Template talk:Lowercase

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
The correct title of this article is Template talk:lowercase. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.

Go to Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Lowercase for a list of the pages that have lowercase initial letters.

Contents

[edit] Lowercase Template

Let's use this template for articles whose subject is properly lowercase

{{lowercase|e}} - math constant = 2.71828...

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ed Poor (talk • contribs) 15:01, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia policy

I note that the wording of "policy" has been removed before (after I've just done it). Regardless, it isn't any formal Wikipedia policy, and we don't really need to say so. The wording is simpler as it stands now, anyway. Dysprosia 04:00, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Technical limitation

I'm annoyed with this wording because it's not really technically impossible to have lowercase titles in a usemod-based wiki. I don't know the mediawiki code too well, but it's doable. The "policy" wording is at least understandable. Think of it as an informal policy that wikipedia (for now) has (a policy I'd be happy to see changed).

The technical limitation is not with the page titles (for instance, Wiktionary is configured to allow them); it's with the links. See the comment at the linked-to page:
(Note: This is due to the present lack of infrastructure for case-insensitive title matching with sane case-preserving semantics in the MediaWiki software. The first letter of any link is forced to be upper case in order to allow links to work naturally both at the beginning of a sentence and in the middle. In the future, there may be a way added to make the initial letter appear lower case without breaking hundreds of thousands of links on the wiki or creating new avenues of abuse; however, there is currently no way to do this.)
--cesarb 02:04, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

This template seems rather long -- it goes into a second line, and I'm viewing it on a 1024x768 screen. The original wrongtitle template is significantly shorter, and this doesn't convey much more information. Night Gyr 17:42, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Agree, so I reverted to a previous revision that has simpler wording. —jiy (talk) 20:13, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Alternate wording proposal

What about:

The article's correct title is {{{1}}}. The initial capital letter is due to technical restrictions.

It's even shorter, in most cases only one line, and it doesn't lose information! 20:13, 05.12.2005

  • I strongly second this. --Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley talk contrib 21:08, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Technical reasons

The technical reasons are

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)#Lower case first letter

but it is not OK to have cross-namespace references in articles. See Special:CrossNamespaceLinks

Not true. This doesn't apply to templates that explain things about wikipedia -- The NPOV and Factual accuracy templates both have links to the corresponding policies in the wikipedia: namespace, as they should. Wikipedia's capitalization requirements are no different. Night Gyr 02:25, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Category

Recently, this template was added to Category:Articles whose titles are initialed a lowercase letter. It's grammatically incorrect, and extremely verbose. Furthermore, it adds an unnecessary self-referential link to the end of an article, in addition to the comment at the top. I think the category should be removed. It's easy enough to use Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Lowercase. dbenbenn | talk 00:41, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Uppercase?

Should there be a corresponding Template:Uppercase for cases where the initial case alters the meaning?

For instance, if I search for gnus, I don't expect to be taken to Gnus but wildebeest (so there should be a Template:Uppercase on Gnus). Likewise, if I search for internet, I don't expect to be taken to Internet. I'm sure there are better examples.

--Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley talk contrib 21:15, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Over-use of this template

I have noticed a few examples of this template being over-used, as in kelvin (now fixed) and al-Qaeda (still there). Is there a policy somewhere describing its intended use? In case there isn't, here is my understanding of when it should and should not be used. Please comment if you disagree.

Should
  • Mathematical and scientific symbols where the case is part of the symbol's meaning, as in "e" and "pH".
  • Geeky things like URLs and Usenet groups.
  • Registered trade marks where lowercase is specified, as in "iPod". I don't think companies should have a right to demand exceptions to English grammar for their trademarks, but I suppose we have to comply if we don't want to be sued or to look like squares.
Should not
  • Common nouns (obviously)
  • SI units, such as "kelvin" and "metre", which can be capitalised at the beginning of a sentence, just as common nouns can (SI brochure section 5.2).
  • Some individual (herman de vries, etc.) or band (bob hund, etc.) that wants to appear quirky.
  • Foreign names beginning with definite articles, such as "al-Qaeda", which are normally capitalised at the beginning of sentences (BBC example).

The point I most expect debate on is the last one. There's a discussion on J'raxis (talk • contribs)' user page here that concludes that there is no sure rule for deciding whether or not to capitalise the al. Given that, it is a waste of space to add the "lowercase" disclaimer to every al- article if the title is not categorically wrong.

Thanks for reading. --Heron 21:47, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Why shouldn't {{lowercase}} be added for entries categorised under your third entry in the "should not" section? Talrias (t | e | c) 22:40, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

The owners of these names have decided that they should be treated as common nouns rather than proper nouns. Therefore, they should be capitalised in cases where common nouns would be capitalised, such as at the beginning of a sentence or in a title. I would say the same about trademarks like "iPod", but for the reasons I gave above. --Heron 10:51, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the third 'should not'. Wikipedia:naming conventions trumps people's aversion to uppercase. ~Crazytales56297 | t+c 13:16, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Redrafting title with a JavaScript trick

If it should be desired, there would be a possibility of changing the title of an article to lowercase by JavaScript! Have a look at als:openURL or als:sed (if interested, see Template:Titel and MediaWiki:Monobook.js there). See also MediaZilla:2118, but this may still take a while. --- Best regards, Melancholie 23:28, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

This was tried before but it had some display problems. Talrias (t | e | c) 07:57, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
In which way? Could you give me a link to the appropriate discussion? Do you have display problems on als:openURL, too? --- Best regards, Melancholie 19:13, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
diff where I removed the old code Talrias (t | e | c) 19:42, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
OK, but at alsWP it works differently, i.e. it directly changes the real title shown by using Monobook.js, so other skins are not affected (but the same JS code should work there, too). Another possibility would be to just hide your CSS code (given by your link) within other skins (*.css)! Better than nothing ;-) --- Greetings, Melancholie 20:00, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
There's a workaround template used at Uncyclopedia to change the article title to anything (sample: here, ignore the out-of-context page and simply view the title), which is as follows:


<div class="firstHeading" style="font-size: 188%; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; float: left; position: absolute; left: 0.5em; top: 0%; width: 98%; background-color:#FFFFFF">{{{1|{{PAGENAME}}}}}</div>


Will this work on all browsers, or would it cause issues for some? --Nintendorulez talk 20:08, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
Since it explicitly sets the style it will cause problems for those of us using a different skin, or different browser settings, etc. Perhaps a better solution would be to use an invisible span with a certain css class, say "realtitle", and use script to copy the content of that span to the heading. That should be really easy, and it will be easy to carry over to e.g. wrongtitle as well. Shinobu 22:57, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
In fact, this is just what the french version of this template does. If you go to, for example, fr:IPod with javascript turned off, it displays the normal "due to technical restrictions" thing at the top. If you go there with javascript turned on, it deletes the "technical restrictions" blurb and rewrites the title using DOM. For the javascript, search for "RealTitleBanner" here. I'd really like to see this template have the div id and span id added, so at least users can make the javascript change in their own monobook.js (though I see no reason to not add it to the global .js). I tried to make the change here, but for some reason it broke things and just displayed {{{1}}} instead. --Interiot 21:27, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
I solved the problem. For historical purposes, I will post a link to the [[sandbox version of this template where I've been doing the investigating, so that it may not get orphaned. Shinobu 23:59, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I checked the iPod page and it works. There is a little script here: Gerbrant.realTitle. It can be used like any other script, please test it, to see if it works properly. Shinobu 00:29, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Awesome! So now we just have to spread the change to the other wrong-title templates, and get the code added to the global file. (one thing you can do with it is use {{wronguser}} to make your talk page appear to be named "User talk:Jimbo Wales", woo....). --Interiot 01:05, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

One issue with this is when the template is used outside the main namespace. For instance, Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Catholic Church of Wikipedia. If you go there with RealTitle enabled, the name at the top doesn't include "Wikipedia:" at the front, making it at least temporarily confusing which namespace the page is in. One possible fix is to always include the namespace: in front of the name. We had a discussion at Template talk:Lowercase-user, that this may not always be prefered. I came up with a hack involving display:none there, that allowed one name to be displayed when the javascript fix isn't used, and another name to be displayed when the javascript is used. But it uses a display:none hack, and I worry about the backwards compatibility of it (eg. browsers that don't understand CSS will display the name twice). Frwiki's fr:Modèle:Titre incorrect seems to punt and not display the namespace (for example, the user-page fr:Utilisateur:VIGNERON only displays the user's name). Any ideas on this? --Interiot 02:59, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Namespaces... the curse of the script programmers... although the problem is in principle solvable. Though not on the link you supplied, "Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Catholic Church of Wikipedia", because its RealTitle is not equal to "Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:catholic Church of Wikipedia", the "Miscellany for deletion/" bit will always disappear. That problem is not really solvable, although it's caused by a page being pulled out of it's original context, so it might not be that bad. And if you use {{lowercase}} without title, then all necessary text shows up, although with a small "m" instead of a small "c".
More pressing is how to extract the namespace. My first guess was to use wgCanonicalNamespace, but unfortunately these are not always what you normally see, e.g. Wikipedia would show up as Project.
I think the solution would be to check the namespace number, if main namespace ( = 0 ) don't do anything, otherwise look for the first : , and take the bit up to and including it, replacing any _ with a space. Shall I try that, or do you think you can punch a hole in that? Shinobu 12:04, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Or we can try to solve it in the template, like you did: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3ALowercase&diff=88126955&oldid=88101099
Two drawbacks:
  1. The colon that would be start of all articles like :iPod and :eBay.
  2. The namespace would be visible in the RealTitleBanner (i.e. when no script is used).
But I have to admit that the solution is more generic, in that you can make different namespaces appear than where the page is located... Ooh think of all the fun to be had!
Seriously though, if we find a way to get rid of the colon, we should stuff all that crap in one template, say {{namespaceprefix}} so that we don't have to maintain several copies in different wrong title templates. Shinobu 12:41, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
It works here, and on iPod. I think that means we're done. Shinobu 12:53, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't know why, but the extra colon doens't show up for NS0. Not sure why. --Interiot 16:53, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Did you check this before of after I fixed it? Shinobu 08:34, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the solution to my above issue is just to get the site-wide javascript working. Then if anyone might have an issue with the full namespace appearing in the "The correct title of this article is" blurb, it doesn't matter because almost nobody will see it. I've started discussing this on MediaWiki talk:Monobook.js and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). --Interiot 16:53, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

This may already have been fixed. Please check the template code. Shinobu 08:36, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for updating that, I saw that right after I posted.
Though I think I have a better solution... the javascript should be the one that figures out whether there's a namespace in front, and if not, it should be the one that adds it. 1) Sometimes people include the namespace in the first argument to {{lowercase}}, and if the namespace is then added by the template, the namespace would be doubled up, and 2) most people prefer not to see the namespace when viewing the "due to technical restrictions" blurb without the javascript hack. The javascript namespace-detection solves both issues. I've implemented it in User:Interiot/js/RealTitle.js, so I've removed the namespace from this template. I hope to get this javascript added to the global monobook.js soon. --Interiot 04:50, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
I have added the NAMESPACE outside of the title parameter, that makes no colon that the full page name is at the main namespace and have colon that the full page name is outside of the main namespace. --Shinjiman ⇔ ♨ 03:48, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Could someone document the usage of parameters?

I don't really understand, from the source, how parameter 2 is supposed to be used. Could I see an example? I'm particularly interested in how to document the fact that a redirect has an incorrect title due to technical restrictions. See Wikipedia talk:Template messages/Redirect pages#Should there be an "R lowercase" template?. --Trovatore 23:10, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

the second parameter can be safely ignored, but it's there in case you want to distinguish articles about usenet from articles about ships, or something. I really have no idea what its usefulness is. Night Gyr 18:31, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] addition of image

I don't know that I entirely like the "abc" image added to the front of the template. I like images in stub notices (because they make it easy to pick out the stub type, and they give a little extra spacing after the article text) but I don't know that they're appropriate in hat notes. How do others feel? --Trovatore 00:53, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I definitely don't like the image, especially since it contains letters in it, causing the "abc" of the image to run into the text. If a symbolic image could be created that did not incorporate letters, then I might be ok with that. Additionally, I think the size (specifically the height) of the current image is a little too large. -- Bovineone 00:59, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
I cut it out, looks awful and distracts from the distracting technical limitations notice. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:46, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template in category

Unless there's a good reason not to do so, would someone with more experience remove the template itself from the category (presumably using includeonly)? --Steven Fisher 23:11, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I've left it in but indexed it under * along with Template:Lowercase and underscore - see Article titles with lowercase initial letters. haz (user talk) 15:24, 13 May 2006

[edit] Article titles with lowercase initial letters

Is this category necessary? For one, it is not that helpful, I think. For two, this kind of metainformation is not encyclopedic, it is a category motivated by wiki software technicalities rather than grouping areas of knowledge have something in common.

As such, I would think that this category belongs either on talk pages, or should altogether be removed. Comments? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:39, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I think it's important to have it, on the grounds that when the obnoxious technical problem is finally fixed, it will provide a way of finding the articles that need to be fixed. I suppose it would be OK on talk pages, except that I can't see any way the lowercase template on an article page could automatically add the talk page to the category (and no one's going to remember if it's not automatic). --Trovatore 15:45, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Oh, and the reason for not just searching for inclusion of the template is that in many cases it may be subst'd. --Trovatore 15:47, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
I hope that the obnoxious technical problem is never fixed. :) It may open a can of worms with people starting articles in lowercase when it should be upper case for around 99% of them. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:24, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
We can always move those, just as we do for articles that capitalize second and subsequent words of the title without a good reason; that's no major annoyance. I think it would be very good to have it fixed, especially for articles that should start with a lower-case Greek letter, like ω-consistent theory or σ-algebra. --Trovatore 16:55, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, I hope I won't see the day when the article sigma-algebra is moved to σ-algebra. :) Since Unicode is so accessible, I found it an annoying trend that article names are unicodified as much as possible. For accents in names that makes sense I think, but otherwise if there are two alternative names for a concept I would prefer the one which is easier to type, as long as it is accurate. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:31, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm reasonably neutral on whether the article should be at sigma-algebra or σ-algebra; I have a mild preference for the latter but don't want to fight about it. However σ-algebra, whether it's an article or a redirect, should definitely show up with a σ, not a Σ. It's worse for ω-consistent theory, because there's an actual notion called Ω-logic, which I'm going to write an article on Real Soon Now, and have been going to write it soon for quite some time. --Trovatore 19:21, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
By the way, if I could ask a favor—when you respond to this thread it would be nice if you could delete the colon from the edit summary, so as to allow clickable edit summaries. Really I think the clean rule of thumb is just never to use any markup whatsoever in section headers. --Trovatore 19:21, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Oh, as far as ease of typing goes, I see that as a non-issue, provided appropriate redirects are provided. You don't have to type the "more correct" name, but it's nice for it to "display". --Trovatore 19:54, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Parameter no longer necessary

I've fixed the template so that the parameter giving the correct page name is no longer necessary if the correct title is all lowercase. This is done using {{PAGENAME}}, combined with the CSS text-transform:lowercase property. However, there are two small problems:

  1. I had to subst Template:Selfref. Apparently a <span> tag can't be put inside a template parameter.
  2. The parameter is still needed for articles such as eBay and iPod, where a capital letter appears in the middle of the title. Otherwise the output is ebay or ipod.

I think this will do until the developers create a {{pAGENAME}} variable to make the transform automatically. Seahen 23:11, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Update: It's been done. I've replaced the span with {{LCFIRST:{{PAGENAME}}}}. Now the parameter can be dropped in articles such as EBay and IPod! NeonMerlin 16:28, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I've removed the categorization

The category serves no purpose and makes ugly category links that detract from the articles. I looked over the discussions above and saw previous requests to remove the category from the template. There are comments that say that the category would be needed later to fix all the articles. This is not true. The articles can be found later using "What links here". I've taken the bold move to delete the code that categorizes the article from the template. The articles should start depopulating themselves from the category. If any remain, it is probably because "subst:" was used. These should be replaced with a non subst'ed version of the template and then they will be removed from the category. NOTE: THIS TEMPLATE SHOULD NO LONGER BE SUBST'ED. See the discussion about this at CFD. -- Samuel Wantman 10:39, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

The category removal has been reverted. But the CFD discussion is moving along with a clear consensus leaning toward delete, so I expect the category to be deleted soon. I'm reverting back to deleting the category because the remaining members of the category have had their tag's subst'd, and the only way to find them is to delete the categorization from this template. Please don't revert it again. Thanks. -- Samuel Wantman 21:32, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

You DON'T depopulate a category in the middle of a debate, regardless of how it appears to be going. This is to be done ONLY by the closing admin. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 01:38, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
In the two years that I've been participating at CFD, not emptying categories has been a common courtesy to other participants at CFD. But it is not a rule that has been written down on any guideline page that as far as I can tell. I believe the reason for the courtesy of keeping a category populated is so that people understand what is in the category being discussed. In many CFD cases, the categories are emptied before they are nominated because there is a better alternative. So I don't think there is or even should be a hard and fast rule about this. In this case that courtesy is not needed for anyone to understand what the discussion is about. So I fail to see what harm there is in fixing the articles where the template was subst'd, and emptying the category. There is no need to yell at me. You certainly understand which articles are covered by the debate. Why are you so bothered by this? -- Samuel Wantman 08:26, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inappropriate use of this template

Fairly regularly, someone seems to add this template to an article simply because you might think the title would be capitalized (in the middle of a sentence), but it's not. That's not correct. The template should be used only for titles that would appear in lower case even at the beginning of a sentence (the title of an article being analogous to the beginning of a sentence). Any suggestions as to how to publicize this? I considered adding an HTML comment to the text of the template itself, but given that it isn't subst'd, it's unlikely that the right people would actually see the comment. --Trovatore 03:24, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

That is not the only usage. It is also used where a proper noun that is the name of an article is meant to be lowercased but for technical reasons cannot be. An example is true Catholic Church. The tCC lowercases the t in "true". But we have to have the article listed as True Catholic Church for technical reasons. There are other cases. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 04:30, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
My opinion is that the usage at true Catholic Church is wrong. For those of you coming in late, the reason the "true Catholic Church" lowercases the "true" is that they claim it's not part of their name, but that they are simply, truly, the Catholic Church. You can see on their own website that they capitalize "true" at the start of the page [1].
Even if it were a proper noun, the template is not appropriate for proper nouns that can sometimes be capitalized, for surely you would always capitalize the title of an article if you could. The article text is a sufficient place to explain the capitalization issue for proper nouns that are sometimes left uncapitalized, in those cases where it's an important enough issue to deserve explanation. --Trovatore 04:40, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Wrong. The template is used on articles all over Wikipedia where WP cannot replicate the first letter usage of a name for technical reasons. That is the reason for its usage. If you want to create a special template for your own pet areas, go ahead. This template is being correctly used. The fact that this even has to be said is absurd. Your complaint about the use of this template is so silly it belongs on the BJAON page. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 05:25, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Look at previous discussion above about, for example al-Qaeda, from which I note the template has correctly been removed (not by me). The reason is simple: The article title properly starts with a capital A. Thus there is no "technical restriction" that needs to be explained. The same is true for the article about the "true Catholic Church". --Trovatore 05:28, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Sillier and Sillier. And still a pile of horse manure. Whichever idiot removed the template from the al-Queda article should get themselves a life. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 05:32, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Alright, let's hear from somebody else here. Two positions have been clearly laid out; Jtdirl and I aren't going to settle anything between the two of us. --Trovatore 05:38, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Fair point. My opinion is simple. Sometimes some people on WP make absurd and pointless "how many angels can fit on the point of a pin?"-type rules. This is a classic. IMHO it belongs on BJAON as something to give the community something to laugh it. It is one of the silliest, most bizarre supposed rules I ever came across and that WP has a couple that is saying something.

The logic is perfectly simple. The article uses the proper name of an organisation. That organisation lowercases its first letter. WP cannot do that. Therefore it puts in a template explaining that there are technical issues. It is that simple. (BTW I was not the one who put in the template.)

BTW - the true Catholic Church uses the term True Catholic. They are not the same. Its publications lowercase t in the full name. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 05:47, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

So as to the first point, I've seen no evidence that this is the "proper name" of the organization. As far as I can tell, from their point of view, the word "true" is not part of the proper name, but just their claim to be the true Church. As to the second, do these publications lowercase the t when it appears as the first letter of a headline or subhead? That would be an appropriate analogy to our article titles, and if they did, then I'd agree with you in this specific case. --Trovatore 05:57, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I'll chime in. I don't know anything about "true" catholics, but I think the general rule should be this: "If a name should NOT be capitalized when it is used at the beginning of a sentence, we should use the template." If this is in question, you just have to find a citation from a good source to decide this. My rationale for this is that virtually all articles in Wikipedia -- except for those about people or organizations -- would not be capitalized unless they were a heading, a title or the beginning of a sentence. The template should be for titles like iPod. As a trademark, it should never be capitalized. Another way to say this is "the template should only be used when capitalization makes the title ambiguous, misleading or unclear in some way. No body is going to be confused seeing "Al-Qaeda" as a title. -- Samuel Wantman 08:02, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that's basically my view. I'd specify it a little further by saying that I don't think that the situation that a name is sometimes left uncapitalized, when people might expect it to be always capitalized (because, say, it's a proper noun), is a sufficient type of ambiguity, misleadingness, or lack of clarity, to warrant making this kind of big deal about it at the top of the article.
That's the general case; the tCC case has the extra complication that the "true" is arguably not part of their name at all. --Trovatore 16:26, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
I generally agree with Samuel Wantman; this template should only be used if the phrase is not capitalized if it begins a sentence. I disagree about the details; as al-Qaeda probably is the way it should be written in proper English, even at the beginning of a sentence. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 17:49, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
I don't think that's true about al-Qaeda. I don't ever recall seeing a newspaper story that used the lowercase a at the start of asentence, and it's the sort of thing that would stick in my mind. If I've understood correctly, "al" simply means "the", so it would be natural to capitalize it initially. --Trovatore 17:54, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
And qā'idah simply means "base" or "pedestal". If we don't write "The Farm", "Le Figaro" or "El Cañuelo" with a minuscule at the start of a sentence, what reason would there be to do that with "al-Qaeda"? The Arabic alphabet has no majuscule–minuscule distinction, so this cannot be a matter of following local custom. In fact, given that this is used as if a proper name, there is reason to write "Al-Qaeda" also in the middle of a sentence, just as we do with "Al-Zafir". --LambiamTalk 23:22, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
  • I'll note my agreement with Samual, Trovatore and others. Articles on topics like al-Qaeda (and donkey and table) are properly capitalized. Generally this template applies where the purveyor of a proper name has explicitly committed to and marketed the ideosyncratic formatting. Christopher Parham (talk) 21:36, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problem?

This used to work fine, but now I see this. Does anyone else see this? I think MediaWiki is incorrectly interpreting the apostrophies for formatting. ~iNVERTED | Rob (Talk) 22:16, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Due to" vs. "Because of"

So, apparently there's been some conflict about whether "due to" is gramatically correct in this sentence, and thus has been replaced with "because of". Not sure if it matters, but "due to" sounds better to me, and it *is* common usage. However, I can see going with "because of" due to it's being less controversial gramatically, and because of the fact that it works. That said, I was initally puzzled about the grammatical argument, and thus checked out Dictionary.com. According to dictionary.com (quoting the American Heritage Dictionary & the Random House Unabridged Dictionary):

Due to as a prepositional phrase meaning “because of, owing to” has been in use since the 14th century: Due to the sudden rainstorm, the picnic was moved indoors. Some object to this use on the grounds that due is historically an adjective and thus should be used only predicatively in constructions like The delay was due to electrical failure. Despite such objections, due to occurs commonly as a compound preposition and is standard in all varieties of speech and writing.

and

Usage Note: Due to has been widely used for many years as a compound preposition like owing to, but some critics have insisted that due should be used only as an adjective. According to this view, it is incorrect to say The concert was canceled due to the rain, but acceptable to say The cancellation of the concert was due to the rain, where due continues to function as an adjective modifying cancellation. This seems a fine point, however, and since due to is widely used and understood, there seems little reason to avoid using it as a preposition.

According to these, "due to" is commonly used, and therefore arguably correct.

Again, not sure how much it matters as it's only a minor wording distinction. However, this template *is* used on many different pages (2000+ as of this writing). My vote would go to using "due to" as it sounds better and more concise. —Matthew0028 00:17, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Due to the overwhelming evidence, I will change my old-school ways. :-) Michael Geary 19:06, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Old-school? I was under the impression that my English was very traditional and even slightly old-school, and I find "due to" to be much more archaic than "because of"... —Nightstallion (?) 13:13, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
'sounds better' 'is more concise' are subjective terms that i feel confuse the issue. Does the interchanging of 'due to' and 'because of' actually create a problem in the context of what wikipedia is trying to achieve? Does it confuse anyone at all when they read the text? Is wikipedia a 'grammatically concise encyclopedia' or 'an encyclopedia'? if the knowledge contained is not obscured, should we really worry? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.42.3.50 (talk • contribs) 2:41, October 19, 2006 (UTC).
  1. While it's true that "sounds better" and "more concise" are subjective terms, all other things being equal, given two terms that are equally precise and correct, take the one that flows better. The short version is that this is an encyclopedia written for and by people, and thus the more readable something is, the better. As you say, this is a subjective area, but there's no helping this; we can just choose to do whatever consensus suggests.
  2. No, interchanging doesn't change the context any, nor does it likely confuse anyone.
  3. As far as grammar goes, it's an English encyclopedia written for English speakers, the more correct, concise, and understandable the grammar, the better.
  4. Should we really worry? No, not really. As I said, it's a minor issue. However, it's preferable to have issues handled the "best" way, regardless of whether it's minor or major. The difference is it's more important that more major issues be handled "correctly".
— Matthew0028 19:40, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Language is what we make it, and rules come after the fact. That which is barely tolerated today may not have been tolerated yesterday, and may be considered standard tomorrow, technically correct the day after tomottow, and archaic the day after that. I'd say use whatever wording sounds the best to the most readers. --Scott McNay 03:25, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Javascript hack

The javascript hack described above is now in the MediaWiki:Common.js, so it should be working for everyone. The main thing to be aware about it though is that it doesn't replace the title unless the replacement title is can be copy-and-pasted as a valid wikilink to the article. As a consequence, articles such as echo (computing), which contain things like {{lowercase|echo}}, and since "echo" isn't a wikilink to the article, the title isn't replaced. I think the best solution is just to change these cases to {{lowercase|echo (computing)}} (or the equivalent, {{lowercase}}). --Interiot 07:47, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

The script causes a bug on Template:Wrongtitle where the title is changed to "{{{1}}}" from Template:Wrongtitle. The last bit of code in the hack should be this to fix it. It tests if the real title matches the shown article title when lowercased. I haven't tested it but it should work:
<code>
  var h1 = document.getElementsByTagName("h1")[0];
  if(wgPageName.toLowerCase() == realTitleText.toLowerCase()) {
    if (h1 && isPasteable) {
      h1.innerHTML = containsTooMuchHTML ? realTitleText : realTitleHTML;
      if (!containsTooMuchHTML)
        realTitleBanner.style.display = "none";
    }
    document.title = realTitleText + " - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia";
  }
</code>

--pile0nadestalk | contribs 23:09, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

The MediaWiki:Common.js code already checks this (that's what the isPasteable bit is). Even when they don't match though, we still need to the change the title because there are quite a few cases where the proposed title is reasonable, but where it's impossible for the wikilink title to approximate it. For example: C Sharp, Softimage XSI, and M-Train. For most articles, the script changes both the <h1> and <html><title> title, but for these that mismatch, it only changes the <html><title> title. (so it's not really a bug so much... I thought it was a decent compromise. It means that <html><title> isn't necessarily authoritative anymore [2], but <h1> is still authoritative, and it lets page names be more flexible when they need to be)
So I think it would be better to fix the template themselves... either make them default to {{PAGENAME}} when no first argument is given, or put the part that shows {{{1}}}} in a <includeonly>. --Interiot 01:08, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Self-use

Would it be too silly to put <noinclude>{{lowercase|title=template:lowercase}}</noinclude> at the start of this template, as an illustration of what happens? --Henrygb 00:46, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

No, many templates have Usage as the first item on teh talk page. Before I figured that out (read: someone enlightened me), I put Usage blocks on some template pages themselves. I can do that here, but an experienced template editor will need to check my usage guidelines for accuracy. David Spalding (☎ ✉ ✍) 14:30, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Someone's my hero

Mad props for those who fixed up the Javascript so that articles with this template appear with the lowercase title. Amazing. Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 23:08, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

It's definitely nice, but it's a cosmetic-only hack. This should really be fixed in the software:
Yeah, there's no reason for it to stay Javascript, as far as I know... it's just that someone pointed out that fr.wikipedia.org already had the javascript hack working over there, so I copied it over here. Hopefully somebody can get the MediaWiki version working. --Interiot 18:17, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I just now saw a lowercase page change on the fly it made me smile! Nice work! —Wikibarista 23:52, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] JavaScript vs CSS

This is a great template, but:

produces (in a non-JavaScript enabled browser)...

Actually, it would display the message without CSS too, no? So in the rare case that a browser has JavaScript turned off, the message which appears at the top of an article will be incorrect and potentially confusing. The results in various screen readers and alternative browsers are unpredictable.

This ought to be a pure JavaScript solution. Instead of applying the CSS rule realTitleBanner.style.display = "none";, I think realTitleBanner ought to be removed from the DOM. —Michael Z. 2007-01-05 04:43 Z

[edit] Namespace addition

I reverted this edit because it broke the lowercase template in both mainspace and userspace. I'm not skilled enough in MediaWiki granularity to know why it affected it at all, but it did. So if this is necessary or desired, we need to figure out how to write it so that it works before we implement it. For an example of how it broke in mainspace: [3]. Thanks, —bbatsell ¿? 04:07, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

oops, it's my fault, sorry for that. :( It should be using the NAMESPACE variable (double curly brackets), instead of using the NAMESPACE parameter (triple brackets). --Shinjiman ⇔ ♨ 04:49, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Talk pages

Is there some policy stating that we don't use the lowercase template on talk pages? 1ne 00:51, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Likely what your see is that nobody's cared enough to add it to the talk page after the JS hack was implemented --Dispenser 02:52, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Why not before, then? Because it is unnecessary. In pages with many fanatics, well, I came to understand lately that it is good in order to keep them happy and quiet. But even before the javascript hack was implemented, nobody cared about adding it to the talk page. -- ReyBrujo 03:49, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Watch it. Don't break WP:CIVIL. 1ne 05:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
A review of the 50 or so talk pages that use lowercase show that a great amount of them deal with articles that count with a good number of followers (eBay, eMule, true Catholic Church, orkut, mTorrent, iPhone, digg, etc). Other subjects like Pi, E (mathematical constant), most—if not all—C programming headers like string.h and Unix commands like size (Unix), and some more known subjects like iPod games, iTunes Originals, iTunes, de.lirio.us, etc, do not. There is an overwhelming amount of articles that do not use the template in talk pages. I ask again, why so many people just don't care using this template in the talk pages and a few do? Can you reply to that? The reply Dispenser gave is not sufficient: the article have been tagged with this template long before the javascript hack was implemented; those users did not care back then, nor nowadays.
As I said, I considered it was not useful, and removed. Then read your message at my talk page, and removed it from the two places you indicated before noticing you reverted the change at iPhone. Since then, I do not remember removing the lowercase template anymore. And as you noticed, there are editors who think the template is not necessary and others who think so. Personally, I don't care: if you want it, use it. In order to reach consensus, everyone must give something up. -- ReyBrujo 05:29, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Probably the closest thing your going to get to anything official (atleast right now) is the mention on WP:LAME of the iPhone talk page. --Dispenser 06:42, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] may be instead of is

Shall I change the sentence "The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions" to "The initial letter may be shown capitalized due to technical restrictions." Because the first lowercase letter is shown correctly in Firefox but capitalized in IE. -- Sameboat - 同舟 15:47, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

The "is shown capitalized" message appears if and only if the reader's browser wasn't able to change the uppercase to lowercase (eg. if their browser doesn't run the Javascript hack), so the message is correct in the specific cases where it appears. (as an aside, articles with this template should appear in lowercase for you in IE, unless you have Javascript turned off in IE) --Interiot 21:08, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../l/o/w/Template_talk%7ELowercase_1e3b.html"