Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization)

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This page is a naming conventions guideline for Wikipedia, reflecting how authors of this encyclopedia address certain issues. This guideline is intended to help you improve Wikipedia content. Feel free to update this page as needed, but please use the discussion page to propose major changes.

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization)

Convention: Unless the term you wish to create a page for is a proper noun, do not capitalize second and subsequent words.

For multiword page titles, one should leave the second and subsequent words in lowercase unless the title phrase is a proper noun that would always occur capitalized, even in the middle of a sentence.

In general, titles of books, films, and other works are also capitalized, except for articles ("a", "and", "the") and prepositions and conjunctions (e.g., "to", "from", "and"). Examples: A New Kind of Science, Ghost in the Shell, To Be or Not to Be.

Because credibility is a primary objective in the creation of any reference work, and because Wikipedia strives to become a leading (if not the) leading reference work in its genre, formality and an adherence to conventions widely used in the genre are critically important to credibility. See these recommended reference works for capitalization conventions:

The Chicago Manual of Style;
Fowler's Modern English Usage (Third edition);
Oxford Manual of Style.

1 Software characteristics
2 Specific topics and examples
3 See also

[edit] Software characteristics

[edit] General

When you create a link with the first letter of the link uncapitalized, like this, the first letter of the target page is automatically capitalized by the software. So like this points to the page titled "Like this".

[edit] Technical limitations

For more details on this topic, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)#Lower case first letter.

[edit] Case sensitivity and searching

Apart from the first letter of an article name, links to articles are always case-sensitive. Article lookups performed through the Search box may be either case-sensitive or case-insensitive, depending on the capitalization of the article's title and whether "Go" or "Search" is used. When entering a string and pressing "Search" the lookup is always case-insensitive. When entering a string and pressing "Go" the software works as follows.

If the article's title is all initial caps (for example, "Abraham Lincoln") then the match is case-insensitive. So, entering "abraham lincoln", "Abraham Lincoln", "AbrAHam LincolN", or any other variation, will successfully bring up the article.
If, after the first word, the article title is all initial lower case (for example, “Rochester railway station”), then the match is again case-insensitive.
If, after the first word, the article title includes some words with initial caps and some words with initial lower case (for example, "Isle of Wight"), then an exact case match is required. This behaviour is often undesirable. To work around the problem, create the main article with the correct title capitalisation (e.g. "Isle of Wight"). Then create a second article with a case-insensitive title style (e.g. "Isle of wight"), and have this redirect to the main article (using the #REDIRECT directive). Any non-case-matching entries (e.g. “isle of wight”) will then locate the article titled “Isle of wight”, and the user will be automatically redirected to the desired "Isle of Wight" article.

Although the Wikipedia search engine does not always lend itself to the style of capitalization recommended for use in titles by authoritative manuals of style, the "work around" described in the last bulleted item in the second paragraph of this subsection ("Case sensitivity and searching") can be implemented if one wants the capitalization of that article to conform to conventional standards.

[edit] Specific topics and examples

[edit] Page names that only differ by capitalization

For more details on this topic, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision)#Minor spelling variations.

It is possible to create two non-redirect pages with the same name but different capitalization. If this arises, a disambiguation link should always be placed at the top of both pages, linking either to a dedicated disambiguation page or to the other article.

See also User:Cmh/List of page titles with multiple capitalizations - "multiple capitalisations" in the meaning of pages with a different page content, so no redirect pages are on that list. This list might help in sorting out pages that are problematic in the sense indicated above.

[edit] Organisms

See: Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life#Article titles and common names and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna)

The capitalization on the common names of species has been hotly debated in the past and has remained unresolved. As a matter of truce both capitalized and non-capitalized (except for proper names) are acceptable, but a redirect should be created from the alternative form.

[edit] Capitalization of expressions borrowed from other languages

For French, see for instance Wikipedia:France-related topics notice board#Titles of works of art. In many foreign languages the capitalization rules are different from those in English. The situation is further complicated by loan words, for example a French expression can be adopted in English (so that you'll find it in English dictionaries), but with a different capitalization:

Art Nouveau is how the name of a certain art movement is usually written in English;
Art nouveau is how it is spelled in French.

If the article is about a work in a foreign language (such as a book or other written work, movie, album, or song), using the capitalization found in most English language reliable sources is recommended. Otherwise, a two-step approach is advised:

Check whether or not a French expression has been adopted in English as a "loan word": if it is, follow the usual English capitalization rules, as explained in other parts of this page.
If the French expression is "untranslated" (not a loan word), follow French capitalization practice. There are some "rules" for French (usually: capitalize "nouns" in the expression that taken as a whole is a proper name, and in addition to that always capitalize the first word of the expression even if it is not a noun), but anyhow for many works of art the capitalization practice can be derived from the original publication, e.g. the captalization of the title of a French novel can usually be derived from how it was published.

For Spanish, German, and whatever language usually written in Latin alphabet the same (or something similar) would apply.