all, about this matter, and I have just come across a new editor who has capitalised all instances of "Black" in the Lynching article. People need to have some guidance in the MOS in order to prevent edit-warring. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 03:09, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Laterthanyouthink, "Lynching" or "lynching"? GPinkerton (talk) 09:36, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
? Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean, GPinkerton. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 09:42, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nothing really, it's just another word that can be capitalized or not, but usually isn't, even though it purports to relate to the proper name of someone called Lynch. Like boycott. GPinkerton (talk) 09:47, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not a parallel case in any way. Words of eponymous origin lose their capitalization when their connection to the original namesake is basically lost except to researchers (also includes fully genericized trademarks). If the average person doesn't know it originated as an eponym/trademark, then we usually don't capitalize it: Have a sandwich and some aspirin when boycotting mesmerizing zippers on cardigans. In this case, I don't think "lynching" and "lynch mob" are frequently capitalized any longer in mainstream sources. That doesn't relate in any way to adding capitalization to an otherwise generic word when it's serving a special role of proper name in a particular context.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:22, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
True enough, but the comment I commented on does use "Lynching", which caught my eye. GPinkerton (talk) 16:00, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the RfC result should be added, though I was confused at first by you referring to part of MOS:CAPS as an "article page"; I though you were saying to put it in mainspace somewhere, heh.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:22, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Colors are not capitalized in English unless they are the first word in a sentence. Adjectives are only capitalized when their are proper nounses: ie, African, or English. Black, white, yellow, et al. are not capitalized. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BlauGraf (talk • contribs) 17:42, 17 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Um, the entire point of this discussion is that sometimes they are, when they mean certain things, and if it suits the house style of the publication. You appear to really be arguing "Colors should not be capitalized in English unless they are the first word in a sentence", which is just a personally subjective stance of prescriptive grammar. Many of us may agree with it, but it doesn't change in any way the fact that capitalization of these terms is increasing in reliable sources, when they carry an ethno-racial meaning, but that these sources are doing it inconsistently (from each other and sometimes even within the same publication), and with conflicting rationales. We are thus left with the legitimate style question of what style to use on Wikipedia. Our obvious default per MOS:CAPS's first rule would be to use lower-case consistently, because the terms are not consistently capitalized in sources. However, an argument can be made that in this particular sense they are serving the function of proper names, so lower-casing them produces an inconsistency with the treatment of other names. This is another of our common cases of different kinds of consistency in conflict, which can be tedious to resolve, and the resolution of which never makes everyone perfectly happy.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:07, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wording proposal on ethnic/racial terms, in light of the recent RfC

I didn't realize how screwed up that section was until just now; see thread below about fixing it up to actually say anything about capitalization of anything at all! As for this thread's proposed addition, here's some draft language, attempting to "marry" the RfC to other pre-existing provisions like MOS:ARTCON and MOS:TONE:

Ethno-racial "color labels" may be given capitalized (Black and White) or lower-case (black and white); do not mix the styles inconsistently in the same article (Black but white).[1] Brown should not be used in Wikipedia's own voice, as it is ambiguous and in the current popular sense is informal, an Americanism, and a neologistic usage which conflicts with prior more specific senses. The old epithets Red and Yellow, plus Colored (in the American sense) and Negro, are generally taken to be offensive. When used in the context of direct quotations, titles of works, and organization names ("... Dr. Fu Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man"; E. R. Baierlein's In the Wilderness with the Red Indians; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; United Negro College Fund), follow the original's spelling. The term Coloured in reference to a specific ethnic group of Southern Africa is not a slur, and is capitalized; person/people of colo[u]r is not offensive, and not capitalized.

Hopefully that will encapsulate the gist. The footnote in it would cite the RfC above, after it is archived to a specific archive page (probably here but possibly there, depending on the archiver bot).

The problem is really that the close isn't quite as clearly written as it could've been, and at first seems to imply "consensus against ever capitalizing", but really just means we're not going to change the guideline to recommend what the RfC proposed (capitalizing "Black" by itself). There was no pre-existing consensus to never capitalize, and many articles already capitalized both terms (as do many RS, as the capitalization has been quite common since at least the 1980s, just not in news writing). The RfC didn't actually result in a consensus to undo that permissiveness, just a consensus against lopsided capitalization of "Black" by itself. ARTCON has been a guideline since forever and other guidelines are derived from it (e.g. MOS:US, and various parts of MOS:NUM on being consistent within the same article, and really you can just search all the MoS pages for the words "consistent" or "consistency" and you'll find lots of provisions that are basically re-statements of ARTCON for a specific narrow circumstance. So, I think it's reasonable to say that either style is still permissible if it's done consistently ("Black and White" or "black and white"); we just did not get anything like a consensus for "Black but white", even in US-specific articles. And it's pretty obvious that we should not use offensive terms in wiki-voice, though exactly which qualify will not always be obvious to everyone, so spelling out a little of that is worthwhile. MOS:PMC is important, too, and should be referenced here; same with MOS:NEO, for which "Brown" is a good case study.

If others do not accept this reading of the RfC and its odd close, in combination with other MoS material, then we should re-RfC it to get a clearer answer, perhaps testing my draft wording here against some alternatives (though of course I'm amenable to wordsmithing revisions without going that far. :-)
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:44, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@SMcCandlish, whatever we post, I hope that it will make it quick and easy for me to figure out whether this edit should be encouraged or reverted. (Please ping me if you need a reply; I'm not watching this page.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:15, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing: Judging from the RfC and from long-stable guidelines, that should be discouraged/reverted (MOS:STYLEVAR, WP:MEATBOT), except in conformance changes, e.g. to change "black" to match "white", or "White" to match "Black", or whatever (whichever style had overall been dominant in the article). I.e., the solid conclusion of the RfC is that there's consensus against doing "white" but "Black" in the same article, even if a consistent upper-case style or a consistent lower-case style are both equally okay. For that particular edit, I guess one would need to look at the rest of it (was this a few stray cases of "Black" in a sea of "black" and "white"?), and also whether someone else had previously gone in and robotically changed "black" to "Black" (but left "white") to mimic AP style, in which case the editor in your diff is the one restoring content to before someone else engaged in a STYLEVAR fault.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:30, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In an ideal world colour-coded symbols for race wouldn't be acceptable. And what is so "white" about Europeans? Pinko-grey might be closer to the mark. Has "African American" become unfashionable? Tony (talk) 04:23, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes: Why We’re Capitalizing Black (NYT, July 5, 2020), The Washington Post announces writing style changes for racial and ethnic identifiers (Washington Post, July 29, 2020, "Beginning immediately, The Washington Post will uppercase the B in Black to identify the many groups that make up the African diaspora in America and elsewhere."), Why we capitalize ‘Black’ (and not ‘white’) (Columbia Journalism Review, June 16, 2020), Black with a capital 'B': Why it took news outlets so long to make a change that matters to so many (Kashmala Fida, CBC News, July 20, 2020, "a number of news organizations across Canada and the United States announced in June the same change in their language guidelines: to capitalize the word "Black" when referring to Black people and culture. The Globe and Mail made its announcement on June 3, followed by the CBC on June 8 and The Canadian Press the next day. In the U.S., a number of news organizations, including the Los Angeles Times, NBC, The Associated Press and the New York Times, also announced the same change to their style guides.") Beccaynr (talk) 15:43, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm yet to be convinced this is anything but a North Americanism. GPinkerton (talk) 15:53, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I was just returning to qualify my comment as such, thank you. Beccaynr (talk) 15:54, 13 February 2021 (UTC) (Although I was specifically attempting to respond to the question about the term "African American.") Beccaynr (talk) 15:57, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That answer to Tony1's question is incorrect; "African[-]American" has not become unfashionable at all; all that's changed is an increasing tendency to capitalize "color labels" as racio-ethnic terms, when they are used (and a bigger increase in capitalizing "Black", alone, rather than all of them, though there has also been an increase in "White" and "Brown"; e.g. The Washington Post almost consistently uses the "capitalize them all in this kind of use" style, while AP has taken a leftist activism position to only capitalize "Black"). This inconsistency in approach is the very reason this discussion is open and has not been an open-and-shut matter. And, yes, it is mostly just an Americanism and a recentism. I wouldn't even call it a "North Americanism" since there's no evidence this is catching on much in Canada. At any rate, it's pretty clear that the actual point of Tony1's post was to advocate avoiding these terms altogether and using more formal language like "African American" or whatever suits the exact context.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:13, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I have just edited Tignon law according to the proposed wording by SMcCandlish above, which appears to be an accurate reading of the discussion. Personally I'd prefer to deprecate "Black" altogether, and simply lowercase it throughout, per common usage. That would be a much easier change to understand and process, and would be more consistent with our general aversion of unnecessary capitalisation, but perhaps it's just my bias as a non-American shining through!  — Amakuru (talk) 12:43, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't like this. Go with one or the other rather than making arbitrary and pointless inconsistency. DemonDays64 (talk) 22:13, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Lots of people won't like it, but we did not get a consensus for "black and white" or for "Black and White", only consensus against "Black but white". That consensus should be recorded. (And it's entirely normal for MoS discussions to not come to a conclusion to require/forbid particular wording or spelling.) Consensus can change, so we might get consensus against one or other other later. That is to say, DemonDays64, that the point of what I've drafted it is to at least prevent the even worse inconsistency of "white and Black", and given that there is no guidance in the MoS about this matter at present, this will be an improvement over the current situation, which is random chaos and people editwarring over it, despite us having already had RfCs and other discussions about it. The results of such consensus discussions need to be codified or no one will know or care about those discussions and the conclusions they have reached (so far).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:22, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I support adding guidelines about this to the MOS, because I recognize that people have different opinions on the capitalization of racial terms and I think Wikipedians deserve guidance. For what it's worth, my personal preference is to capitalize "Black" and "White." This is to treat them as demonyms, rather than to emphasize them; I agree in general that capitalizing words for emphasis is bad. Qzekrom (she/her • talk) 04:19, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm with Qzekrom on each of these points, most relevantly of course the need for the MOS to state this explicitly. Here is some recent ugliness on my talk page from an inexperienced user who could evidently have benefited from a clear guideline. I also think that SMcCandlish's proposed language is quite thoughtful and appropriately detailed. Generalrelative (talk) 07:21, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • I also think it's useful for us to include a summary of the reasons why one might prefer to capitalize (or not capitalize) these words in the MOS text. Qzekrom (she/her • talk) 07:41, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Qzekrom: What wording would you propose? I sense some WP:BEANS and WP:NOT#ADVOCACY danger in there. Is it not enough to just permit both "black and white" and "Black and White" without pitting the styles against each other? There's kind of a WP:NOT#FORUM element to it as well; the purpose of a guideline is to say what to do and not do; it's not to set up discussions and arguments and stances.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:17, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
        • Meh. I think it's enough to link to the archived RfC discussion. Qzekrom (she/her • talk) 14:29, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • @SMcCandlish: Have you decided whether and where we should incorporate this into the MoS page? Qzekrom (she/her • talk) 03:00, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    It's not up to me more than others. The thread below proposes an overhaul of the presently pretty mangled section where this should go (it's the result of some clumsy old merging). Barring objections, that's how I would fix up the section, and that's the section in which I would put something about this.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:13, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is there any progress on the wording proposed above being implemented? I was directed to this discussion, after KidAd has been changing "Black" to "black" on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier with their reasoning being using "Black" isn't stated in the MOS (but as far as I can tell, neither is anything else currently about race color labels). Regardless, I agree Qzekrom that there should be something stated on the matter just so editors know what should be happening in instances like this. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 15:40, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @Favre1fan93: I'll pore over this one last time and maybe look for some ways to compress it, then merge it with the material in the section below and add it, since there aren't any substantive objections, and it'll go a long way to resolving some recurrent disputes. If people want to contend over some wording in it after the fact, that'll be manageable, either casually or with an RfC. But I think this has had more than sufficient discussion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:20, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @SMcCandlish: Sounds good! Your wording sounds very neutral in my opinion, and unlike the RFC which I took to be a definitive yes or no on capitalization, it's worded in a way that allows either option as acceptable. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 18:01, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    The RfC closure (technically proposal closure, as it didn't have an RfC tag) was kind of hard to parse, as it focused on what was said in the discussion as if in a vacuum, without accounting for status quo ante practice (and also incorrectly tried to frame it as an article-style content dispute that was determined only by external sources, when of course internal-guideline discussions are not that, but are consensus discussions that only use off-site sources as part of their reasoning). The salient parts, which seem to be proper closure assessment, are: 'Consensus against changing MOSCAPS to capitalize "Black" .... There was some disagreement as to ... whether the capitalization of other terms of color (mostly "White") should be considered in tandem ... there is still no consensus for supporting such a change as a rule at this time'. (That's eliding a lot of editorializing.) Taken as a whole this translates to "Black but white" (the central proposal) is rejected, "Black and White" will not be imposed as a rule, and "black but white" will not be imposed as a rule. Given that both of the latter two were already in widely accepted use on WP (with very little drama until the "Black but white" movement manufactured drama in 2020), the proposal did nothing to change that, but we'd never actually written it down.

    The closure also wrote of 'sufficient opposition [to making a hard rule for one or the other] such that the matter should not be reopened at a project-wide level until either further developments occur (i.e. more style guides adopting capital-form) or significant time has passed." So, that's basically a moratorium on relitigating it for a long time. There's also a weak suggestion that "black and white" is the default, which is actually consonant with MOS:CAPS in general, but does not take into account demonym arguments, which the closer ignored but which have dominated follow-on discussions since then, both here and at other pages.

    The "further development" that has occurred is the last two months or so of proposing the wording above and seeing if it meets with approval. It seems that it does, so I will implement it now.
     — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:48, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Overhauling MOS:CAPS#Peoples and their languages

When we (well, mostly I) merged away WP:Manual of Style/Proper names after a 2018 proposal to do so, the content ended up in MOS:CAPS, MOS:TM, MOS:BIO, MOS:TITLES, and the main MoS page. That was mostly done pretty well, except we ended up with WP:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Peoples and their languages containing nothing but a single sentence (on an obscure matter), nothing about capitalization, and no advice that people are actually likely to ever be looking for. I'm pretty sure I noticed this at the time and meant to do something about it, but then other stuff intervened.

I've taken a stab at codifying actual consensus-in-practice, as best I can summarize it, in the following:

Peoples and their languages
See also: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (languages)

Terms for peoples and cultures, languages and dialects, nationalities, ethnic and religious groups, and the like are capitalized, including in adjectival forms (Japanese cuisine, Cumbrian dialect). Cultural terms may lose their capitalization when their connection to the original culture has been lost (or there never really was one). Some fairly conventionalized examples are french fries, typographical romanization, english (cue-ball spin) in pool playing, scotch-doubles tournament, and gum arabic. Some are more transitional and can be written either way: latinization of names, dutch date, and russian roulette. Always capitalized: French cuisine, cultural Romanization, English billiards, Scotch whisky, Arabic coffee, liturgical Latinization, Dutch oven. Avoid over-capitalizing adjectival forms of such terms in other languages, most of which do not capitalize as much as English does. E.g., the book title Diccionario biográfico español ('Spanish Biographical Dictionary') does not capitalize the e of español. If in doubt, check how multiple high-quality reliable sources in English treat the name or phrase.

Combining forms are also generally capitalized where the proper name occurs: (pan-Celticism, Austro-Hungarian, un-American). Some may be fully fused and decapitalized if the name is mid-word; e.g., unamerican, panamerican, transatlantic, and antisemitism are well-attested. There is no consensus on Wikipedia for or against these forms. However, prefer anti-Semitism in close proximity to other such terms (Tatarophobia, etc.), else the lower-casing of Semitic may appear pointed and insulting. Similarly, for consistency within the article, prefer un-American and pan-American in an article that also uses anti-American, pan-African, and similar compounds. (See also WP:Manual of Style § US and U.S. for consistency between country abbreviations.)

Where a common name in English encompasses both a people and their language, that term is preferred, as in Swahili people and Swahili language rather than Waswahili and Kiswahili.

For eponyms more broadly, see WP:Manual of Style § Eponyms.

Some of this could be shunted into footnotes, though I don't think it's overly long. I don't think I've missed anything important here (other than see the thread immediately above this one), nor said anything that is just a random opinion and not reflected in actual practice across our articles, and also sometimes subject to various previous discussions, e.g. I was recently informed that "anti-Semitism" vs. "antisemitism" has been the subject of repeated RfCs, RMs, etc., and without a consensus to demand/reject either spelling. Finally, I've also tried to cross-reference the other material that most closely relates to this, including MOS:EPONYM, MOS:FOREIGNTITLE, MOS:ARTCON, and MOS:US, plus integrating an example from MOS:CONFUSED. The thread above (#Discussion about capitalisation of Black (people)) and the request to summarize the recent RfC in this MOS:CAPS section is what inspired this fix-it work, since the section as it stood was so faulty that adding such an RfC summary in there might seem a confusing non sequitur.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:17, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

On first reading I like it. Tony (talk) 04:18, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
SMcCandlish, that kind of whisky doesn't have an "e". GPinkerton (talk) 16:02, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Seriously! I'm surprised BarrelProof hasn't jumped on that! But what about Scotch-like whisky made in Japan, or India? Is the e optional? No, looks like the e is only in the US. So maybe it's just an Engvar thing, not a whisky type thing? Dicklyon (talk) 16:49, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed! I'd forgotten that (I quit drinking years ago, so my whisk[e]y and beer-related mental storehouse of terminological trivia is dissolving, like ice in Scotch.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:53, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Dicklyon, WhiskVar: Irish and US has an e; Scotch never. Other countries usually follow the style their emulating: Japanese Scotch no e. GPinkerton (talk) 18:16, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I should have checked Irish! Dicklyon (talk) 07:29, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"ligurgical Latin"? Shouldn't that be "liturgical Latin"? Or is this a specialized term I'm not familiar with? (Honest question, I could see it existing.)--Khajidha (talk) 12:23, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed. Ligurgical Latin is what you speak after too much whisk[e]y.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:25, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"Going twice ...." Are there any concerns about this wording or its placement? I would like to proceed with this, since it's very undesirable to have a section in a guideline purporting to be relevant and to provide guidance but failing to do either.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:22, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The sentence "Terms for peoples and cultures, languages and dialects, nationalities, ethnic and religious groups, and the like are capitalized" seems to conflict with the decision that "Black" and "White" are not necessarily capitalized, as these are "terms for peoples." I would like to see how the language on "color labels" will be incorporated into this section. Qzekrom (she/her • talk) 17:06, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Qzekrom: That's covered in #Wording proposal on ethnic/racial terms, in light of the recent RfC, above. I'll have to pore over that again to see it there were objections, revision suggestions, etc., but I think what I drafted is more or less what would get added, though maybe I can think of ways to compress it. Keep in mind that the impetus to revise that section of MoS entirely (as discussed in this talk-page section) was that the material discussed in that prior talk page section had no clear place to "live"; it's what made us notice that this guideline section is basically a broken remnant of an old merge and needs overhauling. So, there is certainly no intent to use this talk section to end-run around the section above; quite the opposite.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:18, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I must be getting senile. I actually already implemented this passage, as MOS:PEOPLANG, back on 5 February. So, all that remains it putting in the material from above, which has no objections other than one person basically wished the RfC had concluded with a "never capitalize" result, which it did not.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:16, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Degree courses

The project page says: "fields of academic or professional study are not capitalized". Does this include the titles of academic subjects, such as undergraduate degree courses and qualifications, e.g. Classics, Human Geography, Economics, Medieval English Literature, etc.? If it is meant to include these, should this be made a little clearer? If I saw a degree qualification, such as any one of these, in lower case, on someone's curriculum vitae, I'd think they were careless. I have always assumed they are proper nouns. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:51, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Oxford Style Manual (2003 edn, §4.1.17) covers this as follows:

Capitalize the names of academic subjects only in the context of courses and examinations: "He wanted to study physics, he read Physics, sat the Physics examination, and received a degree in Physics, thereby gaining a physics degree."

In other words, not dissimilar to the republican/Republican distinction already given as an example in our guideline. Per the OSM, one should therefore write "he read Physics at Oxford" [the course], but "he studied physics at Oxford" [the subject]. That may be too subtle a distinction for some. GrindtXX (talk) 16:18, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, WP doesn't capitalize in that way. That's a rather strange Oxfordism, and the habit of doing that is why MoS has a section saying not to do it. That is, no one was ever writing "the Physics of billiard balls is complex" or "She attributed their long marriage to good personal Chemisty". These terms were only ever being over-capitalized as academic subjects/research fields. And it's not at all like the republican/Republican distinction. A more apt comparison there would be a "school" or department within a university that has a unique proper name (e.g. "Jones School of Law at the University of Elbonia", directly analogous the proper name "Republican Party of Elbonia"). If it had a generic name like "Law School" or "Department of Physics", just use lower case: "the University of Elbonia law school" or "the law school of the University of Elbonia". The central rule of MOS:CAPS is generally to not capitalize anything that can reasonably be lower-cased. If there's an exception, it'll be enumerated specifically. Here, we have an "un-exception" that is specifically enumerated the other direction: "fields of academic or professional study are not capitalized". A more specific proper title of a course would be capitalized, e.g. "Introduction to Physics II (PHYS-102)", but its uncommon for us to ever write about them. That's more often going to show up in a primary-source citation to an online course syllabus, which should be replaced with a better source. PS: "received a degree in Physics, thereby gaining a physics degree" would be so confusing that the heads of readers and editors alike would asplode.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:59, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ah yes, asplode. Or else maybe just read on without a single second thought. If I went onto any UK university today and saw "Department of physics" on a door, I'd be quite gobsmacked and would assume it had just been awarded an enormous Wikipedia bursary. I would suggest that a sentence such as "She read Human Geography at St Cuthbert's Society, Durham University" would be seen as 100% normal by most native English readers in the UK. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:15, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]