Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (trademarks)

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[edit] "O'Clock" in a trademark or proper name

I was involved in trying to tidy Ronen Segev last month during its AfD, but after I'd finished, my references to his performing arts group "Ten O'Clock Classics" were reverted to "Ten o'Clock Classics" by User:Mel Etitis with the edit summary "corrected capitalisation, wikilink, & typo". I restored the capital "O", citing the external links/references (a NY Times article, and the group's official website) and the WP:MOSTM's "Capitalize trademarks, as with proper names". However, they were reverted back, with the editor citing the same page's "[f]ollow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules even if the trademark owner encourages special treatment". Since then there's been a brief discussion on my talk page, but nothing further.

Aside from the NY Times article, the Chicago Manual of Style seems to accept the capital "O" as valid, while the BBC has numerous examples of using it.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] In reply, the other editor stated that "it's our MoS with which I'm concerned, not the Chicago, the NYT, or the BBC". So, since I think our MoS is open to interpretation here, I'm hoping to provoke wider discussion, as there's several pages on WP already whose titles could be moved as Ten O'Clock Classics was (see this page move, done concurrently with these edits): 25 O'Clock, 9 O'Clock Gun, The 7 O'Clock News, Three O'Clock High, Twelve O'Clock High and The 11 O'Clock Show. Cheers --DeLarge 12:59, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Prepositions aren't capitalised (except at the beginning and ends of titles, and when they form part of phrasal verbs); I don't see what argument can be raised against following that rule, especially given the MoS guide as quoted above: "[f]ollow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules even if the trademark owner encourages special treatment". Even if this were a trademark, the situation is surely quite clear. I take it that DeLarge wants to modify the MoS in this respect, rather than really claiming that his preference is in line with it. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 14:21, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

As already demonstrated, the CMoS, NYT and BBC all treat the preposition differently when it forms part of a contraction. Given how frequently the WP:MoS follows the CMoS and the prevalent styles of the most prominent news sources, I believe it is perfectly valid to seek further discussion and clarification. --DeLarge 04:03, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

As I said, you want to change the MoS; that's a perfectly acceptable thing to suggest. I'd oppose the change, but others might agree, in which case I'd of course edit in line with it. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:28, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't think this has anything to do with a MoS change; the MoS only says to follow standard English usage, and in this case it appears standard English usage permits capitalizing a preposition when it forms part of a contraction. The Chicago Manual of Style is one of the bodies that is generally taken to define standard English usage, and it suggests that either lowercase or capital is fine. --Delirium 03:08, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
The initial "o" is not a preposition. "O'Clock" is considered to be a single word. Chris cheese whine 04:32, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
Just out of interest, I will point out that I spell it "O'clock" in a name, indeed this is how the BBC does (or at least did) used to spell it. http://www2.tv-ark.org.uk/bbcnews/bbcnationalnewslunchtime.html Rapido 17:46, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
Your source does not agree with your comment. That page is full of references to “BBC News at One O'Clock,” with a capital C. --Rob Kennedy 22:18, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
There recently was a combined move request for published works with "o'clock" in their title at Talk:25 O'Clock. The unanimous verdict was to move these articles to the respective "O'Clock" variant. - Cyrus XIII 00:27, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The thirtysomething example

Rather than being used as an example of how to title articles, this article itself and the rule it adheres to needs to be changed. Who are Wikipedia editors to decide to spell or write things differently to the way the original creators intended? Correct English and proper use of grammar should not come into the equation. A title should be displayed as it is supposed to be. An initial lower case letter is technically ‘incorrect’ but using one is the only correct way to title such an article.

What was the point of the whole – “the initial letter of this article is not capitalised due to a technical restriction”, when editors are trying to purposely write things incorrectly in a uninformed bid to maintain proper grammar?

Just make sure the name/title is italicised every time it appears in the article and there will be little problem with the flow of a user’s reading (due to a noun sporting a non-capitalised initial letter).

Where does this end? Do you want to rule that Mortal Kombat should be spelled with a ‘C’ because the developers were just being stupid? Yes they were, but that's a point of view, and therefore shouldn't be advocated in the guidelines.

If it is made the standard that titles be named and written the way in which they are written in the actual media, by the creators, then it will be correct and there will be no ridiculous case-by-case analysis. Which would, in turn, eradicate the severe problems with inconsistency. Mr.bonus 15:22, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

We’re not here for the sake of the companies, bending the the whim of however they want to style their names and their product names. We’re here for the readers. Readers’ interests should always be at the top of your priorities.
I don’t buy your correctness argument. I’m not willing to accept that a trademark owner always knows the correct way to render its own trademark.
Where does it end? It ends with the capitalization rules you learned in elementary school. Everything after that is marketing hype.
You seem as though you know how the original creators intended something to be capitalized. Have you actually asked the individuals who invented the names? The advertising staff who made up the promotional posters aren’t the same people as the ones who decided what a product, company, or program would be named. The original creators of Thirtysomething called it Thirty Something.
Just now, you referred to the game Mortal Kombat. If we were following your advice, though, it would be MORTAL KOMBAT, as that’s clearly how it’s capitalized on the box and the title screen.
I see you made the same post over at the Thirtysomething article. Apparently, you’re arguing that since it’s spelled with a lowercase letter on the title screen, it should be that way everywhere. But you’re wrong. The article even points out how the title screen was designed by Kathie Broyles. The lowercase letter was a design decision, just like most capitalization choices are on display copy. But Wikipedia isn’t producing display copy; it’s producing body copy.
The “initial letter technical restriction” template is misguided. It isn’t necessary. The style here at Wikipedia is that titles start with capital letters. That doesn’t need to change when a word would otherwise start with a lowercase letter.
You claim that as long as the title of a show is highlighted by italics, readers won’t be bothered when the name is capitalized the way it’s “supposed” to be. I disagree. The discussion below this one is about the show TNA Impact. The title screen writes it with everything uppercase but the I, and with an exclamation point at the end. I find that article incredibly distracting.
Finally, I’ll refer you to an article by copy editor Bill Walsh: What’s in a nAME(cq)? --Rob Kennedy 17:54, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] TNA iMPACT

I can't figure out what applies here. The name of the show is spelled iMPACT (small i and the rest in capitals). This is the trademark, the logo, and how TNA (along with Midway, who is making the game with the same name) always refer to it as. TJ Spyke 05:43, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The closest thing in the guideline to apply to iMPACT (or iMPACT!) is probably the "Trademarks which begin with a lowercase letter" section, as it begins with a lower-case letter and has internal capitals. Yet this bit was clearly written, proposed and approved with aBcde cases in mind (like eBay and iPod), not aBCDE. I'd say it's a judgment call for now and the guideline should probably be expanded, if more cases like this one arise. - Cyrus XIII 12:08, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
The lowercase-letter guideline is for words that are otherwise capitalized normally. The TV show doesn’t apply. Instead, this falls under the Realtor category. The grownup way of capitalizing the show name is TNA Impact. When capitalizing it at iMPACT, you need to be able to answer a few questions: What do the I, M, P, A, C, and T stand for? What is the meaning of the lowercase I? The weird spelling is just a marketing gimmick, meant to draw attention to the game. That’s not Wikipedia’s job. I’ll entertain the notion of capitalizing it as iMPACT if it’s also pronounced as eye-em-pee-ay-see-tee.
And definitely lose the exclamation point in the body copy. Exclamation points are for ending sentences excitedly. They’re not decoration. When combined with the funny capitalization and the italics, the article is downright distracting to read. --Rob Kennedy 17:15, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Someone ought to have this discussion over at the classic example, Yahoo! It appears there was some discussion about it a year ago but nowhere near the level that it should have been.--chris.lawson 07:41, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

This is approaching an edit war now. Will someone please stop by Talk:TNA Impact!? —ptk✰fgs 08:54, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

The article (along with the one about the video game) has been granted full protection in order to help sort this out. The key issue is probably that certain self-professed fans of the program mistake "consensus" with "persisting on one's own favored course of action long and loud enough". - Cyrus XIII 19:59, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ×××HOLiC

Another example of rather strange typography from Japan - any suggestions how to deal with this one? The official website uses "XXXHOLiC", so apparently the lowercase "xxx" used in the current article does not reflect the official capitalization anyway. My money would be on "XXXholic", as it still reflects the supposed meaning of the title (fill in given addiction for the "XXX"), without relying on anymore typographic gimmicks (see Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE by the same artists). - Cyrus XIII 23:00, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

The current article doesn't use the lowercase X, it uses the symbol "×", which is used on the cover of the manga. The official site for TBS[6], the TV station which aired it, uses "xxxHOLiC", as does Production IG[7], who produced it along with CLAMP.
FUNimation, who are responsible for the english dub and distribution in America[8], consistently use xxxHOLiC.
Personally I think it's fine either as "×××HOLiC" or "xxxHOLiC", but I see no reason at all to change it to "XXXholic". ShakingSpirittalk 23:16, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Amazon Japan mostly uses ×××HOLiC, xxxHOLiC, and XXXHOLiC, while Amazon US mostly uses xxxHOLiC. There are some other versions, including XXXHOLIC and Xxxholic. However, sometimes the same publication by the same company appears in different typesets on Amazon JP + US, and it sometimes disagrees with usage found at these publishers' official websites. I really don't know what kind of process Amazon is using for choosing or changing typesets. We should also be careful not to invent new formats, as this style guide suggests. —Tokek 05:32, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
The triple ×/x/X asside, does the mixed (and mostly uppercase) capitalization of "holic" fulfill any purpose in terms of meaning and phonetic distinction (like it is the case with eBay and iPod)? - Cyrus XIII 17:47, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Typesets are not used for phonetic distinction in eBay and iPod. —Tokek 14:41, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Xxx would be counter to the "MCI" example. Using the symbol instead of an X is inappropriate for the same reason that we do not use an asterisk in Macy's or a heart symbol to represent the word "love". Therefore, I would suggest XXXholic is the correct lettering and capitalization and would also conform with my suggested revision to mixed internal capitalization as written below. ju66l3r 23:09, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
"XXXholic" sounds the most reasonable to me. The three letter series "XXX" has a long history, affixed to pornography and moonshine alike, and is clearly meant to be read as "Ex Ex Ex". Then we simply lowercase the rest of the name in line with standard English orthography. —ptk✰fgs 02:36, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
If you assume the ××× in ×××HOLiC bears any relationship to the XXX of pornography or moonshine—something forbidden—you do not understand its significance in the title. It stands for a variable (so the title means fill-in-the-blank-HOLiC) and is not pronounced at all. —pfahlstrom 17:34, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree that "XXXholic" is the best choice. PubliusFL 02:40, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Ok, a respective move request is up. - Cyrus XIII 03:36, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested revision for clarity of mixed internal capitalization

I suggest the following revision to this guideline to better clarify the mixed internal capitalization problems springing up recently:

  • Trademarks that consist primarily of lowercase letters with internal capitals do not need to be capitalized if only the second letter is capitalized:
    • avoid: EBay is where he bought his Ipod.
    • instead, use: eBay is where he bought his iPod.
  • But, if possible, rephrase to avoid beginning sentences with such trademarks:
    • He bought his iPod on eBay.
  • Trademarks that consist of mixed capitalization for stylistic considerations should follow normal conventions:
    • avoid: He was browsing deviantART while watching TNA iMPACT! on television.
    • instead, use: He was browsing Deviantart while watching TNA Impact! on television.

Any comments/suggestions? Thanks. ju66l3r 23:02, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

In that last example, I think I'd use "DeviantArt", with CamelCase.
I'm not a huge fan of the wording in the first bullet point... I feel that the essential difference between "iPod" and "iMPACT" is that the former consists of separate units "i" and "Pod", which the latter is simply the word "Impact" with funny capitalization. I'm not articulating that distinction as well as I'd like... does anyone know a nice succinct way to put what I mean? (Is that a weird question?) -GTBacchus(talk) 23:12, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
CamelCase per readability? Otherwise, I'm not seeing the justification based on the other guidelines. It's not CamelCase to begin with, it's mixed capitalization. As for the first bullet point, all I attempted to change was to be more clear on what is currently a "Lowercased trademark" -> "Trademarks that consist primarily of lowercase letters with internal capitals" and "if the second letter" -> "if only the second letter". Thus, keeping the same intent but being more clear about the applicability to avoid any rule gaming. ju66l3r 23:38, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
The trouble with adding more rules to avoid gaming is that it often just pushes the wrinkle to a different spot in the rug. What if something comes out called "iPodPhone"? (Not so far-fetched, really...) That's clearly more like "iPod" than "iMPACT!", but it's got more than just the one internal capital. Tricky, huh? I think it's somehow the fact that the "i" and "e" are prefixes with independent meaning in "iPod" and "eBay", so they're in the style of CamelCaps, while "iMPACT" isn't capitalized that way to make any semantic distinction, but to look cool, and to establish brand distinction.
With CamelCaps as with "iPod", the capitalization serves a function; with "iMPACT!", it's purely style. -GTBacchus(talk) 01:49, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
I think CamelCase would make sense if the following applies:
  • The brand name/trademark is obviously a composite, like eBay consists of the "e" (which apparently stands for "electronic", like in "e-mail") and "bay". "iMPACT" clearly is not, hence "Impact".
  • The official typesetting puts an emphasis on these components capitalization-wise. If the official form for aforementioned art community was "deviantart", I'd suggest to use "Deviantart", but since its "deviantART", converting it to "DeviantArt" appears to be more appropriate. It retains the original emphasis and still gets rid of both first-letter-lowercase scenarios and multi-caps.
- Cyrus XIII 05:35, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
I must disagree with the "DeviantArt" suggestion. That would be inventing a new format. One should not assume that CamelCase is the one true way to deal with names made up of more than one morpheme. For example, the company which calls itself TOKYOPOP is often referred to as TokyoPop because of the two evident morphemes, but there is no reason to assume that this is a less incorrect (according to the company) rendering than Tokyopop. As far as deviantART is concerned, both Deviantart and DeviantArt would be wrong. The only one that can be supported by "traditional" capitalization rules for compound nouns is Deviantart—not that I support that spelling; my personal belief is that Wikipedia would be more improved than harmed by respecting a great many idiomatic typographical choices. —pfahlstrom 00:31, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, the "TOKYOPOP" example is not 1:1 applicable to the "deviantART" scenario, as former company capitalizes its name fully, while the latter puts aforementioned typographic emphasis on the words the name is comprised of. I see your point regarding the issue of respect towards typographical choices and I'd like to suggest this article to you, as it sums up the reasoning behind not copying typographic eccentricities really well and also mentions a few worst-case scenarios.
There is an issue connected to these discussions I've been wondering about for some time now: When discussing capitalization, do we really discuss spelling? I was always under the impression that due to the A/a redundancy in our alphabet, "TOKYOPOP" and "Tokoypop" are essentially spelled the same, with capitalization-related considerations happening on a different level. Any thoughts on that, anyone? - Cyrus XIII 04:00, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Cyrus, I'd agree that spelling and capitalization are separate issues. As far as I know, we faithfully follow trademark holders as regards spelling, until they depart from our alphabet (like KoЯn or Prince when he was called "<Deleted fair use image>"). For capitalization, however, we tend to follow standard rules of English, thus the band is at Korn, but not at Corn (band). -GTBacchus(talk) 04:33, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Pfahlstrom, regarding our "respecting idiomatic typographic choices", I guess the argument is that if we follow trademark holders' lead in typography, then we're marketing for them. Besides, what's to say we draw the line at capitalization? Why can't someone insist that their name is only correct when it's in Courier New font with umlauts over all the letters and a red asterisk at the end? We can do that (I think) but is that a good idea? Why incorporate all the devices that promote their brand name, rather than just reporting on it? It seems to me that we should draw the line at the point where eccentricities stop assisting with readability (like CamelCaps) and start being novelty for its own sake, or rather for the sake of brand management.
That said, I don't know what's the best way to handle "deviantART". By applying the rules of capitalizing the first (non-prefix) letter, and reverting all caps words to title case, we arrive at "DeviantArt" or "deviantArt", depending on whether you consider "deviant-" to be a very long prefix. Both of these are, as you pointed out Pfahlstrom, new format inventions. (Well, the former is the choice used by Wired News, so it's not an entirely new invention.) The rules, such as they are, weren't written with such cases in mind. -GTBacchus(talk) 04:33, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
I have read the article mentioned above by Cyrus, and I still think the line could be drawn at a more accomodating place than where it currently rests (I am, relevantly, a professional copy editor who favors descriptivism over prescriptivism). I agree that logos are not spelling (for example, see the Talk:Toys "R" Us page), but I don't necessarily agree that capitalization is not spelling. The article says that companies don't always know what they are called—but I think that when they are overwhelmingly consistent in their nomenclature, it won't hurt Wikipedia to accomodate it. The rules as they currently stand are clear on names like eBay and REALTOR (though I personally think disallowing REALTOR is inconsistent with allowing eBay) but not clear on what to do with deviantART. The rules are also currently silent on what to do with personal or group names which do not belong to companies and are not used as trademarks (such as bell hooks or CLAMP—see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (capital letters)#Individual typographical choices for personal names). It is my opinion that all consistently used idiomatic typographical choices should be respected on Wikipedia. —pfahlstrom 21:12, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
"REALTOR" and "eBay" are different in so far, as the latter uses its non-standard capitalization to signal meaning and pronunciation, the former merely stands out more. Also, in case of all-lowercase trademarks or names, I do wonder what the reasoning behind ignoring very basic grammatical rules would be, especially while putting the interests of certain groups or individuals over those of the readers. - Cyrus XIII 20:12, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
Cyrus, capitalization is not grammar. (Spelling, capitalization, and punctuation have nothing to do with grammar.) And eBay does not signal meaning or pronunciation--the meaning and pronunciation would be the same if it were Ebay or E-Bay or E. Bay. Yes, I know it was originally short for Echo Bay, but the only way you can get to eBay from Echo Bay is if you apply some creativity. And that is, I believe, the purpose behind all idiosyncratic capitalization--a desire to show creativity...and yes, distinction. It's quite obvious that using idiosyncratic capitalization helps something stand out, but I submit it does so in the way that idiosyncratic spelling does. For example, my mother, Katherine, spells the short form of her name with an e not usually found therein--Kathey. Why? Does there have to be some sort of deep meaning? She does it that way because she likes it that way. The American Idol season 6 contestant LaKisha Jones spells her name (or her parents spelled her name) with a capital K in the middle. Why? Why not just use the more common typography of Lakisha? Would it be pronounced any differently? Would it have any different meaning? I do not believe that it would; I believe the only reason to write it with a capital K is because that's what she or her parents prefer. Whose desires should we bow to--the Jones family, or the Wikipedia-reading public, if they decide by consensus to not respect idiosyncratic capitalization? I would suggest that LaKisha would be offended by someone telling her the correct way to write her name is with a lowercase k. I would suggest that she would say that writing her name with a lowercase k would be "spelling her name wrong." I suggest that writing eBay as Ebay is spelling the company name wrong. I suggest that spelling deviantART as Deviantart is spelling the name wrong. Likewise, I suggest that spelling CLAMP as Clamp is spelling their name wrong. Now, you seem to suggest that it is in the interest of Wikipedia readers for Wikipedia contributors to ignore idiosyncratic capitalization of names. I suggest that there is no evidence that this is in the readers' best interest. It is not Wikipedia's job to determine the truth or what is the right way to do things. It is simply to present things as they are, and I say that to ignore idiosyncratic capitalization is to present things as they are not. —pfahlstrom 00:08, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
No offense, but right now, you are giving off the impression, that you have not fully read the guideline we are discussing here (on its own talk page no less). The LaKisha example just seems like an odd choice, given that the guideline designates occurrences of CamelCase as a per-editor judgment call. And since typographically separating the "La" from the rest of the name gives it a French touch, you got your signaled meaning right there. Also, I've never heard that echo bay reference before and nine people out of ten will probably consider the "e" an abbreviation of "electronic", just like in e-mail. After all, we trade goods in (or idiomatically speaking "around") that bay via the internet.
All that being said, I'd strongly suggest to take that moral edge off your argument unless you are prepared to stand for all the implications attached to it. This has happened before and it is not in the least productive: People idealistically demand that Wikipedia should verbatim copy even the strangest sort of typography, without considering coherency of presentation or readability of text and eventually, they always end up accusing a great many Wikipedia editors, along with hundreds of other publications of embracing factual inaccuracy and grave disrespect towards certain people, companies, brands and so on. Swell.
Also, I'm sorry to say this, but you are currently not helping this discussion to progress, but are rather stalling it with that "let's abolish this guideline and all of its kind" stance. You know, it would not be done with this one. Did you know that the Manual of Style for articles related to Japan suggests to apply standard capitalization to English words found in Japanese media? You will probably say that this is yet another sign of disrespect or even racism, yet many editors who ever waded through the typographic mayhem of Japanese pop culture will attest, that it is nothing short of sane.
Anyhow, back to topic, please. - Cyrus XIII 15:23, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
I will thank you to assume good faith, Cyrus XIII--I certainly have read this guideline, and I certainly am suggesting that it be altered to accomodate idiosyncratic typography. Also, since you had not heard of Echo Bay before, I will suggest you read the eBay article, where the explanation of Echo Bay may be found. But whether it stands for Echo Bay or Electronic Bay, my statement of the meanings and pronuciations of E-Bay, Ebay, and E. Bay still hold.
My issue is one of prescriptive vs. descriptive linguistics, not of morals. As I said, I believe it is Wikipedia's job to present things as they are. Is this not the case? As I am in favor of accomodating idiosyncratic typography on Wikipedia, and this section is about dealing with idiosyncratic typography, my statements are very much on topic, though I admit they are more wide-ranging than trademark discussion, because in my mind they are inextricably interrelated. —pfahlstrom 17:33, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

So am I right in saying that the first guideline applies when the first letter, and the first only, is an abbreviation of some word? Or perhaps not necessarily be short for anything but just separate from the rest of the word? --202.180.169.15 10:52, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Examples of removing CamelCase?

From the policy page:

"Trademarks in CamelCase are a judgement call"

Are there examples of CamelCased trademarks not being under the same CamelCased article title? —Tokek 11:16, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Guideline change: Lowercased trademarks with internal capitals

Proposed change:

  • Lowercased trademarks beginning with a one-letter, separable prefix do not need to be capitalized if the second letter is capitalized, but should otherwise follow general rules:
    • avoid: EBay is where he bought his IPod.
    • instead, use: eBay is where he bought his iPod.
  • But, if possible, rephrase to avoid beginning sentences with such trademarks:
    • He bought his iPod on eBay.
Add  * '''Agree'''. --~~~~  or  * '''Disagree'''. --~~~~  on a new line. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

--202.69.68.85 11:27, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

  • Agree, as this fixes the loophole that caused such a fuss recently. I was considering writing a draft for a complete makeover of the guideline, in order to streamline it and point out the cases where variants of CamelCase are desirable more clearly, but this kind of revision will probably need a lot more discussion beforehand. - Cyrus XIII 12:08, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Agree. Wikilawyering of the letter s in the phrase "internal capitals" is turning into a loophole that swallows the whole guideline. PubliusFL 00:20, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
  • disagree Use the most common name should be the rule. Kyaa the Catlord 15:21, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Agree. This would have helped me immensely a few months back when people kept insisting (incorrectly) that "iPod nano" and "iPod shuffle" are correct capitalisations. I especially agree with PubliusFL that the current guideline is being used as a loophole by people who ought to know better.--chris.lawson 07:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Disagree. This proposed change will allow POV-pushers who favor style over accuracy to avoid having to make legitimate arguments against orthography that reflects what exists in the real world. —pfahlstrom 00:23, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Agree - casing is irrelevant to WP:COMMONNAME. As far as that is concerned, "Name" == "nAME" == "nAmE". This guideline deals specifically with how we render the name, and does not conflict with WP:COMMONNAME. Chris cheese whine 09:31, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
    • I responded to this a couple days ago, but apparently it didn't take. Anyway, WP:COMMONNAME does not say that casing is irrelevant, nor say that as far as it is concerned "Name" == "nAME" == "nAmE". I believe that it is much more natural to assume, and take as a given, that case matters when common users of a name have used an idiosyncratic case for it; if it did not matter, why would they use an idiosyncratic case? Use of idiosyncratic case can demonstrate that that case is an essential part of how to write the name. —pfahlstrom 03:31, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
      • So, where does it say that casing is relevant? WP:COMMONNAME deals with the name, how a name is rendered is not a part of the name. Chris cheese whine 04:38, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
  • disagree Sentences start with capital letters. Rewriting to avoid "EBay" or "IPod" is the best idea, but if they appear at the start of the sentence they should be capitalized. This is an established rule. Other publications use this rule. It makes sense. Why does Wikipedia need to deviate? Markstevo (talk) 16:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

  • "Use the most common name should be the rule." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Aaru Bui (talk • contribs) 10:07, 9 March 2007 (UTC).
    • Comment -- that's an open invitation for edit warring over the "most common name." E.g. "hundreds of media references say Widget" versus "but my fanboy forum has a bazillion posts that say wI*dGeT!" Check out TNA Impact! and weigh in on whether the "most common name" for that wrestling program is "TNA iMPACT!" or "TNA Impact!" or "TNA Impact" if you like. This is why we have a Manual of Style. PubliusFL 15:30, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
      • Comment So you'd like to abolish WP:COMMONNAME? That guideline has two years of precedent over this one. Did you also forget about WP:V, WP:RS, WP:SPIDER and meta:Instruction_Creep? Kyaa the Catlord 16:29, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
        • Reply "So you'd like to abolish WP:COMMONNAME?" Certainly not, because WP:COMMONNAME itself says "Other exceptions are contained in the Manual of Style." I'm not sure what WP:V and WP:RS (both now incorporated into WP:ATT) have to do with this, except that if your suggestion is adopted, people will have to come up with reliable sources to settle disputes over which of multiple typeface variants qualifies as the "most common name" (which will be difficult in many cases, again see TNA iMPACT) rather than just referring to the MOS. PubliusFL 16:47, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
          • Reply Excellent, you can understand that there are exceptions. Edit warring is completely not the way to go. Blind adherence to the rules also is not the way to go. We're not supposed to be a "dick" or "wikilaywer" over these things. Wikipedia should not be stressing people out, as it seems to be on the case you keep pointing out. It is JUST as wrong to game the system by bullheadedly adhering to guidelines as it is to edit war against those same guidelines. Rules are made to be broken and sometimes it is just as well to walk away when things become tense. (I'm not saying you're doing any of these things, just that they can and probably are happening.) Kyaa the Catlord 16:56, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
            • Reply Use the common name, forget about Manual of Style. Especially in the area of Anime titles. Kagurae 09:15, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Reply. This proposed guideline change doesn't concern common names. This is just an exception to the general rules. This guideline is to support common names for us to use iPod instead of Ipod as the general rules suggest. Make a new guideline change proposal to argue against "Follow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules even if the trademark owner encourages special treatment". --Aaru Bui DII 23:16, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
      • reply It doesn't until it is wrongly used on a common name, such as it has been bent in the past to cover matchbox twenty, KISS and CLAMP. This entire MOS entry has been used to push a group of users POV on any entry that they wished changed regardless of consensus. (And I'm sorry, a simple majority, such as that at KISS, does not equal consensus.) Kyaa the Catlord 23:34, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
        • Kyaa the Catlord, are you arguing that the proposed change is a change for the worse, or just that it doesn't go far enough in reinforcing WP:COMMONNAME? -GTBacchus(talk) 01:22, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
          • The latter. Hell, I don't know. I'm just sick of beating my head into a wall here. Kyaa the Catlord 01:48, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
            • That's fair enough. I think the point you've been making is independent of this particular edit being proposed. There are certainly people who would agree with you that WP:COMMONNAME should take precedence over WP:MOSTM, and that we should respect the typographical wishes of trademark holders. A decision to do that would be a pretty big change though, and it isn't likely to happen overnight if it happens at all.

              Currently, there's a pretty broad consensus that we should apply the standard rules of English capitalization to trademarks, regardless of what usage is supported by the trademark holder. If you want to change that consensus, I think you should write up a proposal (maybe on this talk page?) and post links to it at WP:VP/P to attract people to the discussion. Then you'll just have to convince the community that your proposal is a good idea. -GTBacchus(talk) 08:07, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

              • This is on my agenda. It probably won't happen too soon since I have an article in the works about the CLAMP debacle for a couple of online sites I take part in and want to have that published and fade from memory so as to avoid canvassing claims (if it becomes published). Kyaa the Catlord 09:06, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
              • Frankly I don't see this broad consensus you're speaking of. I see this obscure guideline being enforced by a few editors, many people then coming to this page as a result to complain, and a handful of editors who watch this page duly informing them that "broad consensus" is against them. In the vote I saw that originally decided this, it doesn't seem like the current wording won by a great margin (unless I missed something), and I would love to see the "always follow rules of English grammar above trademark quirks" notion applied to some high profile pages like Yahoo! mentioned below. I think that might be a good test to gauge how broad the consensus really is. -- mattb @ 2007-03-08T23:19Z
                • When I said there's a broad consensus, I was basing that on my experience closing over 1000 requested moves over the last six months or so. Would it help if I list examples of move discussions where numerous people, not involved in this current discussion, cited the general principle that we don't cater to trademark-holders' whims? I'm open to the possibility that consensus can change, but in this case, it'll take some time and some arguments that I haven't seen yet. The strongest argument for using standard English rules hasn't even been brought up in this discussion, as far as I can see. -GTBacchus(talk) 03:02, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
  • This proposed change will allow POV-pushers who favor style over accuracy to avoid having to make legitimate arguments against orthography that reflects what exists in the real world.—pfahlstrom
    • All due respect, pfahlstrom, but accepted rules of grammar and spelling are not merely a point of view that a few people are "pushing". The burden of making a "legitimate argument" lies upon those claiming exceptions should be made to standard rules of grammar and spelling.--chris.lawson 00:38, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
      • This is a question of style, not of grammar. Traditionally, grammar focuses on morphology and syntax. What we've got here is either an issue of spelling or of typography—some are insisting that it's just a question of typography and that spelling is not involved, but others are asserting that the idiosyncratic use of case can be considered as essential as what letters are used to write the names. In either case, rules of spelling such as apply to dictionary words have never really applied to names. People can spell names however they choose, and many variant spellings of the same name exist. That does not mean one can pick and choose variant spellings to address the same individual or other entity; that individual or other entity is the final arbiter on how their name must be spelled. There is no set of "English rules for names" that people must conform to. —pfahlstrom 05:10, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
        • I am one of the ones asserting that this is, in most cases, merely a question of typography. A guideline (or, preferably, a policy) stating that standard conventions for capitalisation, spelling, grammar, etc. should be followed is what is needed here. (Surely no one would argue that typesetting or "spelling" names with all lower-case letters is "conventional".) Those claiming a need for an exception to such a policy are welcome to provide convincing arguments in favour of said exception. In cases such as "k.d. lang" or "e.e. cummings", such arguments are likely to be accepted. In cases such as "Yahoo!" or "matchbox twenty", they are not. Again, the burden of making and supporting a legitimate argument lies with those claiming exceptions to convention.--chris.lawson 06:08, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
          • E. E. Cummings is not an example of someone who uses an eccentrically formatted name. He never used or accepted the lower-case rendering of his name; see the article. bell hooks, on the other hand, seems to insist on it. The rest of your point, I agree with. -GTBacchus(talk) 07:21, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
            • Though I always felt that applying certain standards to the handles of groups yet not to the synonyms of people who happen to work solo might raise NPOV concerns. - Cyrus XIII 10:43, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
          • I don't claim that idiosyncratic case usage is conventional. But what are the real reasons for the current state of the guidelines? Why are idiosyncratic case usages like OxyContin and iPod allowed? I do not imagine they were allowed because of a triumph of descriptivism over prescriptivism (though that is what I would personally prefer). It seems to me that they were allowed because those usages have become common recently, though still unconventional—so common that they have become the common name for the entity in question. I believe that along those lines, any unconventional case usage which is nevertheless the most common name (such as CLAMP) is also a prime candidate for exception to the convention (setting aside my personal descriptivist feeling that idiomatic orthography should be respected in all cases regardless of common usage). Let us also consider the example case of REALTOR®. Why does the National Association of Realtors want their name written as REALTOR® in the first place? It's a reaction against the longstanding trend of realtor toward becoming a genericized trademark. That may make it, as an example, somewhat less relevant to cases where the reasoning behind an idiosyncratic case use is for the sake of idiosyncrasy or expression rather than simple trademark protection. —pfahlstrom 19:47, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Would the examples constitute to being lowerCamelCase? Even with the general rules, where it states CamelCase is a judgment call, does that include lowerCamelCase? If it does, won't it contradict with the first guideline of capitalizing all trademarks? --Aaru Bui DII 10:40, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
I have to say I'm not a huge fan of lowerCamelCase, as in "iPod" or "iMac", but at least these words have a capital letter in them somewhere fairly near the beginning. Articles written with the subject in all-lowercase throughout the article are damned near impossible to read, as are articles where the subject includes arbitrary punctuation, especially in cases like "Yahoo!".--chris.lawson 12:35, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I ♥ Huckabees and Yahoo!

Just to get a read on the room... what's the view on I ♥ Huckabees and Yahoo!? I think a lot of the same issues are at play here, and if those two articles are permitted to keep their current article titles, then it seems as though the band names affected by this dispute should be permitted to keep their lowercase titles.

I mean, the MORTAL KOMBAT analogy just doesn't seem applicable. It's not just about how it's rendered on marketing materials -- yes, the Mortak Kombat logo is in all caps, but the official name of the game series is in lowercase. But the people involved with naming I ♥ Huckabees and Yahoo!, much like the people involved with the pillows and matchbox twenty, specifically chose to name it with those eccentricities, and if we're going to describe these topics, we should do so by how they choose to represent themselves. (Eccentric symbols and punctuation is equal to eccentric letter-casing in my mind -- is there disagreement on that point?) Purifiedwater 22:46, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

And also, what's the deal with k.d. lang? Just sayin'. Purifiedwater 22:48, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
k.d. lang is a trademark, and should be capitalized just like thirtysomething. The Huckabees and Yahoo articles should be changed too. This stuff should be pretty straightforward. PubliusFL 23:06, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, why not try moving those articles to appropriate titles and changing their text to conform with this page. I'm interested in seeing whether those article maintainers will think that this MOS page holds water. -- mattb @ 2007-03-08T23:14Z
A move discussion for Yahoo! explicitly decided to keep the "!", which I still think is dumb. Dragons flight 23:17, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Yet a move discussion for the pillows was basically decided by a couple of editors who insist that MOS-TM's guideline should be followed to the letter. There was no consensus to change that page, consensus was replaced by MOS-TM. Seems like yet another case of Wikipedia viewpoint stacking. That's why I encourage you to try the same behavior on Yahoo!. Move the page, insist that MOS-TM represents a "broad consensus" and see what happens. I don't mean to be sarcastic (well, a little), but if larger pages can decide this matter for themselves, I see no reason why this guideline should be enforced as a rule on smaller pages. -- mattb @ 2007-03-08T23:23Z
I can't even see the stupid heart symbol, and I'm running a modern browser (Firefox) on a modern OS (OS X 10.4.8). Get rid of it. There is no "heart" letter in the English language. -- Renesis (talk) 23:25, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Just for reference, here's the debate over the Yahoo! -> Yahoo move that ultimately failed. The folks there brought up an interesting point: what would we do about the band Panic! at the Disco, where virtually all media mentions include the exclamation mark (and whose common truncated name, Panic!, would not immediately call to mind the band without the exclamation mark)? And what of the TV game show Jeopardy!, which both clearly self-identifies itself, and is often identified with, the exclamation mark.

Would it be too much just to come up with a guideline/policy that specifically deals with the titles of bands, songs, movies, and TV shows, rather than rely on ambiguous guidelines about "trademarks" (of which, arguably, the names of bands, etc. falls outside the scope)? Purifiedwater 00:45, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Trademark: "A trademark or trade mark is a distinctive sign of some kind which is used by an individual, business organization or other legal entity to uniquely identify the source of its products and/or services to consumers, and to distinguish its products or services from those of other entities. A trademark is a type of industrial property, and typically comprises a name, word, phrase, logo, symbol, design, image, or a combination of these elements." In the US, the name of every band (whether registered or not and whether noticed with TM or not) would qualify as a trademark because it serves to unique identify the entity providing a product/service to the public. Many people seem to have the mistaken impression that trademarks are a lot are rarer than they actually are. Once you adopt a name that is uniquely yours for the purposes of identifying your products to the public, you have automatically acquired trademark rights to that name. Dragons flight 01:45, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
Don't worry, I know -- but musicians' names are more than just "trademarks." They're actual identifiers whose purpose is more than mere marketing, thus are arguably outside the scope of WP:MOSTM. Purifiedwater 03:45, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

The consensus that I've observed, in working WP:RM pretty consistently for the last six months, is that people's names tend to be treated the way those people prefer (e.g., bell hooks, k.d. lang), and that other trademarks tend to be subjected to the usual rules of English, (e.g., Matchbox Twenty, TNA Impact!, Birthright Israel). I'm not saying this consensus is particularly consistent, or necessarily the right thing, but it is what I've observed.

As for I ♥ Huckabees and Yahoo!, those aren't related to capitalization. What I have observed is that the I ♥ Huckabees article was not moved, because it was decided that the heart symbol is actually a semantic unit that can't be replaced with a usual word. (Apparently it's intentionally ambiguous whether it stands for "heart" or "love"; compare We Love Katamari, where we don't use the heart symbol.) I haven't witnessed any discussions around Yahoo!, but it seems to me that we allow for punctuation to be part of how a trademark is spelled. -GTBacchus(talk) 03:14, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

So we allow for decorative punctuation but not decorative capitalization? This makes no sense to me. -- mattb @ 2007-03-09T03:26Z
Exactly my point: I don't think we should have a double-standard with regard to eccentric naming. If we permit Yahoo!, where the "!" serves just as much purpose as the intentional lower-cased matchbox twenty, then where's the consistency? (And I'm not sure why there's debate over whether I ♥ Huckabees is pronounced with love or heart -- the movie's website spells it out as "heart" and Google shows an over 17:1 proclivity towards "heart" instead of "love".) It's pretty clear that it's "heart," and rendering it with a ♥ is humoring an eccentricity. Purifiedwater 03:45, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
Have you read the debates at Talk:I ♥ Huckabees. Maybe that would help you understand why there's a question about it. As for why we would allow decorative punctuation but not decorative capitalization, I think that's a very fair question. Like I said, I'm not necessarily defending the consensus I've witnessed, I'm just telling you about it. -GTBacchus(talk) 08:22, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm guessing the content of the movie's website changed since the debate took place on I♥H's talk page, because the Flash animation features a cast member and the director verbally saying "I Heart Huckabees," which kind of eliminates the whole "intentional mystique" arguments in favor of retaining the ♥. And no worries, GTBacchus, I'm not at all saying you're defending (or detracting from) the lowercase-removal argument, and I really appreciate your insight into the situation.

 

I guess that's the key question here: Why should decorative punctuation be allowed, but not decorative capitalization? Any thoughts? Purifiedwater 08:59, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
I believe that we should follow the rules of WP:COMMONNAME and go with whatever is most used in official ways. If the official website maintains a unique case or mix of case, we should respect the creator/band/owner/person's wishes. It is not our place to rename persons/things/etc. Kyaa the Catlord 09:04, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, that's one option. I think you can make a good argument for going with WP:COMMONNAME, but I've also seen good WP:NOT-based arguments for not doing so. I think it would be useful to collect the best arguments from each side, put them in a section on this talk page, and do a content RFC on it, posting notes at WP:VP/P and the talk pages of WP:NC, WP:MOS and WP:MOSCL. Maybe someone could mention it on IRC.
The current situation is awkward. There have been a few precedents set (iPod, bell hooks, KISS, P!nk, Yahoo!), which people have taken as models for certain categories of articles (single letter prefixes, famous people who lower-case their names, band names, punctuation used as substitute letters, punctuation in a trademark). This had let to patches of articles that are internally consistent, but inconsistent with other patches. Now that the patches have gotten big enough that they're competing for space, I guess it makes sense to step back and look at them, sort out the rationales that have kept each one consistent, and try to say something general. -GTBacchus(talk) 18:56, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

From WP:COMMONNAME:

When choosing a name for a page ask yourself: What word would the average user of the Wikipedia put into the search engine?

Note use of the term "word". Note also the exclusion of the term "symbol". Note also this eminently reasonable essay by Bill Walsh, a widely respected copy editor for the Washington Post.

As far as applies to I Heart Huckabees, a simple Google search reveals nearly one million hits for the version using the word "heart" and fewer than 1,000 for the version with the symbol.

I completely agree that we need a guideline with more teeth, and I do not believe that WP:MOS-TM and WP:COMMONNAME are presently in conflict, nor do I believe that a guideline stating something like "Proper rules of English grammar and punctuation will be used full stop" is in conflict with WP:COMMONNAME except in very rare cases. We have redirects for a reason. Let's maintain our professionalism here and use them where appropriate. Just because someone wants special treatment for a trade name doesn't mean they're going to get it. We're writing an encyclopedia here, not ad copy.--chris.lawson 19:39, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Nobody that I'm aware of has asked us for special treatment of their trademark. You're not defending this guideline against company marketers, merely other editors. We're all well aware of what we are writing. The capitalization issue is one prime example of where English grammar conflicts with common usage, and interestingly, MediaWiki's "Go" button parser is actually case-sensitive. -- mattb @ 2007-03-09T20:43Z
Examples like Yahoo -- which, contrary to all logic, actually survived a vote to move it to a sensible page title -- are primarily what I'm referring to here. I'm far more concerned about the proliferation of extraneous punctuation than I am about case, although you'll never find me arguing in favour of leaving "thirtysomething" or "adidas" all-lowercase.--chris.lawson 00:18, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
"You're not defending this guideline against company marketers, merely other editors." It would be a foolish trademark holder that wouldn't try to do brand management on Wikipedia. I can't tell whether an editor here works for a marketing department or not. Either way, when we describe something, it not necessary for us to use the various marketing tricks to help make the brand names stand out and be remembered by consumers. WP:NOT a marketing tool. -GTBacchus(talk) 19:10, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
As a general rule, I'd say to use the form of a name that's in most common use, which may or may not be the same as the one the marketroids in the company that released the thing are using. If several different forms are in use and no consensus can be reached on one of them being the "most common", then use the one that is closest to "standard" English capitalization, spelling, and punctuation in accordance with Wikipedia style guidelines. *Dan T.* 04:49, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I can understand the desire to use the exclamation point for Jeopardy!. In this case, you could possibly make a case that omitting it would be akin to inventing a form that is rarely used, as most publications I've seen use the exclamation point. Yahoo, on the other hand, rarely shows up in reliable sources with the exclamation point. I still think that page should be moved. Croctotheface 23:43, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. If you want to start a move request, I will be glad to lend a hand. —ptk✰fgs 00:14, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
I actually don't particularly want to. I doubt the result would be different from the first RM. Croctotheface 22:55, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe I'm summarizing the view of some people here, but, if a person holds the legal right to a name and made it with any idiosyncratic spelling or capitalization, what gives us the right to change that spelling due to English language rules, which titles are not required to follow in any way whatsoever. I'm personally wondering about the anime HunterxHunter, pronounced merely as "Hunter Hunter", and the Fullmetal Alchemist ending theme song, "To the other side of the Door", which the album CD cover specifically spells it as; and let's not even begin to get into l33t, which has neither a commonplace name or trademark.Naruttebayo 23:21, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

"What gives us the right"? That's an interesting question. I guess the fact that we're writing Wikipedia gives us the right to do whatever we decide to do with it. It's a free world; there's no rule saying we have to typeset anything one way or another, except the rules we decide to adopt. Rather than asking "what gives us the right", do you really mean to ask why we've decided to avoid stylized typography rather than replicate it? I think some pretty good reasons have been given for that; would it help to summarize them? -GTBacchus(talk) 23:25, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Verily. As Wikipedians, do we not have a responsibility to be accurate to the topic? We do have the right, but don't we have a factual obligation, so to speak?And still, why change it just because we 'can'?--Naruttebayo 23:35, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
We certainly do aim for accurate description. There is a question in this case where description ends and promotion begins. We aim for neutrality, and participating in trademark holders' brand management is not consistent with neutrality. If a trademark holder always displays their trademark in certain colors and in a certain font, are we obliged to replicate those aspects of their trademark every time we mention it? Where do we draw the line? The consensus that I've observed is that we draw the line just beyond CamelCase. The reason seems to be that CamelCase actually does a semantic job (helping readers parse the word), while other eccentric typography is done simply to distinguish the brand from others in consumers' minds. -GTBacchus(talk) 23:42, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
In the same spirit of "promotion vs. description", does this mean we cannot use a logo or picture if the logo itself is not "neutral" enough? Aside from font and colors, however, if some form of material from the trademark holder spells it using characters in a certain fashion, does that prove that this is in fact the title of the subject, not an advertising gimmick? Aside from my argument, I wanted to ask about my "To the other side of the Door" example; what would be the proper use here? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Naruttebayo (talk • contribs) 23:51, 30 March 2007 (UTC).
I believe the common rendering per WP:ALBUMS would be "To the Other Side of the Door". - Cyrus XIII 00:05, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
I think it's fine to use a logo or picture to show what it is. That's description. Nobody's suggesting that we pretend logos don't exist. In our article titles, and in the context of simply talking about something however, it is not appropriate to use a logo every time the subject is mentioned. As for specific cases, there are guidelines and precendents indicating that we tend to use usual title case, as specified in our Manual of style, when presenting titles of works such as albums, books, etc. -GTBacchus(talk) 02:19, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
Exactly. Guidance on this point can be found on the main MOS page, which says that the MOS "has the simple purpose of making the encyclopedia easy to read, by establishing agreed principles for its format. . . . if everyone does things the same way, Wikipedia will be easier to read and use, and easier to write and edit." Logos and quirky styles should definitely be covered in articles, but in general, the body text should be styled to make the article easy to read, use, write, and edit. PubliusFL 03:05, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't see how purposely using an incorrect representation will somehow make the article easier to read, use, write, and edit, but it's become clear that no one cares to back this up, and I'm too tired of it to argue anymore. —pfahlstrom 00:51, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

(unindenting) I'm not sure what kind of evidence you'd consider sufficient to "back this up", but using the exclamation point that Yahoo likes to use, for instance, can make sentences harder to read because the exclamation point is end punctuation. As such, if "Yahoo!" appears in the middle of a sentence, it can be highly jarring. You may not agree that it is jarring, and that's fine, but I know that I'm not alone in preferring standard English to fealty to trademarks. What GTBacchus has been saying also serves to "back up" the guideline. He has pointed out the slippery slope argument--if we're OK with strange capitalization or punctuation, do we become obliged to replicate boldface, italics, or coloring? Must we use the "TM" and "(R)" symbols as well? Regarding the notion of "accuracy", I would argue that it is more "accurate" to render a trademark in standard English, so that it follows the way it sounds in the spoken language. The function of nouns is to identify things. The function of punctuation is to organize writing. However, advertising departments want to do much more with words and punctuation, and their main concern is not communicating clearly or informing the public but rather selling a product or service. Also, most publications have style guides that say more or less what we do here. Croctotheface 05:05, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

The language of your paragraph is rather POV, with expressions like "fealty to trademarks" and blaming all orthographic idiosyncrasy on advertising departments. I find your "accuracy" argument specious; writing has never been speech, and English orthography specifically coincides only loosely with how things are pronounced. The relationship of capitalization and punctuation with how words are spoken is even more tenuous. And we already use end punctuation in the middles of sentences with no problem at all, in words like Mr. or Mrs.—that the next word in the sentence is lowercased is context enough for most readers that the sentence is not over. Anyway, I see no problem with simply reporting words/names as they are without making any judgment as to whether those words have any worthy reason to be that way. To force nonconformist orthography to conform to orthodoxy is to deny the point of its nonconformity—whether you personally feel that something has a good reason or a bad reason for its nonconformity, stripping away orthographic idiosyncrasy is inherently POV and against the core principles of Wikipedia. —pfahlstrom 22:14, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
When I'm reading English, I definitely use capitalization and punctuation to help me navigate sentences, and to recognize proper nouns when they occur. When a proper noun is decapitalized, or when there's unexpected punctuation in a sentence, it often causes me to have to back up and read the sentence twice in order to parse it. That makes bad writing, according to what I've learned about written communication. As for the "Mr." and "Mrs." examples, in British English the periods tend to be omitted; regardless, abbreviation is a standard use for periods, so that's not a very good example if we're discussing non-standard punctuation.
When you say that Croctotheface is "blaming" all orthographic idiosyncrasy on ad departments... I find "blame" to be an odd verb to use. I don't think anybody's saying that using strange orthography is a Bad Thing, such that "blame" has to be assigned. We're just saying that professional publications rightly eschew strange formatting when trying to write standard prose. Trademark holders are welcome to write things however they want, but we have to adhere to NPOV, as you say.
Language is used for different things, and part of NPOV is that we use language to inform about subjects, and not to promote them. Ad people try to make their brands stand out, because that's their job. They're using language to do more than communicate information. Like Marshall McLuhan said, "the medium is the message," so if we let our medium be molded by trademark designers, then we're also spreading their message for them, and that is certainly contrary to NPOV. That's how I see it, anyway. -GTBacchus(talk) 23:14, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
I think that when editors here focus their arguments about, for example, titles, on their status as trademarks rather than their status as titles of creative works intended to convey some creative message, they are saying that anything unusual about them is a Bad Thing That Does Not Belong on Wikipedia. That is what you yourself seem to be saying right here. I disagree that reporting something as it is is somehow advertising it. (Though my wife uses the opposite argument, that any article about a subject can be seen as advertisement, whether its name is written in some distinctive way or not.) Whether its idiosyncrasy is something a marketing department thought up or not...so what? In the end, it still is what it is, and it should be reported for what it is. If the name of what is being informed about is changed in order to inform about it, then it's not really informing about it, is it? As for any example I may give about nonstandard punctuation—what example can I possibly give that is going to be standard? That's the point—it's nonstandard. Yet the use of periods in abbreviations is not the primary use of periods; it's a secondary use that people have become accustomed to. Yes, the orthography of Yahoo! is unusual, but I don't think it's something that there is a high barrier to getting used to, or that will flummox someone reading an article that has it written that way. Just being nonstandard does not mean it is a Bad Thing That Does Not Belong on Wikipedia. If in reporting on unorthodox subjects you put an orthodox face on them, they're not unorthodox anymore, are they? And is it Wikipedia's job to do that? —pfahlstrom 05:17, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
It's not Wikipedia's job to make decisions based on upholding or exterminating what we decide is "unorthodox". The point of the style guide is to make the encyclopedia as readable as possible. The notion that people would "get used to" a trademark sort of avoids the discussion altogether. In fact, if you agree that it is necessary to get used to nonstandard typography, you basically agree that it is or can be jarring to readers. To the notion that they will get used to it--readers would get used to it if we stopped using capitalization or changed the style sO tHAT iT wAS wRITTEN lIKE tHIS. We shouldn't ask them to--instead, we should do them a service by avoiding needless deviations from standard English. As a second point, which I alluded to earlier: all publications make these decisions, and if anything, Wikipedia shows a lot more willingness to replicate nonstandard usage with trademarks than major professional publications do. I don't know of a single major news source, for example, that writes Yahoo with an exclamation point, unless they're just reprinting a press release. Croctotheface 07:01, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
I'd rather stick to real-world examples than hypotheticals. We're dealing with actual names of actual companies/books/etc. But yes, I don't disagree that nonstandard usage is unexpected—thus the "nonstandard" label. But I do disagree that giving readers what they expect is more important than accurate reporting of facts. Question: Does the Oliver! article bother you? —pfahlstrom 21:20, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

(unindenting) I have less of a problem with nonstandard styles that are widely adopted by mainstream sources. I don't think that we should try to establish the standard for what "artistic expression" is, although my personal opinion is that the exclamation point in Oliver! has some artistic merit while the one in Yahoo! does not. However, it is easy enough to just look to material already written about these subjects to see what name is more common. MOSTM does not override WP:COMMONNAME, and I don't believe it should. As such, I'm fine with using Oliver! and Jeopardy! because they are unquestionably more common styles. The important point here, which I keep returning to, is this: our obligation is to our readers. I submit that we serve the readers well when we use "Time magazine" instead of "TIME magazine" or "Realtor" instead of "REALTOR". I completely reject the notion that doing so is somehow "inaccurate" or "not factual" as you suggest. These companies use the English words "time" and "realtor" as names, and English words are rendered in lowercase unless they are proper names or begin sentences and so forth. It would be inaccurate to pretend that these companies exist outside the bounds of the language that we use to communicate. The notion that we should make readers have to "get used to" odd stylistic flourishes because a trademark owner uses them priveliges the trademark owner over the reader. That would be the wrong choice to make. Croctotheface 23:22, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sidebar on word choice

I don't have much to add to what GTBacchus has to say in reply, except that I'm a bit confused by why you would criticize me for using POV language when I'm expressing a point of view. Comments on talk pages need not conform to WP:NPOV. If they did, we couldn't even have this discussion. Croctotheface 23:26, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
It is possible to express a point of view about something without using loaded phraseology. Not that I manage to always do that myself though, I must admit. —pfahlstrom 05:17, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
It's also possible to express a point of view WHILE using loaded phrases. Croctotheface 07:01, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
Sure, but loaded phrases distract the reader from considering the merits of opposing points of view. Is that your intention? —pfahlstrom 21:20, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
No, my intention is to express my opinion. (Can we let this thread go? I typed up that last response as a joke and forgot to delete it. This argument strikes me as silly.) Croctotheface 23:22, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Allowing for common names

What would other editors think about reworking this guideline to be more in harmony with how common names and full names of individual people are expressed in Wikipedia? The classic example is the page of the 39th U.S. president, which is at Jimmy Carter. The page name is Jimmy Carter, and the main heading is James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. Thereafter in the article, just the last name or Jimmy Carter is used.

If this paradigm were to be applied to trademarks, the page name would be the common form, the main heading would be the "correct" form, and the common form would be used throughout the rest of the article. The common form would be whatever is most commonly used in the real world, and depending on verifiable usage would sometimes be the same as the correct form (even if in conflict with historically conventional typography) and sometimes different.

For example, the Craigslist article might start out: craigslist, inc (commonly referred to as Craigslist) is a centralized network of... ...After incorporation in 1999, Craigslist expanded into nine...

Thoughts? —pfahlstrom 08:09, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe you base these considerations on WP:COMMONNAME - this guideline was not even written with capitalization issue in mind, hence it is not at odds with this one. As for using the official typeset at the beginning of the article and then carrying on with a still potentially stylized variant, why should we? It defeats the purpose of trying to avoid brand management in the first place and creates inconsistency on our part. Also, why do you keep doing this? By now you should realize that this is not the place to promote an agenda calling for the wide adoption of idiosyncratic capitalization, as this guideline was created to do the exact opposite and most people who frequent this page are more likely to care about it and wanting to improve it, than considering it all the way wrong and in need of abolishment.
If you want to go through with this in a productive way, rather than a disruptive one (see those recent, out-of-context votes of disagreement over that minor guideline change), relocate your efforts to a higher tier of our guidelines and policies, which you would have to do at some point anyhow, since WP:MOS-TM is not the only set of rules that favors standardized over stylized typography. Then we will all see whether your ideas are consensus worthy after all - I highly doubt they are (no surprise there, I know), based on my own experience and those 1000+ requested moves, GTBachus mentioned. - Cyrus XIII 13:54, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
I think the other guy realizes that the "COMMONNAME" policy wasn't written with capitalization, punctuation, etc. in mind, but is trying to analogize from that one, which makes a good deal of sense to me. Out of curiosity, when faced with such a decision of whether to use quirky style promoted as the "official" name of something, or convert to standard English style, which way do other publications priding themselves on "getting things right" go? When The New Yorker, The New York Times, the The Wall Street Journal, and Encyclopedia Britannica write about one of these things, which style do they use?
An interesting case, by the way, is the one of Prince (musician), which uses this opening paragraph, covering his full birth name, the "artistic name" (requiring an image) he used for a time, and some informal nicknames:
Prince Rogers Nelson (born June 7, 1958), known from 1993 to 2000 as <Deleted fair use image> (or informally, The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, TAFKAP, or simply The Artist), is a popular and influential Grammy Award winning American musician.
*Dan T.* 14:05, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Cyrus XIII, your statement that someone who does not agree with a guideline cannot offer suggestions to improve it is baseless. I am offering suggestions that I think will help Wikipedia as a whole, and I am doing so by analogy to other established guidelines. I do not believe that the spirit behind this guideline is avoiding brand management; the spirit of the MoS as a whole, including this page, seems to be toward promoting readability. I am all in favor of promoting readability, as long as it is not at the expense of accuracy. But you're right, it's an issue beyond merely MOS-TM, so I've asked for input on the Manual of Style (titles) page.
Well, I was thinking of a more wide-reaching approach at WT:MOS or WT:NC. - Cyrus XIII 00:09, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Dan, earlier on this talk page you will see several references to a self-published essay by Washington Post copy editor Bill Walsh explaining his views on what newspapers should do with idiosyncratic typography. Guidelines on Wikipedia cannot necessarily be so prescriptive, since the NPOV and verifiability policies must be taken into account. —pfahlstrom 21:49, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Yet another article using a quirky capitalization apparently because the subject herself prefers it that way: catherine yronwode. It's interesting that the use of odd schemes of capitalization, spelling, and punctuation is something that the "artsy" crowd and the marketing types, often otherwise severely at odds with one another, have in common. (Although, actually, ms. yronwode has some history of being both.) *Dan T.* 13:21, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, among the "marketing types" are fairly often designers themselves, after all logos and eccentric typesets have to come from somewhere. - Cyrus XIII 16:39, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Troublesome guideline.

The "Avoid using special characters that are not pronounced, are included purely for decoration, or simply substitute for English words" guideline seems to be rather troublesome. Here are six examples I could find where special characters are more important than their lack of, or substiution of:

  • 3×3 Eyes: To use an 'x' instead of an '×' when multiplication is involved is incorrect. Also, under current guidelines, the article would be Sazan Eyes or 3 By 3 Eyes (at least I think that's what the English pronouciation is.)
  • ± Junkie might technically be Plus-minus Junkie, though the Japanese pronouciation makes it more along the lines of Plumin Junkie (it abreviates the words).
  • ×××HOLiC: The "×××" is silent, and the series is pronouced "Holic". However, people don't like the idea of calling it just "Holic".
  • Kujibiki♥Unbalance and Kujibiki Unbalance are two seperate series. The ♥ is silent btw.
  • Namco × Capcom would technically be Namco Cross Capcom under current guidelines, but few people think of it in that way.
  • I ♥ Huckabees: Can be read as I Love Huckabees or I Heart Huckabees.

I think that it's clear that there are some cases where special characters are important and should be used. I think that the guidelines should be reworded to be where special characters can be used when it's part of the name and not just the logo. Besides, we support the use of other non-standard characters like the macron vowels, so why no ♥ for the others?--SeizureDog 12:54, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

This should be part of MOS-Titles, really. We should not be changing titles just "because a guideline says so". Kyaa the Catlord 13:00, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Well damnit, there's too many of these policy/guideline pages anymore. I never know where the root concept is held.--SeizureDog 13:10, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. Commonname should trump all. :P Kyaa the Catlord 13:20, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
MOS-TM is currently being used as a trump for all sorts of things which are marginally relevant. If something is the title of a creative work, I think its status as a title should be more important than whether it also happens to be a trademark. Also, trademark rules should not be applied to pseudonyms, personal names, or band names. But specifically here, I agree that there are cases where special characters are important and should be used (as part of the name, not just the graphical logo), and the guideline should accommodate them. —pfahlstrom 16:49, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
That ♥ symbol is an interesting one... its (I think) earliest use is in the "I♥NY" tourism slogan, which is pronounced "I Love New York". But more recent uses include at least one where it's silent, and others where it's pronounced "Heart" or is ambiguous in pronunciation. *Dan T.* 18:05, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Though such cases can be handled quite easiy:
  • If a symbol has a clear meaning, replace it. (I♥NY → I Love New York)
  • If it is not pronounced, it's just decoration, so leave it out. (Kujibiki♥Unbalance → Kujibiki Unbalance (2006 series))
  • If it is ambiguous, either leave it in or try to reach a consensus on the most prevalent replacement, for the particular case. (I ♥ Huckabees)
- Cyrus XIII 18:19, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
But if the ♥ in Kujibiki♥Unbalance is being used to distinguish it from Kujibiki Unbalance, that means it's not just decorative, even though it's not pronounced. —pfahlstrom 20:44, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Indeed. A similar example would be Negima! and Negima!? Is there any reason why a '♥' should be considered decorative and a '!' or '?' not? And if you consider them as exceptions simply because they're found on a keyboard, consider the decorative use of a '!' in Metal Gear Ac!d. ♥ actually does often serve grammatical purposes in Japanese, both as a alternate to a middle dot (as used here) and as an indication of tone (of which '!' and '?' do the same thing). And while I say that it serves this purpose "in Japanese", it can easily be used in the same manner in English as well, we just don't normally.--SeizureDog 07:59, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
I think all the examples the OP gives are bad examples. Lets go by them one by one:
  1. 3×3 Eyes: If the English pronunciation is "3 By 3 Eyes" it could very well be placed there. However, × is also used in normal text (search Wikipedia for it if you want) so the question whether × is allowed in this case is more of a question on whether × should occur in normal text, than a question about this guideline.
  2. ± Junkie: If it's commonly pronounced like "Plumin Junkie", than why not call it that way?
  3. ×××HOLiC: If the "×××" is silent, and the series is pronouced "Holic", as you assert, then the ××× and the weird caps are just styling, nothing more. If people don't like it, so be it. If we accept this kind of thing then at the end of the century everything will have its own logo-like glyph. Do I even have to explain why that is bad and unpractical?
  4. Kujibiki♥Unbalance and Kujibiki Unbalance: Well that's really stupid, but if there really is no differnce in pronunciation then we can handle them just like we would handle any other case were articles would potentially share the same title. Note that remakes often share the same title with the original and no one thought about making trouble about that until this weird ♥ showed up.
  5. Namco × Capcom: Then how do people refer to it? What do people actually say when they refer to it? The answer to that question is the ideal article title.
  6. I ♥ Huckabees: The advertisements say "I Heart Huckabees", so that's what it's called. That people misread it only shows that having odd symbols pop up everywhere is a very bad idea.
Yours sincerely, Shinobu 17:59, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] NiGHTS into Dreams...

This issue was brought up in the article's talk page. One user said that the three dots should be removed as they break the linking of the page. To reiterate what I'm saying over there: I do have the game manual and jewel case on me, and the trademark does indeed read "NiGHTS" with the lowercase "i." In fact, the manual refers to the game simply as "NiGHTS" and never "NiGHTS Into Dreams..." And if we go by the title on the jewel case, we can see that the "i" in "into" is lowercase, and, though the stylized font makes it difficult to determine, it appears the "d" in "dreams" is also lowercase. Admittedly, nowadays, the most popular usage of the title does appear to be "NiGHTS Into Dreams..." across most gaming media outlets. However, you can see in most interviews that the developer Naka and crew simply refer to the game as "NiGHTS." Indeed, that appears to be the most common usage when the game was released in 1996, although "NiGHTS" is kind of used as an abbreviation now. The "..." really is decorative punctuation; there's still no consensus over whether Yahoo! or TNA Impact! should stand with their decorative punctuation.

I think that, by overwhelming common usage, the lowercase "i" in "NiGHTS" should still stand. The question is whether the title should simply be "NiGHTS" or "NiGHTS into dreams..." or some variation of that, with or without the ellipses. --Tristam 22:05, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I think what should take precedence is what the common usage among reasonably careful writers is... that is, the writers who are taking some care to "get things right", as opposed to sloppy, casual usage as in instant-messaging where correct spelling, grammar, punctuation, and capitalization isn't valued. If in careful usage, people tend to use "standard" English capitalization/punctuation, then that's what should be used here; if they tend to use some cutesy variation specific to that product, then that's what should be used. The result may not always agree with what the marketing types or artist types want, and/or with what the English language mavens insist on, but it would follow usage for that item as practiced by those who actually write about it. *Dan T.* 22:35, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
If you look on Google Books and Google News, you'll find that the most common styles in reliable published sources are "Nights Into Dreams" or "Nights into Dreams," with standard title-case capitalization and no punctuation. In my view, that's what MOSTM would indicate as well. PubliusFL 23:15, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
A google book search brought up almost nothing for me, and in a google news search almost all of the sources used "NiGHTS." --Tristam 23:39, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
The most common styles in reliable published sources usually include the funky capitalisation, that's from my magazine collection anyway. We'll obviously see a resurgent interest in this subject due to its upcoming Wii sequel, and then can make more firm comments. However, I would definitely be inclined to drop the "..." from the article title. I would not drop the "Into Dreams" part of the title, as it is indeed part of the title. However, in the article text, it is not necessary. I would not oppose a move to Nights Into Dreams, I feel that Wikipedia style guidelines suggest we ignore weird capitalisation, however, I would not champion one either. - hahnchen 00:00, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, the style manual here would recommend "Nights", not "NiGHTS". —ptk✰fgs 19:58, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

The page has recently been moved from NiGHTS Into Dreams... to Nights into Dreams..., which I agree with. But what should be the usuage within the article itself? (Someone has recently removed all the idiosyncratic capitalisation from the main text.) When video game magazines and websites mention the game, the general impression I get is that those that have been written by someone with some knowledge of the game use "NiGHTS", whereas those that are just relaying minor news items use the version that would be recommended by a spellchecker. :-) I seem to recall one publication (possibly the issue of the UK Official Dreamcast Magazine referenced in the article) actually adding the note "(yes, it is meant to be written with a lower-case 'i' in the middle)" after one mention of the game. --Nick RTalk 12:03, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

In general, this guideline exists to advise against using nonstandard styles. It wouldn't make much sense for that only to apply to the article title and not the text. Croctotheface 14:47, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I see what you mean - the discussion above seemed to be about the title of the article rather than its content, so I got the impression that this guideline was a naming convention for article titles. But still, Sega's capitalisation is widespread enough that it deserves at least one mention in the article (early in the lead section?) - what would be the best way to make that clear? Any suggested phrasings? Is there a template for clarifying these things at the start of articles, like Template:lowercase? --Nick RTalk 15:30, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
None that I know of, but since I've run into that issue (should the official typeset be mentioned and if yes how) several times by now, a template to standardize that bit seems like a very good idea. Something along the lines of the Nihongo template. Article code could look like this.
{{tm|'''Toys "R" Us'''|Toys "Я" Us}} is...
Resulting in something like this:
Toys "R" Us (Toys "Я" Us ?) is...
Ideas/suggestions? - Cyrus XIII 15:43, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
My suggestion is to leave it alone. It IS NiGHTS.75.65.91.142 15:15, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
NiGHTS Into Dreams... is the proper name for the game. This is known to all who know it well. According to the Wikipedia Manual of Style, this is addressed: "but, don't invent new formats: For the standardized test, SAT is standard English, while "Sat" is essentially never used." NiGHTS is not to be confused with the plural form of night. The article itself should be titled Nights into Dreams... but when referred to in the text as NiGHTS into Dreams... Also, when shortening the title and discussing the character, Nights would apply as the suitable naming convention according to the Wikipedia Manual of Style. -- MarMink 14:32, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Capitals to lower case in page names

There seems to be a movement to rename pages whose names are spelt all in capitals, following the trademark/official usage of the name, to lower-case. For example, NUMB3RS was just renamed to Numb3rs, despite the show itself (and the official website) using the capitalized version. I can see that having special characters in the name could cause technical problems, but what is the issue with capitals? Mike Peel 07:47, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Because it's not standard English to write words in all capitals. Although from a marketing perspective, all caps certainly STANDS OUT and calls ATTENTION to certain words, the style can also be DISTRACTING. The theory behind this guideline is that readers are best served by applying standard English formatting to trademarks even when the trademark owner encourages special treatment. Croctotheface 09:06, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
Also, as an addendum, with "Numbers", there is not a concern with WP:COMMONNAME or "inventing new formats" because, at least per this search, the "Numb3rs" style is used by a great number of publications, though there are some that use the all caps. Croctotheface 09:11, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, that's unfortunate that you think so. I totally disagree with this portion of WP:MOS-TM, but for the sake of examples here are some more articles which the MOS is in conflict with:
—Tokek 13:42, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
As we know, other crap exists. Croctotheface 13:49, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
Speaking of which, does the capital v in "MuVo" (another Creative brand) signify anything? - Cyrus XIII 14:11, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
(@Cyrus) I don't know, but WP:MOS-TM currently doesn't automatically ban CamelCased trademarks.
(@ Croctotheface) By crap, are you referring to the portion of WP:MOS-TM that's picky on when capital letters should be allowed in article titles? I agree that the example you provided ("STANDS OUT and calls ATTENTION") is an uncalled for deviation from standard English writing practices, but those aren't trademarks, hence you're essentially comparing apples and oranges. The type of hacking that is suggested in WP:MOS-TM for all-caps trademarks is not an established standard practice in English. I don't know why the rule exists when there is clearly disagreement - and whether it is a generally agreed upon rule is questionable. The rule itself has beocme a source of problems rather than something that helps to prevent or resolve disagreements. Oh, and Microsoft .NET. —Tokek 15:00, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
First of all, civility is valued here. Second, my link that refers to "crap" was to WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS, which is an influential essay that, among other things, argues that the argument that because a handful of articles have a certain quality (in this case, that they render a trademark outside the boundaries of standard English), all articles should be allowed to do that, is fallacious. The fact that there exist articles that do not follow the spirit of the guideline really doesn't concern me, though I'd be happy to be appraised of any discussions relating to the naming of such articles so that I can participate.
Second, the rule is not ambiguous. Applying it should be an easy exercise, so the only reason that it would be a "source of problems" is because people tend to edit articles relating to material they like, and consequently, some editors believe that the decisions made by people who control material that they like should be sacrosanct.
Third, there really is no difference between the capitalizing of words in my post and the capitalizing/decorating of words in a trademark. English words, phrases, and sentences have conventions that are applied to them in writing. If a trademark owner gets to say "don't apply these conventions to my title", it's really no different from me saying "don't apply these conventions to my talk page message"? Croctotheface 15:16, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
>Second, the rule is not ambiguous. Applying it should be an easy exercise, so the only reason that it would be a "source of problems"....
The problem is not about understanding how to apply the rule, the problem is in the consequence of applying the rule. Hence lack of ambiguity in how to apply the rule does not in any way resolve its flaws.
>If a trademark owner gets to say "don't apply these conventions to my title", it's really no different from me saying "don't apply these conventions to my talk page message"?
The trademark owner may tend to capitalize in a certain fashion, while WP:MOS-TM demands a specific method of capitalization. Actual accepted usage (in English) is somewhere in between and needs to be determined on a per-article basis. Stylized caps may "render a trademark outside the boundaries of standard English," but so can WP:MOS-TM render trademark outside of standard use. WP:MOS-TM gives little to none of this needed wiggle room, as I've explained in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (trademarks)/Archive 1#A lot of fuss about caps over nothing. —Tokek 14:13, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Information needs to be in other Wikipedia pages

I think some of the information on trademarks here needs to be used on other pages in the Wikipedia Manual of Style. In particular the Naming conventions page and Capital letters page. Recently I changed the title of some pages from Invader Zim to Invader ZIM to match up with the official title but first I checked the 2 pages I mentioned for the guideline on using capital letters in the name of an article. It's only here afterwards that I find the guideline. I definitely think this should get a mention in the Naming convention page at least as it's there where most people will look for guidance on the title they'll give to a page. But the only link to the MoS page on trademarks from Naminc conventions is when using company names. This guideline seems to be very important (go for style over accuracy) so should probably be more prominently displayed. ●BillPP (talk|contribs) 13:49, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree completely. Add mention of this guideline to those pages as you see fit. nadav (talk) 14:04, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Input requested on requested move

At Talk:Ftr#Requested move, there is a proposal to move ftr to FTR (bus), claiming that the lower-case trademark "ftr" should be presented in standard English as all capitals. I don't see that the guideline explicitly addresses this situation, in that "ftr" is not really an acronym and perhaps not even strictly speaking an abbreviation. The guideline recommends that lower case trademarks like adidas should be presented as proper nouns and capitalized accordingly as "Addidas". Input on this question is welcome at Talk:Ftr#Requested move. older ≠ wiser 17:13, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] General Inquiry

There is currently a discussion on-going on the wikipedia page for the band S.K.I.N over the correct way of formatting the name. Under Wikipedia guidelines, as the individual letters hold no significance it is classed as stylized typography, however - this is the name of the band. The bands name is S.K.I.N, not Skin. The latter is incorrect, and the word itself has no relevance towards the band at all. How would this issue be resolved? As currently this Manual of Style is being used to prevent the truth of the matter from being displayed. If my name were J.I.N.E.C.O.U and it was pronounced as individual letters without a meaning being applied to each one using the word "Jinecou" would be nevertheless, incorrect. Does this argument at all hold any ground? Because it seems silly that something in a grey area like this cannot be conveyed correctly as it simply is not reflected by the style rules. Thats not what Wikipedia is about. --JinecouO.N.E 08:16, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Is the name pronounced "ess kay eye en" or "skin"? If it's the former, then "S.K.I.N" is not stylized. Although we might find a period after the N a bit more standard, we don't need to go so far as to to add it. If the name is pronounced "skin," then the next step would be to see which styles are present in reliable sources about the band. If there is a very strong tendency to use one rather than the other, then that would be a strong argument in favor of using whichever style the sources prefer. If the name is pronounced "skin" and there is no strong tendency to use one or another, we have something of a quandary. In general, I'd be inclined to go for "Skin" and "Skin (band)" rather than replicate the stylized typography. Croctotheface 08:54, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] All capitals

The problem seems to be the section titled "Follow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules even if the trademark owner encourages special treatment" is too general. Realtor should be used and not REALTOR. Yet this does not apply to MCI, IBM, FBI, etc. The sections needs to be expanded to deal specifically with brandnames which are used in upper case only. Another example is NOMEX where the wiki pages uses Nomex. Yet the tradename is NOMEX. Any comments? statsone 05:42, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

The guideline calls for using all capitals if each letter is pronounced as a letter. That is, MCI is pronounced "em see eye", while REALTOR/Realtor is pronounced "realtor". If each letter of "REALTOR" stood for something, even if it's pronounced "realtor", then that could also be cause for presenting it in all caps. The point of the guideline is to avoid having our encyclopedia read like promotional material. One of the reasons companies like using nonstandard styles is that, by virtue of being nonstandard, they are eye catching. That is good if you want to promote a company, but it does not do the readers a service if they are doing research or looking to inform themselves. Croctotheface 06:05, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Some users are claiming the video game PONG as an exception, based on the reasoning that, written in all caps, it is taken to mean an Atari product, while lowercase would be a generic "clone" version produced by another company. I am not convinced by this, even if Atari liked to capitalize their product name, and that there were indeed many "Pong clones" owing to Atari's failure to protect their trademark. Any opinions? ProhibitOnions (T) 06:49, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't see that as a reasonable exception at all. If anything, it would be more confusing to readers if both "PONG" and "pong" are in a sentence and there is nothing there to explain the difference. We don't need to take an opinion on whether Atari failed to protect their trademark, just that we don't capitalize trademarks of this nature. Croctotheface 06:53, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree, no all-caps for Pong; plus there was no source for this supposed differentiation. I have formatted the article accordingly, would you guys help me out with the remaining links to the redirect? - Cyrus XIII 09:49, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Nevermind, all done. - Cyrus XIII 11:56, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Excuse me, but the product title is still an active trademark and still released under such title. The latest in fact was a licensed commercial on TV just a few months ago. I just finished doing a contract job with Atari on this very game as well, and Atari Legal was very specific. Likewise, the fact that there are PONG clones have to do with no protection of the hardware (these were hardware solid state games, no game code), not the title, which is still protected the same as the rest of their titles (Asteroids, Centipede, etc.) There have been "clones" of those as well. What sources would you like on the useage of all caps PONG, I'd be happy to provide them. We can start with the home console's own manual. And Croctotheface, regarding "...are in a sentence and there is nothing there to explain the difference...." the difference was indeed explained and set up in the very first paragraph on the page.--Marty Goldberg 16:31, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

If someone looks to the middle of the article without having read the lead and sees varying styles for the same word, it could indeed be confusing. Bottom line is that at WIkipedia, we don't replicate nonstandard styles such as all caps. I find the disambiguation argument completely non-compelling because there are plenty of cases of items that need similar disambiguation, and it's more than possible to write clearly about such items without writing in all capitals. Croctotheface 05:49, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ABBA

Seeing as how the Pong issue above was resolved to everyone's satisfaction, we might wish to consider the Swedish pop group Abba. Or, ABBA, as the article has been re-renamed to, on the pretext that it is an acronym or initialism. While the group name was certainly derived from combining the members' initials, it's not pronounced A-B-B-A, nor does it "really" stand for "Annifrid, Björn..." or whatever (in contrast to real acronyms like NATO, which really refers to the "North Atlantic Treaty Organisation"). The band, like Kiss (band), evidently preferred to spell it in capital letters (with the second B reversed where this was typographically possible), but this hardly obliges us to do so. As those who prefer "ABBA" earnestly (and in my opinion, incorrectly) point to this page as justification for their actions I thought I'd ask for others' opinions. ProhibitOnions (T) 10:18, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

If the band name is actually derived from its member's names, then I have to support all caps in this case. It seems almost exactly like NATO to me. I understand your argument that NATO is not the name of the organization but rather an abbreviation of it, but the idea that "ABBA" is intended to be a quasi-abbreviation is a logical reason to capitalize the letters. That is, the B represents the proper noun "Björn" even if it does not abbreviate it. I also have an "inventing new formats" concern, as in my limited experience, essentially all reliable sources seem to use "ABBA" rather than "Abba", and we should not invent a style if one has unanimous or very wide acceptance among secondary sources. This case is different from Kiss because "kiss" is a word in its own right, so there is not a concern with inventing a new format, and the band doesn't intend for the letters to have any sort of meaning or represent anything, so their all caps style serves solely as decoration. Croctotheface 10:32, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Croctotheface and as I've stated on Talk:ABBA, the all-caps typeset just needs a source and then it's good to go. - Cyrus XIII 10:56, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Not so fast. It's not true that "essentially all reliable sources" use caps. While most fansites do, the BBC doesn't [9], the NME doesn't [10], the New York Times doesn't [11], NPR doesn't [12], the Independent doesn't [13], Time magazine doesn't [14], etc. There's no reason to divert from the usual Wikipedia policy because a pop group likes to write their name a certain way. Again, it's not an acronym. ProhibitOnions (T) 21:54, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Hey, relax, I qualified my statement with "in my limited experience". It's not a matter where I intended to get one over on people in a "so fast" manner. I just used my memory and a Google News search because I didn't care to research the matter in great detail, and I still don't. I still consider "ABBA" an acceptable and likely preferable style to use. However, a critical mass of reliable sources certainly would give us the discretion of which style to use. Croctotheface 23:29, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Hope the terseness of my response there wasn't taken the wrong way -- I just meant we shouldn't rush to any conclusions (and we should instead relax and think about it). However, I have to admit I haven't really heard a "killer argument" on this that would make me happy with creating an exception for "ABBA" that couldn't better be explained in clear prose, pointing out that the band likes to write their name with the backwards-B spelling, or capitalizing it when this is not possible. We can't write it in their first choice, anyway. ProhibitOnions (T) 12:26, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
My feeling is that the spirit of the guideline is to avoid nonstandard styles that exist solely for decoration or promotional purposes. When there is a legitimate claim that something other than decoration or promotion is involved, then we should consider it. If ABBA is indeed an initialism, then the all capitals style is not solely for decoration. I feel like the distinction you draw with NATO is a big stretch: to me, they're basically the same case. If, for whatever reason, NATO no longer wanted to be known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, perhaps because they included countries from other regions, but wanted to keep the NATO name despite it no longer standing for their actual name, would you say that we should then render it "Nato"? It seems very strange to me that we would be be in the position of "taking away" an organization's "right" to all caps. Croctotheface 19:03, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
The group's official site considers the band name an acronym. That case is closed for me. - Cyrus XIII 23:04, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Using Registered Trademarks in Books & Articles

I cannot find any information on rules for using a registered trademark symbol when writing book chapters or journal articles. I think guidelines in this area need to be included. I've heard some people say you must use the TM or R symbol every time you refer to a product that has a registered trade mark. Other people say that you use it the first time that it appears in the chapter or article but do not have to use it with other references to the same product. What is the consensus or rule in this area?SuzMorris 01:02, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your references to book chapters or journal articles are all about, but for WP articles, this guideline says, "Do not use the ™ and ® symbols, or similar, unless unavoidably necessary for context (for instance, to distinguish between generic and brand names for drugs)." Croctotheface 01:53, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Clarification

After reading Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters)#Mixed or non-capitalization I got the impression that if a trademarked name, or the name of a band etc. is not capitalized, then the article should not be capitalized. However, this page seems to contradict that. I was wondering which one is correct? I would personally advocate that if something is non-standard English, but is identified on their website, in media etc. as that, it should stay. So what is the current consensus? i said 09:09, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

For music-related topics, I'd primarily refer to WP:MUSTARD, which favors standard English text formatting, links here and does not name exceptions. Also, that bit in WP:MOS-CL you mention is about personal names (for individual people) and now that you mention it, it should probably go anyway, to have the Manual of Style as a whole better comply with WP:NPOV. Hope that helps. - Cyrus XIII 13:10, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pingback

I mentioned this MoS-page on a style discussion elsewhere: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related_articles): Fantasy characters in "Names of companies, products, and organizations". Excerpt / first sentence:

Some people apparantly claim that the section "Names of companies, products, and organizations" justifies keeping characters like ∞, ♥ and the like even though MOS:TM expressly forbids it.

You may or may not be interested. Shinobu 18:10, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adding explanations to style guides?

What I see happening a lot, is that people are referred to this page for some guideline, then they read the guideline, they don't agree with it because they simply don't get it, and we spend time being unproductive because we need to convince them. And what if someone leaves a message on this talk page that goes unanswered, so that from then on he thinks he's right? What we might need are explanations to some of the guidelines, especially those that tend to cross new people but make sense when explained. Or perhaps a few weblinks to good essays on the subject. Just a thought. Shinobu 19:34, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I try to answer all messages to the effect of "shouldn't we render this company name as ALLCAPSRaNDomCapSW!+|-|PU|\|c+ua+!0n?" As far as explanations--what parts of the guideline do you think should be explained? What would the explanations say? Croctotheface 20:37, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

@I try to answer all...: Yes, I can see that, I must commend your energy. But everytime you type a paragraph like that, you could have done something more enjoyable, no? As for what such advice would say, perhaps we can have a look at your own replies:

  • Disambiguation argument is non-compelling.
  • Non-standard styles are confusing.
  • It's a part of English (written) grammar.
  • Wikipedia is not an advertisment (a.k.a the eye-catch effect).

Other arguments:

  • Where does description end and promotion begin?
  • If we would consistently allow it, everything would get its own logofied glyph.
  • Everything you need to know about capitalization you learned in school. (Bill Walsh)
  • Proper formatting makes reading easier. This is subverted by non-standard formatting.

If you prefer to give everyone who complains their own personal response, that's fine with me in principle, but I still think it would be better if a styleguide were also to motivate the guidelines given. Shinobu 15:15, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How about SPAM?

SPAM v Spam. - Arcayne (cast a spell) 20:46, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Why would there be any reason to yell SPAM when Spam does just as well? Croctotheface 21:04, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Could you link the specific case? Your might still be dealing with an acronym, which would warrant the use of all-caps. Open source software projects do that sort of word play all the time. - Cyrus XIII 06:41, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
SPAM is used to refer to the food, spam to the unsolicited email. Spam is for email when in the beginning of a sentence, I think it's useful to keep this distiction.--71.217.197.87 (talk) 02:36, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
So there's no difference between, say, the TV series Firefly and the insect? We can't disambiguate because "Firefly" is reserved for "the insect when at the beginning of a sentence"? There are plenty of ways to disambiguate, both in article titles and in text, without needing to resort to formatting the word in some crazy way. Croctotheface (talk) 15:31, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ALLCAPS when talking about trademarks

What do we do when talking about a trademark, or a mark? The guideline here says to use common English capitalization rules when using trademarks to talk about the product, service, or company they identify, e.g. "The Gap is an American clothing manufacturer." But what hapepns when we want to talk about the mark itself? To be clear, many lawyers and scholars, as well as the US Trademark Office, use allcaps to distinguish the mark from the thing it represents. So you would say "The Gap has been vigilant in filing registrations on and defending its GAP mark," or something like that. The guide doesn't seem to cover this. Wikidemo 20:16, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Mentioning a trademark is just a special case of mentioning a word (the use-mention distinction). The standard here, Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Italics, rule 3: "words as words", is to use italics. Your example would thus be:
"The Gap has been vigilant in filing registrations on and defending its Gap mark.
Nohat 05:38, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Macy*s vs. M*A*S*H

I would think these would both fall under the same rule, but the latter is named M*A*S*H on the article . What's the deal? --Henry W. Schmitt 07:22, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd be OK with "MASH", but there's arguably an artistry/common name concern. It would depend, for me, on the style that most secondary publications use. If enough of them use "MASH" that we would not be imposing a rarely used format, I would support changing the style. Croctotheface 09:16, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
I was hoping to link to Wall Street Journal and New York Times articles, but strangely they all refer to the show with asterisks. I have never really looked much at the NYT, but I read the WSJ daily and except for iExample eExample etc they don't follow any silly rules that other brands call themselves. But my silly local newspaper does and I have even seen "Craigslist" all lowercase in headlines, when even Wikipedia doesn't do it. Foiled again. --Henry W. Schmitt 04:30, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
My impression as of late has been, that Wikipedia is moving away from a per-case consideration of outside sources, when it comes to style questions and that many editors make a distinction between content (such as the spelling of something, to which WP:COMMONNAME would apply) and the formatting of that content (i.e. capitalization, where for the most part, we just go for standard English). This approach certainly has a lot of benefits: Where possible every subject gets equal treatment, as we avoid to replicate inconsistencies or favoritism among outside sources (which goes along nicely with WP:NPOV) and also saves some of the time and energy put into repetitive discussions (and that's what our guidelines are supposed to do anyway).
That being said, a rationale I have seen for the asterisks in "M*A*S*H", is the distinction between the TV series and the movie. But that's not really an effective disambiguation, especially for people unfamiliar with the franchise. I'd say the Macy*s scenario applies and that the MASH related articles should be changed accordingly. - Cyrus XIII 15:35, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
I am troubled by the notion that we should discard WP:UCN in certain cases because we make a distinction between "content" and "formatting". I'm not sure that this distinction is as clear as it may seem at first glance: for instance, are "Oliver!" and "Oliver" really "the same name, just formatted differently"? To me, they seem very different, and the exlamation point seems to have communicative power. The rule you're suggesting would, in my mind, require "Oliver" with no exclamation point. I haven't done a ton of research, but I suspect that if we did decide to omit the punctuation, we would be the most significant publication that has done so. If we grant an exception for this case, then the rule falls apart and we are returning to case-by-case. The "look to the sources" approach that I advocate avoids the need to decide on our own what constitutes "part of the name" versus just "the way the name is formatted". Making that decisions ourselves, without guidance from sources, seems to run afoul of WP:V, if not other policies as well.
More generally, I'm confused by the logic behind what you're saying here. If we agree that WP:UCN applies in many situations ("naming" cases), and that it is appropriate to use a case-by-case thought process there, then I don't see why we would then turn around and say that going case-by-case violates our sacred principle of neutrality when applied to other situations ("formatting" cases). Not only is the naming/formatting distinction blurry (Oliver!(?)), but I don't see the logic behind why case-by-case is good for one category and terrible for the other. I am not and I never have suggested that we somehow "take a poll" of secondary sources and use whichever style is most popular. In fact, my argument has always been that if a style that more closely resembles standard English formatting is used in a significant number of reliable secondary sources, then we are free to apply this guideline, which calls for standardizing nonstandard styles. Croctotheface 11:02, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A more general successor to this page?

In a discussion that is now archived here: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles), misc archive 18, Fantasy characters in "Names of companies, products, and organizations", it was suggested that this page might be in need of a more general successor.

A lot of the formatting guidelines on this styleguide are not specific to trademarks at all. Examples are capitalization and funny symbols. As a result some guidelines like MOS:JP refer to this guideline for certain formatting issues, and derive their rationale from it.

Unfortunately this can create confusion since this guideline by itself really is about trademarks and nothing else. Therefore it has been suggested that MOS:TM needs a successor that still contains the guideines it contains now, but that is broader in scope and more general in its application, as well as less confusing when linked to from other guidelines.

Any ideas?

Sincerely yours, Shinobu 18:23, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I would actually be surprised if any of the cases you're talking about are not trademarks. Whoever owns the intellectual property has almost certainly trademarked character names, especially if they tend to be rendered in a crazy way. Croctotheface 10:28, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Initial lowercase trademarks should have an initial uppercase letter at the beginning of sentences.

E.g. vi and eBay when at the beginning of a sentence should read Vi and EBay respectively. Otherwise it just looks silly. I do not know of any other publication that starts sentences this way. How do you folks feel about this? --Henry W. Schmitt (talk) 01:01, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree - in particular, it seems an inconsistency that we insist on uppercasing trademarks that start with a lower case, except with names like iPod and eBay. Why the exception? Mdwh (talk) 12:35, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Partial Acronyms as Registered Trademarks

A great deal of disagreement exists with respect to how to treat partial acronyms which are trademarks. Examples of problems are SYSCO for Systems and Services Company,, SAAB for Svenska Aeroplanaktiebolaget., and GETRAG for Getriebe- und Zahnradfabrik Hermann Hagenmeyer AG. All of these companies promote the capitalization of their entire trademark. Because these aren't strict acronyms, some users of Wikipedia believe that they ought to be in camel case, or only have the first letter capitalized, while others such as myself lean toward all caps as they are commonly used. I'd like to have a discussion on this topic, come to a consensus here, and add a section to the guide to prevent confusion or fragmented tribal knowledge rules for dealing with these situations.

I'll start off by proposing a line which recommends these names stay in all caps. Does anyone object, or have anything to say about this? Nicholas SL Smith (talk) 02:35, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm for "Saab", "Getrag". If it is pronounced as a word, in most cases (I think) it should be Example not EXAMPLE. -Henry W. Schmitt (talk) 05:37, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm also for "Saab" and "Getrag". When you read the word Getrag, do read it letter-by-letter like "G.E.T.R.A.G." or as "Getrag? The same goes for Saab. All Saab television commercials here in Australia pronounce the brand name "Saab" as "Saab" and not "S.A.A.B. OSX (talk • contributions) 06:18, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
To cover two specific comments:
"All of these companies promote the capitalization of their entire trademark." Let them promote all they want, but let us not indulge them. To quote Bill Hicks, "Does anyone here work in marketing? Kill yourself. No, seriously, do. This is not a joke. There is no rationalisation for what you do. You are Satan's little helpers. Kill yourself." Bear in mind we're fighting more than just CamelCase these days. Look at Macy*s, or the grotesque tNA iMPACT!, to see how marketing men are mangling the English language in order to attract attention. These people also insist that ™ or ® be used, and Wikipedia's had e-mails of complaint in the past where we haven't obliged. That's one of the reasons such guidelines exist; to prevent WP looking like a corporate brochure.
"...others such as myself lean toward all caps as they are commonly used." As demonstrated both with Getrag and Saab, all caps are not more commonly used by reliable, independent sources, only by primary sources. Site-specific searches of the NY Times, the BBC, Reuters, and CNN bear this out.
I'm actually all for capitalization for acronymic initialisms (e.g. NATO or NASA), because they are commonly written in capitals by those same outside sources. In other words, the status quo seems OK to me as far as the guidelines are concerned. --DeLarge (talk) 09:58, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
This is not a discussion about Macy*s or tNA iMPACT; neither of these are acronyms, and discussion of them does not belong here (they are already covered in this style manual). There is no question that pure acronyms such as NASA, NATO, BMW, GM, USA, EU, EADS, 3M, etc., ought to be capitalized. The question at hand is what to do about partial acronyms. Currently we have no rule to address this issue.
I completely agree with not using advertising intentions as authority for how we treat trademarks. We either need to have a rule about this, or a set of criteria taking into account the totality of a case to determine the appropriate case (although, I support a more strict rule with less rather than more exceptions).
What needs to be considered here is:
  • When a trademark is a partial acronym, should it be capitalized?
  • If a name is trademarked in all caps (ie, it is listed in trademark offices as being in all caps), should it be capitalized? What constitutes common usage?
Nicholas SL Smith (talk) 18:19, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Well, what kind of rule do our sources tend to follow for partial acronyms? As to what constitutes common usage, that's determined at first on a case-by-case basis by consensus, and is often later generalized to some principle we can write down. -GTBacchus(talk) 02:14, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
It appears that sources differ greatly on this issue. Some sources use all caps and some do not. It appears that news sources often use non-caps, whereas technical articles and financial news sources use all caps. Nicholas SL Smith (talk) 03:32, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Huh, well that's awkward. Is there an easy way to produce a list of examples of the type of names we're talking about here? We could see what kind of ad hoc consensus has developed in various places, and see what that tells us. -GTBacchus(talk) 05:52, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

<--- Doesn't seem awkward to me, as I don't think (non-primary) sources do differ. Aside from the company's website itself, I haven't seen any specific examples cited where there's a pattern of "GETRAG" being used, only the assurance of User:Nslsmith that it's the case. For Google News it's uncapitalized the majority of the time (the Financial Times, USA Today, Autocar, Automobile Magazine, Edmunds.com, CNN, San Diego Union Tribune all go with no caps, while Forbes uses both). It's the same story with Google Scholar ~ plenty of patent applications using both cases, with a 15-5 majority in favour of no caps on the first two pages of results. Also, the German WP article is at de:Getrag, and I even found Lee v. Getrag Corporation, I.C. NO. 397246 (NC 3/21/2006) (NC, 2006).

I really don't think there's a need for new guidelines when common sense does as good a job. It's already covered by "follow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules" and "use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things", especially since I think that adheres to the spirit of WP much better than yet another layer of Wiki-bureaucracy. A simple WP:RM request should suffice. --DeLarge (talk) 09:04, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

An update to the guidelines is appropriate whenever two people read the same guideline and reach conflicting conclusions (as seems to be the case here). I read "follow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules" and to me that means write acronyms in all caps. MOS:CL says "write acronyms and initialisms in all capitals" with the only exceptions listed being "acronyms [that] have now become ordinary lowercase words, such as scuba and laser" (emphasis added). The examples here have regular words made into proper nouns in lowercase, and the one acronym example in all caps. No exceptions are listed.
Sources can indeed vary greatly on this issue (though not necessarily with GETRAG). One good example is NISMO. A Google News search shows a fairly even mix of NISMO and Nismo. We don't use sources as examples for tone, style, image usage, etc. so I don't see why this standard should be an exception.~ Dusk Knight 17:15, 21 November 2007 (UTC)


The case referenced DeLarge both capitalizes and leaves lower case the name. State rules of civil procedure have very strict rules dictating the format of party names both in the title of an action and within the body of an action. They don't use "common sense" or "common usage."
As for Google searches, a search of most recent news articles or of most accessed web pages does not accurately reflect common usage, it only reflects most recent news articles or most accessed web pages given a particular search parameter. Google's behavior as a search engine is not meant to, and does not accurately reflect common usage with respect to this matter. The reason this is so is that Google does not rank a page more highly when it uses a particular case, and users are not more likely to click on a web link because of the case used. Note also that no proprietary, print literature, or copy written literature is available through Google (manuals, specs, etc...).
The problem I have is precisely what Dusk Knight mentioned above. I don't want a fight, I want a candid and productive discussion about how to avoid conflict in the future; after all, the reason we have style manuals is to ensure conformity of style and eliminate conflict among editors. If there is indeed a common sense way to handle these names, it should be easy to articulate the sense into a simple, easy to follow rule.
I propose inclusion of a line that states something to the effect of when a trademark or company name is an acronym, we capitalize the acronym. When the noun is not proper, and has fallen into the vernacular such as laser or scuba have, we should use standard English capitalization rules. This is compatible with both MOS:CL and the existing framework of WP:MOSTM and is not repugnant to common or accepted usage. What are everyone's comments on this? How can we change it to be acceptable? Nicholas SL Smith (talk) 00:08, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

"The case referenced DeLarge both capitalizes and leaves lower case the name." It capitalizes it once, in a title heading that also capitalizes 'WILLIAM H. LEE' and 'PHOENIX INSURANCE COMPANY'. Elsewhere it's lower case, since the rest of the body of the article is written in standard English.

"As for Google searches, a search of most recent news articles or of most accessed web pages does not accurately reflect common usage" Aside from the fact that the news searches go back twenty years or more (here's a Google News search showing only prior to 1999, and the uncapitalized "Getrag" is still predominant), they are exactly what reflects common usage, as they are written and copy-edited by professionals who follow the same guides that dictate WP's own Manual of Style.

Further to this, according to both the Chicago Manual of Style and the Guardian Style Guide we should not be capitalizing "Getrag". CMOS defines it as a contraction as it's not based on the initial letters only,[15] while GSG says acronyms pronounced as words should be spelled out only with an initial capital.[16] Those recommendations would point to Nismo staying where it is, so this paragraph's for User:Dusk Knight.

"Note also that no proprietary, print literature, or copy written literature is available through Google". Yes it is, via Google Books, where the uncapitalized "Getrag" is still predominant. Thanks for reminding me to add that to the evidence at the move request. --DeLarge (talk) 12:51, 22 November 2007 (UTC)


I'll make an alternative suggestion to User:Nslsmith. To avoid further confusion in future, and following the recommendations of the Chicago Manual of Style and the Guardian Style Guide, we should specifically recommend against capitalizing acronyms which are not initialisms, and treat them only as contractions unless there's a compelling reason to do otherwise. --DeLarge (talk) 15:01, 22 November 2007 (UTC)


This recommendation is opposite an already existing rule in MOS:CL (see here). I disagree with creating a rule which states mutually repugnant positions by Wikipedia on something as basic and necessary as capitalization. The Manual of Style on capitalization dictates that we capitalize GETRAG.
I already addressed the fact that state rules of civil procedure have very strict rules about capitalization which do not reflect common or accepted English usage. Case text does not reflect a model for English usage in any way (believe me, I just turned in an appeal; editing it per Bluebook standards with state specific departures was murderous.)
As per the Google Books comment, Google Books is unable to display most information it scanned even originally intended to be displayed due to copyright restrictions. This tool is in Beta, and not a reliable source of research.
Normal Google searches are good to find notability and whatnot, but such searches are not natural, and are not approved ways to determine English usage, grammar, or common capitalization schemes. Such searching is original research. See the Guide on Search engine testing and Wikipedia's policy against original research. Nicholas SL Smith (talk) 19:25, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Upon further research into Wikipedia's definition for acronym, I discovered Acronym#Case which does not articulate a rule, but outlines how different entities handle acronyms. According to this article, acronyms are only capitalized when they have become normal words. Acronym#Pronunciation-dependent style offers insight into a a possible guideline, relating to whether an acronym is pronounced as a word, or each letter in the word is said. It also lays out a reason for Delarge's news searches through Google, which show a high level of normal case examples. Apparently many news media companies use normal case, which differs from the norm of all-capitalization. Either way - the definition if an acronym does not exclude acronyms such as GETRAG, see Acronym#Back-capitalization. The definition in that case says that even when such acronyms are not popper nouns, they are still often capitalized (notice the example of the non-popper noun MARC as MAchine Readable Cataloging or Mailing list ARChive). This gives an even stronger case to capitalize GETRAG. Nicholas SL Smithchatter 01:51, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
You may be right - Advertising law is a nebulous area composed of parts of trademark and intellectual property. Anyway - can you think of a way we can clarify the issue of acronym trademarks? Check the discussion at Talk:GETRAG Nicholas SL Smithchatter 01:29, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Add a small note...

I think on the first bullet point, which says, "Capitalize trademarks, as with proper names," a note should be added, indicating something along the lines of:

An exception may be made if the company producing the product writes it without a capital letter, when in print. Logos do not count as print, for the purposes of this principle. For example: In the case of "iPod," do not use "Ipod," but instead, "iPod," because the company which produces the iPod writes it with the special capitalization.

I know it needs some wording adjustments before it could be used.

Thoughts? aido2002talkˑuserpage 05:21, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I like this idea - it would help prevent confusion by allowing the article reference to appear as it does in the world, making the reference more useful and easy to spot. We do have disagreement, however, over whether companies should be able to dictate how a trademark is capitalized. Some believe that only normal English rules should be used, which would prevent anything such as iPod from appearing in text or as an article name. Others such as myself believe the actually registered trademark should be the controlling factor. Although it is not apparent with iPod, GETRAG, in the issue above is registered as a trademark in all capitol letters [here]. Apple's application, unfortunately, made no mention to a capitalization scheme. [see here] I support such a comment as it would avoid future issues and disagreements with trademarks such as iPod. Nicholas SL Smith (talk) 06:02, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

A big NOOOOO to this idea. The reason we use "iPod" is most certainly NOT that the company prefers it. The whole point of this guideline is to say that when there is a conflict between "what the company wants" and "what most closely resembles standard English", standard English wins. Croctotheface (talk) 06:13, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I suppose your reasoning, Croctotheface, is sound. The mere fact that a company prefers a particular capitalization should not dictate.
  • Common usage, however, tends to modify "what most closely resembles standard English," as there is no controlled English scheme per se. Unlike French, for example, English is a constantly evolving language with ever changing rules which mimic what is used. Truly, as "iPod" is the way we write the name of that crazy little audio device manufactured by Apple Computer, "iPod" is the way it ought to be written.
  • There is validity to the argument of listing a trademark as it is trademarked. A trade mark is nothing more than a name which is registered with a trademark office for the purpose of protecting the name of a company, service, or good. When a trademark is registered in a particular way, that registration serves as a definition of the name of that good, service, or company. If the name of something is nAME, I don't see why anyone here feels that he or she is entitled to modify the title to anything other than nAME.
Furthermore, the only reason to maintain English rules for article test is to promote clarity, standardization, and readability.
  • It is actually less confusing to maintain novel capitalization of commonly used or actual registered trademarks.
  • Any conversion reduces the similarity of information here to information found on real life. I am for reducing this conversion and interpretation. I am for presenting real world information as it appears in the real world for readers to interpret as they wish from their own point of view. I think that is the only way to keep from filtering information. Nicholas SL Smith (talk) 06:43, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Well, in the iPod example, we've chosen to go with that formatting because "Ipod" is rarely used, and the second letter capital resembles standard English closely enough that it does not disrupt the prose. For your "commonality" argument, it would depend on HOW common the non-standard usage is and how common a more standard equivalent is. There is no reason that we should use "REALTOR" just because that's how the trademark is registered. If we decide that we should, as a matter of policy, respect any and all nonstandard formatting, capitalization, and punctuation, our encyclopedia would read like a press release. If you want to look to real world cases, I would advocate doing as I described elsewhere on this talk page: look to secondary sources, such as newspapers, that write about the trademark. If there is a strong "consensus" among reliable sources that the nonstandard style should be used, then we should probably follow that trend rather than buck it. If there is a critical mass of secondary sources that change the formatting to make it appear more like standard English, then we should, for the sake of readability, as you suggest, go with standard English.
You do need to recognize that what you're proposing is, in no uncertain terms, to eliminate this guideline. I submit that the result would not benefit the publication. Croctotheface (talk) 07:10, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I do entirely support a high level of revision to this guideline, in many ways removing what it currently states. I believe taking course in the direction of following what is commonly used would improve Wikipedia as a whole. I worry that the reason many may disagree with me on this point is because they are not accustomed to such deviations from normality. Wikipedia as an entity is just that - a deviation from normality which is continuing to gain acceptance as a valid source for reference. I'm totally up for discussing this and, while I do disagree with you, I don't hold grudges -- How about this -- for now how about something resembling the following, as a compromise between your apparent viewpoint and that of aido2002:
"Trademarks not adhering to normal English capitalization rules are acceptable so long as the unique capitalization is the predominant method for portraying the trademark. A company's preference alone is not a controlling authority."
For a start it might not be bad - but something on point is needed. The guide only covers situations where trademarks may begin a sentence with a lowercase letter. There is enough controversy around this subject to address this situation here where we look for guidance. Nicholas SL Smithchatter 07:35, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
My primary issue with what you propose is that I don't know how "predominant" is defined. Does it mean that it's up to your judgment (or mine) about whether one or another style "predominates"? Do we do some sort of survey or sampling? If we initially find 500 cases of a nonstandard style and 501 of a standard one, do we accept the standard one, only to switch if the count becomes 502-501 the other way? Secondly, I think that you would be surprised by how often major publications do what we do in this guideline. For instance, a search of Google news for "Yahoo" reveals that the exclamation point is very rarely used, despite the fact that "Yahoo!" is how the trademark is registered. (I suspect, incidentally, that the "Yahoo!"s mostly come from press releases.) I do not believe that the guideline, as it stands, needs any revision or should be revised. I do think that exceptions can be made, but they should be rare and only for cases where the nonstandard style is overwhelming. I would define "overwhelming" as used something close to all the time by reliable secondary sources. If there exist more than one or two reliable publications who standardize the nonstandard style, we should follow the guideline as it stands and do the same. Croctotheface (talk) 07:47, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Predominant, overwhelming, majority, -- These are all subjective standards. I suppose getting away from subjectivity is impossible; but, I believe at least a mention of how to handle this is needed. Talk page after talk page of issues have arisen because nothing speaks to this issue. Clarification, if only minor, can only help. If you notice, in the line I suggested above, definitive speech was avoided. "acceptable" and "predominant" were used. This falls in line with the article's existing use of words such as "avoid," "should," or "general usage." It isn't easy to revise such as well written guideline, but ignoring an obvious gap in the guide it will only exacerbate the problem. How about an allusion to the use of a survey, or "talk page agreed upon" capitalization? Nicholas SL Smithchatter 07:59, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't think "avoid" or "should" are at all ambiguous--they're clearly prescriptive. I take "avoid X" in this guideline to mean "do not use X", and I really don't see another way of interpreting it. I'm not entirely sure, at this point, what you want from the guideline. Do you want to replace it with something that takes the opposite meaning? That's the impression I had before. If you do not want that, then what? What do you want the guideline to address that it does not currently? Regarding the "talk page specific" approach, that would defeat the purpose of having a manual of style. The MoS exists so that similar cases are treated similarly across the encyclopedia. Croctotheface (talk) 08:50, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
And it brings up whether SPAM™ the meat product should be all caps, differentiating it from email spam. - Arcayne (cast a spell) 14:49, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
There is already a difference between "Spam" (capitalized) and "spam". Croctotheface (talk) 18:17, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
With respect - no, there isn't. Currently, the DAB page lists SPAM (the corporate acronym) as 'Spam'. Apart fromt he initial listing in the article as 'SPAM', it is thereafter referred to as 'Spam'. My concern is this, do we respect trademarked names, or don't we? This cannot be a subjective matter, as we tread litigious waters by seeming to give preference of one corporate-created identity over another. - Arcayne (cast a spell) 21:17, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
First, you raised a disambiguation issue. It seemed that you suggested that email spam, which is not a proper noun, could not be adequately disambiguated if we used "Spam" for the meat product, but that we had to use "SPAM". I replied that because Spam and spam are distinct, there was no disambiguation issue. To your second question, no, we don't "respect" corporate trademarks. That is the point of this guideline--that a trademark is "officially" rendered a certain way is not a relevant principle for our style guide. There may be other reasons to use a style that is also official (for instance, if the "official" formatting were "Spam", there would be no reason to change it), but the fact that it is preferred by the trademark owner carries no weight. I don't see any legal issues whatsoever. There exists no law that says that corporate marketing must be replicated by independent entities. There is no law against giving "preference" to one corporation over another, even. If WP decided to enter an endorsement deal with a rival of Spam's and actively promote that rival at the expense of Spam, there would be no legal issue with that, and that is a much stronger stand than the one you are ascribing to us as it is. Croctotheface (talk) 22:05, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
"iPod" is not standard English (especially at the start of a sentence), anymore than using any other trademark that starts with a lower case, and/or has upper case characters after the first character. If the difference is based on "what most people use", then the article should reflect that. Mdwh (talk) 12:40, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

That last statement is clearly not founded in statute or in any American case law (which is pertinent for Wikipedia). There are many many legal issues with such an action - I hope Wikipedia never goes there.

I'm afraid Arcayne does have a point. If we look to incorporates news media to decide how to capitalize a trademark, we are looking to one, or a set of private organization to determine how to portray another private organization. If any confusion stems from this, an actionable claim exists against any entity promulgating such confusion (that is, assuming Wikipedia servers are physically located in the US, which I believe they are). I never meant to bing up that argument, it is in fact a valid argument under trademark law.

On another note, and what I meant to do initially by taking part in this talk page, I can not emphasize enough that some clarification is needed on this manual with respect to when to use novel capitalization in trademarks. The only steadfast rule existing now is that we are to portray acronym trademarks in all capitol letters (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters)#All caps). There is a world of confusion and of disagreement among reasonable editors on this issue. A consensus must be reached and we must augment this manual with the agreed upon rule. We'll have arguments about this topic ad infinitum unless something is done.

Croctotheface, I have noticed that you have a problem with non-adherence with classic English "rules." Why do you have a problem with non-"standard" capitalization schemes? Let us get to the reasoning behind these decisions to determine which route will be best. Nicholas SL Smithchatter 02:52, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm all for the "iPod" page being called "IPod". -Henry W. Schmitt (talk) 03:04, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm neither here nor there, IPod is also a non-standard capitalization - what needs to be developed is a guideline for when to do what with capitalization in trademarks. This guide is a still vague on a few points. Do you have a reason for being all for "IPod" which can help us? Nicholas SL Smithchatter 03:43, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I vaguely remember from my schoolings that both the first letter of sentences and the first letter of proper nouns are to be capitalized. --Henry W. Schmitt (talk) 03:56, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I am sure I recall that as well. This leans the way of a hard line rule for English standard capitalization. I am not against this per se as it is at least a move toward more guidance which I think is neeses. - I personally support less strict route and allow more freedom, allowing us to write as we see writing in everyday life, off line and online. This isn't up to me, however, it is up to the reaching of a consensus.Nicholas SL Smithchatter 07:09, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Two things: first, there is nothing in any statute that says a private entity such as Wikipedia can't endorse or support one company over another. I have no idea why you would think it would be prohibited from doing this. If WP wanted to, instead of being an encyclopedia, be a one-sided information source designed to support company X over company Y, there is nothing at all to prevent them from doing that. Of course, it could not say anything libelous, but using "Spam" instead of "SPAM-brand luncheon meat" is certainly not libelous. Second, Nicholas, you have not articulated any actual criticism of this guideline, aside from an implication that it is vague. I really have no idea what you actually want it to say, and it would go a long way if you spelled this out. My position is, basically, that the current guideline is sufficient to resolve disputes. It tells us that, when dealing with trademarks, we go with formatting that most closely resembles standard English unless it constitutes "inventing" a format. It then gets more specific with a series of examples. I don't see how that is unclear in theory or practice, and what cases the current guideline does not get at that you want it do, and what you want it to say about them. In other words, I don't really know what it is that we're talking about. What do you want the guideline to say? Croctotheface (talk) 07:22, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is totally allowed to do what it wants, but it is subject to injunction or damages if it were to do precisely what you mentioned; were it to affiliate with and promote product X from company X while portraying company or product Y as product y or why, Wikipedia would be open to litigation for confusing the public about the trademark of company Y. Furthermore, any use of Wikipedia to gain business for X through its maintenance of company Y information would open Wikipedia to limitation and damages. I don't have time, nor would it be appropriate to discuss the action ability of such actions under NAD, NARC, the Lanham Act, etc.,(the UK, Germany, and other EU affiliated countries are often more strict on these issues) but rest assured that the actions you have mentioned are and have been litigated in the United States. (this was not my point though, this conversation almost wondered to Keven Bacon).
My point, my goal was to show that this guideline is vague in how to handle "initialisms", acronyms, and the incomplete acronym trademarks. After initially posting, however, I found Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters)#All caps, which required the capitalization of acronyms even if they are not complete or strict acronyms. The reason this was an issue was because editors are attempting to sort this out through polls on individual talk pages, when it would be much better to have a guideline which addresses this so we all don't spend our time discussion how to capitalize GETRAG, Saab, and so on as listed above. A link to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters)#All caps may be helpful, as the two issues are closely related. Nicholas SL Smithchatter 02:51, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
I have a hard time seeing the use of "Spam" over "SPAM" as trademark dilution. Even if it were considered dilution, if the changing of its name were done for the purpose of criticism, I could see a free speech defense. Besides, if you're correct, then Yahoo has grounds for dozens if not hundreds of lawsuits against news outlets, such as CNN and the New York Times, both of which omit the exclamation point, which is part of Yahoo's registered company name, let alone their trademark. The "see also" section of this guideline already links to the all caps guideline, and has for some time now. Croctotheface (talk) 20:14, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Regardless - actions not litigated are not free from the threat of litigation - in law it is incorrect to say that something is "legal" or "okay" because someone else does it. Nicholas SL Smithchatter 00:01, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
At this point, if this belongs anywhere, it belongs on one of our talk pages, but I'll make one more reply here. My argument is not that because Yahoo has not sued to protect their trademark, it becomes legal to dilute it. My argument is more that because there are countless examples of publications doing what we do with trademarks, and yet there do not exist (to my knowledge, at least) any successful lawsuits against media companies for trademark dilution because of it, I have to expect that they don't exist because it's not actually trademark dilution. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. Croctotheface (talk) 00:12, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to refresh this discussion, which came up on Talk:deviantART earlier today. I do not believe this guideline as it stands completely fits either what is commonly done on Wikipedia, or what those involved with the articles under discussion think should be done. This is causing quite a few conflicts between those trying to enforce the style guide vs. those actively editing the articles concerned. Is there any objection to modifying the current guideline to recognize that, in general, if an officially-endorsed capitalization is also in wide use by those outside the organization promoting it, then we should use it too, per WP:COMMONNAME? I appreciate that this does not cover those situations in which there is no such endorsed capitalization, but it is a start. GreenReaper (talk) 02:36, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
No, I would not find that to be a positive change at all. First, the notion that there is a dichotomy between the best practice (exemplified by the guideline) and reality does not mean that we should scrap the guideline. Second, it is important that matters like these are not just left up to the editors who frequent the articles in question. In general, I've found that editors tend to be, for lack of a better term, fans of the subjects of articles they edit. In my experience, "fan" editors tend to believe that the subject of their fandom should be able to do whatever they please with the English language.
As far as devising a standard, I think my comments are pretty clear about what I advocate here. I think that a "wide use" test would have the effect of ending this guideline. I suspect that, for just about every trademark that is formatted in some weird, someone could make a claim of "wide use"; especially for trademarks that are used so often that hundreds or thousands of secondary sources write about them, there will almost definitely be some number that replicate the nonstandard formatting. Basically, this guideline exists to say that we do not desire to make exceptions to standard English just because a trademark owner wants to do something weird with capitalization or punctuation. The "wide use" standard would reverse this--it would say that we only standardize weird formatting if basically everyone else standardizes. I prefer a standard that goes the opposite way: we should only not standardize if basically nobody else does. Croctotheface (talk) 04:18, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
But I don't see the current guideline as best practice - I disagree with it. For example, TIME magazine should be under TIME magazine - or just TIME - unless the majority of people in the world do not use that wording to refer to it. This should be shown before a change in the page title is made. I don't see any other justification for a change from the official phrasing. GreenReaper (talk) 00:41, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
How do you propose finding out what formatting "the majority of the people in the world" use? I don't think that such a test is workable at all. Even if we could somehow determine what style each person used and tally the votes, would we need to change styles if we found that it went from 51%/49% one way to 51/49 the other way? As to the "officialness" argument, there are a number of replies, which have been recounted in more detail further back in this page's history. First, there's the slippery slope: if we accept irregular capitalization on the grounds that we should simply recount trademarks the way the TM owner wants, we would then need to use the TM symbol if the owner uses it each time, too. If the only way to standardize names if by showing that the "majority of the people in the world" use it, then we would never be able to standardize anything because we would never be able to determine that half plus one of the world's population uses the standard style. Secondly, the reader is not served by nonstandard styles. "PGA TOUR" has no more communicative power than "PGA Tour"; it's only rendered in all caps because it makes it stand out in paragraphs. That's great for branding and marketing, but our goal is not to support either of those thigns, it's to inform our readers. Trademarks don't deserve special treatment compared to other proper nouns just because the trademark owner wants to grant it to them. Croctotheface (talk) 01:12, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
You keep implying that my argument is based on owners' rights. Please don't do that. It is based on what is most used. That is why I said "unless the majority of people". Use of the trademark is a default, that keeps us safe from using an minority name unless it has clear, verifiable support. And there are plenty of ways to gauge support, the simplest being to count unique sources. In many cases, such as iPod (and quite possibly TIME) then it would be clear from the preponderance of sources. If it is not clear, then we should use the trademark as a default, because at least then we can point to something and say "this is our justification for using this name - the responsible organization uses it, and we know of none that is proven to be more common". We might have to switch once or twice while it settled down, but we move pages around at the drop of a hat already. Just because it is hard to make the right decision does not mean we should not do it. And it does not even have to be very hard - how many do you know that have more than a handful of unique sources and would be in doubt over their naming? deviantART has about ten to twenty, tops, if we added all the ones that aren't there which could be found in a quick search. Then we would have a verifiable name based on our sources, rather than the opinion of Wikipedia editors. GreenReaper (talk) 07:51, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] .NET Framework

NET doesn't stand for anything, shouldn't it be .Net or Dot Net? - Onmyounomichi (talk) 16:46, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Discussion here: Talk:.NET Framework#Title. - Onmyounomichi (talk) 15:49, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] .hack//Sign

Also, I think the formatting here may also need a change. ".hack//SIGN" is the name of an anime series. The "." is pronounced "dot", which is spelled out inside of it in the logo, and the // isn't pronouced at all. Move to Dot Hack Sign? - Onmyounomichi (talk) 00:03, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

You should have said there's a ongoing discussion about this on the article's talk page.Kazu-kun (talk) 03:45, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FOX vs. Fox

There are inconsistencies on how to type it out. I think it should be listed as FOX, since that is how the station lists it Ctjf83 talk 19:17, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

It should be "Fox". It's not acronym. If this manual of style means anything, then this is a clear cut case where the editorial convention on Wikipedia is to remove superfluous capitalization. Dragons flight (talk) 19:23, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
why wouldn't we follow what the station uses, that makes sense to follow them Ctjf83 talk 19:24, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Because Wikipedia, like many publishers (e.g. the NYTimes), has an internal style guidelines for consistency and does not simply reproduce the style that any organization chooses to use. For example, REALTOR® is the official style propogated by the National Association of Realtors, who hold a trademark on that word, but saying "REALTOR®" all the time instead of "Realtor" is silly. In the same way, the Wikipedia community decided not to use all caps except for things that are actually acronyms (or psuedo-acronyms like MCI, which is read M-C-I, even though the letter don't stand for anything). Fox, being derived from the publisher's name, is clearly a word and not an acronym and as such our convention is to treat it in Title Case rather than ALL CAPS. Dragons flight (talk) 19:33, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
OK Ctjf83 talk 19:38, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I heavily disagree with this point. The all-caps or the all-lower case of a specific brand or name is its most common distinguisher from the commonplace word, hence the reason many companies do it. i.e., the video game "GUN" is spelled that way by Neversoft; allowing that spelling on Wikipedia distinguishes the game from the firearm. In answering the Wiki question: "Ask yourself what most people would enter when looking for this item?" I feel that those who are looking for the game "GUN" would type "GUN", rather than "Gun". But even if they didn't, that's what redirects are for. Gun (video game) is the current redirect page whenever one enters "GUN" in the search field. So my question is: if the actual spelling by the CREATOR of the product is "GUN", then why would Wikipedia insist on misspelling it? If my parents decided to name me "BOB SMITH" in all capital letters, my name WOULD be "BOB SMITH", not "Bob Smith", and if I had a page on Wikipedia that read "Bob Smith", it would be WRONG. Just like, if Wikipedia called the article "Deviantart", it would not be correct, as the site is called "deviantART", and is listed as such. iPod is not listed as "Ipod". Why is it that only CamelCase names get their true names listed, but names spelled in all-caps and all-lower get the shaft? If this is to be a true encyclopedia (of which the point is to EDUCATE the public) then we are doing the public a disservice by giving them misinformation. The movie TRON is spelled in all-caps on EVERY professional web site I've visited, yet Wikipedia insists on spelling it "Tron"-- which is actually the spelling of the character, "Tron", so now more confusion is added to the mix. In many cases the capitalization of a word ITSELF is a major disambiguator, and Wikipedia's policy of consistently ignoring brand disambiguators for titles is foolish, irresponsible and incorrect. The company IS "FOX", so if I'm reading an article on "FOX", why then would I want to believe it shares the exact same capitalization of a small, furry woodland creature? If someone writes the name of the video game "GUN" as "Gun" because of the Wikipedia page, and the reader then corrects them by saying the proper spelling is "GUN" and provides the game box as reference, who then is correct: the one with the Wikipedia page, or the one with the actual game box? That version IS "GUN". Activision even spells it as such in their press releases. Any other spelling WOULD be incorrect, and I heartily believe this stupid rule of disallowing item-specific captialization, except for instances of CamelCase, should be dissolved. --Schmendrick (talk) 17:03, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
"Gun", as a proper noun, does not present a disambiguation issue when compared to "gun", which is not a proper noun. Otherwise, you can research past discussions of this nature as far as people who assert that "official" names should be formatted exactly as the trademark owner formats them if you want replies to the arguments you have made here about "correctness". Croctotheface (talk) 17:21, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
If then answer to Schmendrick's question is so hard to explain or complex that we ask that he research it on his own - perhaps the rule is doing more harm than it is worth. We need a simple to follow rule with a simple rationale. The current atmosphere surrounding this topic is turbulent -- to take enormous liberty with capitalization is against the spirit of this medium. I think these guidelines need revision. When a company actually coins a word or name, that company's usage is correct because it coined it. When another entity such as Wikipedia comes along and decides that it should be another way - it does a dis-service to the research community. Nicholas SL Smithchatter 19:35, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
You misunderstand. The intent of the guideline is to say that if multiple formats exist in common usage then you should choose the one in Title Case without obnoxious punctuation. For example Time rather than TIME, Fox rather than FOX, Macy's rather than Macy*s, etc. We aren't inventing any formats, simply choosing among the existing ones in a way that provides a consistent presentation without annoying gimmicks. In many cases, this means ignoring the trademark holders preferences, but that is because the trademark holder is often trying to load their mark with obnoxious gimmicks that we don't want. Personally I see FOX as simply an example of that. Obviously Fox is named for the surname of the founder William Fox, and capitalizing it is simply a branding exercise to draw extra attention to the name. We don't have to participate in that, and allowing trademark holders to control the textual presentation of their mark could very quickly lead to non-neutral looking copy that emphasized some companies over others. Dragons flight (talk) 22:07, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps this discussion (along with several others, i.e. the one currently in going on at Talk:DeviantArt) is an indicator, that this guideline needs an introductory text, in which things like the concern about undesirable brand management go. A "this page in a nutshell" box, containing the "Follow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules, even..." line, also couldn't hurt. - Cyrus XIII (talk) 22:24, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
I think that would be very helpful. Croctotheface (talk) 22:32, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
Okay, I wrote one. Improve as necessary. Dragons flight (talk) 22:58, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
That's pretty good. I agree with it as well, however, I think it is important to be careful not to give the impression that we are to ignore the presentation or common usage of a trademark (otherwise, Ipod would be used instead of iPod) -- I modified it to indicate common usage - I'll edit it a bit more to convey the idea that a company's presentation is not an authority (but it may be given consideration). Nicholas SL Smithchatter 01:01, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

(dedent) NPOV requires that we not give significant preference to the styling of some trademarks over other, hence the intent of this guideline IS that we should largely ignore company preferences when there is a commonly used and less ostentatious format. iPod is an exception that comes from the usage rule, because Ipod (or IPod) are very uncommon and hence not reasonable choices, even though Ipod would ordinarily be preferable (more like standard English) if it were a common usage. Dragons flight (talk) 01:28, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Introduction/rationale

Since earlier attempts at an introductory text to the guideline differed on a few issues, this might need a bit more discussion, in order to ensure guideline stability. I have reverted the guideline to its introduction-less form for now, below are the previous drafts. It's a bit late for me, so I'll throw in my own 2 cents later on. Feel free to format the drafts to point out differences. - Cyrus XIII (talk) 01:33, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Most recent revision by Croctotheface
Trademarks are to words and short phrases used to by organizations to identify themselves and their products and services. Often, these names are written in several different ways with variations in capitalization, punctuation, and presentation. When choosing how to format a trademark, Wikipedia editors should choose among styles already in use, not invent new ones. In general, editors should choose the style that most closely resembles standard English, regardless of the preference of the trademark owner. The remainder of the guideline offers some more specific recommendations for frequently occurring nonstandard formats.
Most recent revision by Nicholas SL Smith
Trademarks are words and short phrases used to by organizations to identify themselves and their products and services. Often, these names can be written in several different ways with variations in capitalization, punctuation, and presentation. When choosing how to format a trademark, Wikipedia editors should choose among styles already in mainstream or common use, not invent new ones. The remainder of the guideline offers some more specific recommendations for choosing amongst commonly occurring variations.
Most recent revision by Dragons flight
Trademarks are words and short phrases used to by organizations to identify themselves and their products and services. Often, these names can be written in several different ways with variations in capitalization, punctuation, and presentation. When choosing how to format a trademark, Wikipedia editors should choose among styles already in use mainstream or common use, not invent new ones. In order to avoid giving greater apparent attention to some trademarks rather than others, editors should usually choose a style that closely resembles standard English, regardless of the preferences of the trademark owner. The remainder of the guideline offers some more specific recommendations for choosing amongst commonly occurring variations.

I like my version the best.  ;) But seriously: I don't like Nicholas's version because it basically rewrites the guideline. The whole purpose of this intro was to state clearly that we standardize formatting. If we're not going to assert that, then what's the point? I don't mind Dragons's version, but I don't know that the reasoning is to avoid giving preference to nonstandard marks (though that is certainly a danger of replicating wacky style); I had thought that the point was more that standard English was its own rationale. Croctotheface (talk) 03:48, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I concur, that Nicholas's draft deviates too much from the existing guideline's spirit. My own attempt below is based on yours, with a rationale at the end that echoes the consistency bit from the WP:MOS main page, followed by Dragon's NPOV passage.Standard English is certainly a great rationale on its own, due to such standards forming the basic tools for communicating information. But neutrality concerns keep coming up when those wacky styles are being discussed and I have seen a lot of comments made during move request proceedings that went along the lines of "We don't do brand management - period." - Cyrus XIII (talk) 15:54, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Introduction
Trademarks are words and short phrases used by organizations to identify themselves and their products and services. Often, these names are written in several different ways with variations in capitalization, punctuation, and presentation. When deciding how to format a trademark, editors should choose among styles already in use (not invent new ones) and choose the style that most closely resembles standard English, regardless of the preference of the trademark owner. This provides articles with more consistency and avoids giving greater attention to some trademarks rather than others (see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view). Listed below are more specific recommendations for frequently occurring nonstandard formats.
{{policy in a nutshell}} template
Follow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules, regardless of the preference of the trademark owner.
  • I like the nutshell template, and I think we should go ahead and add that forthwith. I still don't love the reference to NPOV, since I don't really think that's a big part of the reasoning here, but I'm not going to quibble about it to the point that it delays adopting this change. I'd prefer to rewrite that line as something like, "This practice helps ensure consistent language and avoids giving more attention to trademarks with nonstandard styles than to marks that follow standard English conventions." If we want to reference NPOV, I'd prefer a clause outside parentheses. Croctotheface (talk) 21:39, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
  • The nutshell template goes up then. As for the NPOV bit, I'd still consider it useful to preempt the repetition of related arguments in said move discussions, but likewise, I don't have that strong of an opinion on the issue either. Hence I've asked GTBacchus, who has probably a lot more move request-related experience than most editors/admins (at least more than me), to provide another 2 cents. - Cyrus XIII (talk) 09:22, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
I suppose that I can agree, then, just because there's no place else to even raise the NPOV concern if not there. My issue is not that I think the concept is invalid, it's that the way it's presented here, it appears to be the main rationale behind the guideline. I think the main rationale is more that trademarks are just words and should not get special treatment. Croctotheface (talk) 23:10, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi. I've read the discussion, looked through the guideline's history, and browsed through some related project pages. I found WP:MOSPN (proper nouns), which I hadn't seen before, but seems clearly relevant. From what I've seen, Wikipedians tend to oppose non-standard formatting for a couple of reasons.

Readability is one reason: there is an expectation in standard English that proper nouns will be capitalized, titles of works will be rendered in title case, etc. Violations of this expectation are jarring, especially to readers unfamiliar with the topic.

Another argument, linked to NPOV, is that we don't assist trademark holders in establishing brand distinction through use of FlAsHy! formatting. It might be more directly linked to WP:NOT a soapbox, nor a promotional tool, than it is to NPOV. The distinction is between describing something and promoting it.

All told, I like Cyrus' suggested nutshell with something like Croctotheface's suggested edit. We wish to insure readability, and we wish to avoid making some proper nouns seem more special than others. -GTBacchus(talk) 03:05, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

(deindent) How about this one then: "This practice helps ensure consistency in language and avoids drawing greater attention to some subjects than to others." The words "subjects" encompasses trademarks, as well as any other entity a trademark may gain an edge over (in terms of reader attention), by employing flashy formatting. And the soapbox part of WP:NOT indeed applies more directly in the context of trademarks (and it links to WP:NPOV itself anyway), hence the link under the relevant passage of the sentence. - Cyrus XIII (talk) 08:30, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm OK with that; really I'm OK with most of the versions here. I think I'd prefer to use "undue attention" or some similar construction, since it's not by definition bad, wrong, or non-neutral to draw greater attention to some things than others. Croctotheface (talk) 08:43, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Good point. I'm feeling lucky, so I just put up the resulting introduction. - Cyrus XIII (talk) 08:55, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Okay, so what is the ultimate consensus? I've tried to follow along, but we're darting back and forth so much, can someone please clarify what's ultimately been decided? --Schmendrick (talk) 18:01, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Schmendrich, I don't think there really is a consensus, but it looks like we're getting close to a workable guideline. Nicholas SL Smithchatter 02:58, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
I like the nutshell addition but it must be amended to include the fact that common usage dictates how a trademark is listed, not only standard formatting. This is how we do it all over Wikipedia - take iPod for example. I'll make an attempt to change it, although it may double the length of the nutshell -- Nicholas SL Smithchatter 02:39, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
No, the principle with iPod is not common usage, but rather that "iPod" is more standard than some other variation. It could be more standard because of common usage, but if a certain style were common usage and not standard, we would choose a standard style rather than a common one. Croctotheface (talk) 04:44, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Let us look at why is iPod more "standard." First off, iPod is not in any way standard English usage. iPod is common usage, and because it is so commonly referred to as iPod, it has become the correct way to portray the word (through common usage), although it goes against standard English usage. Therefore, the common usage test is correct. Nicholas SL Smithchatter 19:04, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
As I said in my previous post, it could be that a style that might otherwise be nonstandard BECOMES standard because of common usage. If that happens, as it has with i- and e- prefixes such as in iPod, then so be it. It does not somehow mandate the rule you suggest. It also does not follow that because nonstandard usage has become standard through common use in a certain case, it must be that common usage is always standard. Croctotheface (talk) 21:06, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] BRD section break

Per the Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle I've restored User:Croctotheface's version for now. It has the approval of User:GTBacchus and User:Cyrus XIII, while User:Nslsmith's suggestions were disputed. Whydontyoucallme dantheman (talk) 20:35, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I think we have a semantic miscommunication. Standard English dictates that there will never be a lower case letter in front of a proper noun. This convention was not modified by Apples marketing team. The -i prefix is not a prefix at all, but a beginning letter which looks cool when in lower case. This violates all English rules. The only reason it is being listed as iPod is because it is written most commonly as iPod. Simply because it most commonly written this way does not make it standard English (I think this is the misunderstanding). Any English book will direct the reader to write iPod as Ipod; this is standard English, English has not been modified.
Common usage dictates iPod. You are completely wrong in you assertion that because it is common it is standard. Standard English implies consistent rules which encompass the usage for a language. We are talking about common usage here - and this needs to be included in the introduction and nutshell, or this guide has been negatively affected and is wrong. If you assertion is correct - common usage must still be included in the introduction or nut shell because if, as you assert, because something is common it is then standard, common usage should be first considered (as the edit you reverted stated). Either way - the nutshell as it is now is incomplete and wrong. Nicholas SL Smithchatter 22:20, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
I respectfully disagree. Words with the i- and e- prefixes (and they are prefixes) represent a new category that came into usage in recent years. Standard English usage for these words is to render them as we do here: iPod, eBay, and so forth. If you find "English books" that instruct writers to use Ipod and Ebay, then by all means bring them to our attention, and perhaps the consensus will change. You are completely wrong that I said common implies standard, and I in fact said the opposite. There are lots and lots of cases where this guideline recommends a usage that is arguably less common because it is standard. Nobody but you thinks that this guideline exists to recommend common usage. Croctotheface (talk) 00:08, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I detect a combative tone in your comment; take a moment to consider this: What source do you have for stating that i- or e- are prefixes? What are you implying that they mean, and what is your source? iPod and eBay are not standard English (English condoned by style guides). They simply are not, regardless of agreement or disagreement. All English books state that popper nouns in English are to be capitalized (the first letter). The Chicago Manual of Style, The Guardian Manual of Style, the Blue Book [(Rule 2)], simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style, and the MLA style Guide all state that proper nouns are to be capitalized. These are very well accepted authorities on English usage, used by the authors of text books, editors of anything from newspapers to novels, and technical writers alike. The Wikipedia article on Capitalization makes note of the trend of modern companies to deviate from the "rule:"
Most brand names and trademarks are capitalized (e.g., Coca-Cola, Pepsi) although some have chosen to deviate from standard rules (e.g., easyJet, id Software, eBay, iPod) to be distinctive.
So, it was both the intent of the trademark holder to change the style of capitalization (something we deny should be even considered, but obviously it is if is becomes common), and that it is an exception to the rule (meaning standard English). What source are you using which states that standard English (or any English rule) allows these exceptions to the rule? There is no legitimate source I've seen which defines any e- or i- as a legitimate prefix for anything (such as un- ex- or in- are in fact legitimate Latin prefixes which change the meaning of words in Latin based languages.) Furthermore, even legitimate prefixes to proper nouns are not allowed to be in lower case unless hyphenated.
We are left with the fact that these are exceptions to the Rule (ie: they are not standard usage). Why do we allow this deviation? The reason we allow this deviation is because this deviation has fallen into common usage (not because it is now standard English usage which is backed up by the rules set forth in anything). When and if style guides ever cannonize these deviations, we can say they are standard English. We need to be up front and straightforward with this fact in this guideline as to keep this guideline logical and correct to practice. Whether or not you disagree, your claim is original research unless you can back it up with reliable citations. Nicholas SL Smithchatter 00:45, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Your comments above were certainly combative ("you are completely wrong"). I really don't have anything more to add to this conversation. You assert that i- and e- are not prefixes in this case, but you don't explain why it matters, so I don't much care. "Capitalize proper nouns" doesn't really get to this specific case, which has come about in recent years. AP style, for instance, agrees with our usage, but I don't think that means that the Associated Press discards standard English because of "commonality" as you suggest that we must if we go with iPod rather than Ipod. Even if we set aside my argument that i- and e- prefixes are special cases that are treated differently, you make a very big unsupported assumption about this guideline. Because this guideline makes an exception for iPod and eBay, you say, this guideline cares mostly about "common" usage, despite the fact that the word "common" has, to my knowledge, never appeared within it in with any kind of consensus behind it. You hinge your entire "common usage" argument on the case of iPod because every other case cuts against "commonality" and for standard English. Considering that nobody else here thinks that this guideline means what you think it means, I don't think there's much more to be said about this topic. Croctotheface (talk) 00:58, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
You guys don't seem to be using the word "standard" in the same way. Defining that might help. Does "standard" mean that the style guides recommend it? All of them? Two of them? Does "standard" mean the New York Times does it?

It may be that the style books will eventually include exceptions for certain prefixes. If that happens, it will be because such use has become so overwhelmingly standardcommon that most everybody changes usage despite the books. Those things do evolve over the centuries.

I'd like to see more examples of proper nouns with "i-" or "e-" prefixes that are lower-cased in all or nearly-all cases. That could constitute evidence of the new syntactic category that Croctotheface is arguing exists. (Is that the right word?)

Also, for such examples, what decisions have we made? Are we entirely consistent with the "i-" and "e-" rule? Eventually, this page should be describing the community's decision rather than prescribing it. Thus, the decisions made at Talk:iPod and Talk:eBay and elsewhere are the real guideline, which we're writing down more or less accurately.

It might be advisable to bring more eyes to the situation. I can really see both sides, and am not sure which is a more accurate description of consensus. -GTBacchus(talk) 01:33, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

If it's true that there are a critical mass of grammar and usage books, style guides, and so forth that say "iPod" is wrong and "Ipod" is standard English, then that may persuade me that we should use "Ipod". However, my suspicion is that they don't exist because i- and e- prefixes are a relatively new phenomenon, and there's a capital pretty close to where it should be. I have a couple of points of contention here, though: first, style guides are prescriptive by nature. We shouldn't seek to "describe" substandard practice despite the fact that editors out there like it. There are a lot of editors who think that we should just use "official names", especially for their pet article. Croctotheface (talk) 01:37, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
The one that User:Nslsmith linked above would seem to favor "Ipod". I haven't checked the others. To be fair though, the one doesn't actually address the case of proper nouns that are rendered by most users of English with lower-cased initial letters. I assume most of the style books are largely silent on the question, because as you say, it's new. CamelCase is a related style choice that the books haven't had time to make a ruling on. -GTBacchus(talk) 01:48, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
"Capitalize proper nouns" doesn't get at this case. AP Style calls for iPod very specifically. Also, this discussion occurred at this page already, and you can refer to the archive for it. The point of this guide is NOT to reflect "common usage"; it's to create a set of coherent rules to unify the way trademarks are formatted at this encyclopedia. There is no way to determine "common usage", as I've asserted many times, and it's not really a useful principle. WP:UCN is designed to apply only if the rest of the encyclopedia's guidelines don't apply, and really, in that case, it's more about saying, "The rest of our recommendations have failed you, so just make sure to use something that makes sense." Croctotheface (talk) 01:53, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Minor revision: the point is not to reflect "common usage", but it's important to say that sometimes, by way of something being commonly used, it becomes standard as well. In these cases, of which, I submit, iPod is one, we acknowledge that the language has changed and that something that may have previously been unacceptable is now considered standard. Croctotheface (talk) 01:56, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Under that AP Style link, the principle they cite is that "Generally, we follow the company's preference in spelling their name." That's pretty much the opposite of the principle that we tend to apply, so it's a bit strange that we should follow their example in our attempt to do the opposite of what they do. -GTBacchus(talk) 02:02, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

In my opinion, the reason we use "iPod" and not "ipod", "IPod", "Ipod" is a result of the "styles already in use" clause. None of these alternatives have a significant amount of usage anywhere, and hence they don't meet the treshold for consideration, even though "Ipod" would undoubtedly win a standard English test in terms of formatting. So "iPod" is not an exception to the rule, it is merely a result of having only one real choice. Dragons flight (talk) 01:20, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

My goal here is to be complete - if we allow unconventional capitalization, we ought to describe when we allow it. I agree with Dragons flight, that there is no reasonable alternative for such examples in frequent or common use; however, we are still missing the point that these are new issues which do indeed break rules in use today which prescribe how we do things in the English language. Why is iPod the only way we write that particular proper noun? The reason is that Apple was successful in its marketing campaign, and most people adopted (incorrectly) the intent of Apple Computer. As this went on, we began to accept it as normal, and it became common English (but not correct according to standard (meaning according to prescribed rules)). Will any future names be allowed to follow this convention? According to the way this guideline is worded, the answer is a resounding no. Capitalization of certain articles will be an artifact of when they were originated with respect to this introduction (which seems absurd). We can't get around the need for informing writers when unconventional capitalization is needed by simply saying that certain forms of unconventional capitalization are now "standard" just because - we allow it? - because it is used? (slang is not standard just because many or most people use it). What I propose is a description of when we allow proper nouns to break standard or conventional English rules of proper noun capitalization. Omission of this information is also absurd.
The addition of a line which suggests that we "consider common usage" serves our purposes here. Nicholas SL Smithchatter 01:59, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
The guideline is very descriptive; it says, "Trademarks beginning with a one-letter lowercase prefix pronounced as a separate letter do not need to be capitalized if the second letter is capitalized, but should otherwise follow normal capitalization rules." I've described in great detail why it is that I think we do this. You seem to believe that prescribed rules prohibit this; it's my contention that, in this case, common use of an unconventional formatting led that formatting to become standard. It could be that we are just using terms differently, as someone above suggested, but I don't think so. You seem to want to say that because we made an exception to what you consider standard for one case, we should make it in all cases if there is a "commonality" concern. If we did that, most or all of the other examples in the guideline would flip, and the guideline would recommend for what it currently recommends against. Croctotheface (talk) 02:07, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Also, you didn't want to add a line that says to consider common usage: your edit made "common usage" the main criterion we should look to. To the extent that we say that we should not invent formats, I agree with you on this point. However, I do not think it would be better for us to use, say, PGA TOUR because we somehow determined that it is more "common". Croctotheface (talk) 02:09, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Croctotheface, what is your definition of "standard English"? Is it determined by the Associated Press? by style guides? How common does something have to be before it has become a new standard, and who makes that call? How do we know that "eBay" is part of a new syntactic category, but "PGA TOUR" isn't? -GTBacchus(talk) 02:15, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I think that the rule we're actually following is this: We follow standard English (as defined by style guides, etc), except when we decide to make exceptions. Exceptions we have made include, besides iPod and eBay, examples such as Yahoo!, Jeopardy!, and brian d foy. I don't think there's a common thread unifying these, except that a consensus formed. -GTBacchus(talk) 02:17, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

GTBacchus! I think we're getting somewhere -- ok -- so we do make exceptions when we form consensus. Shouldn't we state what binds these consensuses together? (or at least state "unless consensus is formed to the contrary..."). From what I've read, consensus is found when there is an overwhelming body of usage which is unconventional, or against standard English usage. Nicholas SL Smithchatter 02:29, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I like the "unless consensus is formed to the contrary..." language; it feels right. Perhaps a good way to define where the line is drawn is to give examples on either side of it. Are there cases parallel to "Jeopardy!" and "Yahoo!", but where we decide to suppress the nonstandard punctuation? Why is brian d foy different from bell hooks, anyway? I think I know why iPod is different from TNA iMPACT. DeviantArt is as close to the center of the gray area as I believe I've seen, so it plays a prominent role in indicating just where the line is. -GTBacchus(talk) 03:14, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
If we put that language in, we may as well just remove this guideline. If we just say, "do this unless you don't want to", we're not recommending anything. There is a strong consensus to standardize nonstandard styles. There are cases where, I'd argue, seemingly nonstandard use is actually standard or there is some greater purpose to having seemingly decorative punctuation. Croctotheface (talk) 04:01, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I strongly disagree. There is a strong consensus that our guidelines, at their best, are more descriptive of consensus than prescriptive. They describe decisions we've made. The fewer than half-dozen of us have no business telling the community what to do by making a "law" of some kind. The best thing we can do is descibe what solutions the community has made, over hundreds of pages with thousands of participants. Guidelines reflect community decisions; they don't dictate them. Rather than making them pointless, this is precisely the usefulness of guidelines. They guide the formation of new consensus, by reminding us what we've thought in the past. -GTBacchus(talk) 06:03, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm not suggesting that WE prescribe for people, I'm suggesting that the idea behind the MOS is that it represents a strong consensus across the encyclopedia. So, if the editors of some obscure article arrived at the consensus to use a green background with yellow typeface, write in all caps, or allow some wacky formatting for a trademark, this guideline exists to tell them that they should not. If this guideline, instead of saying what it does now, said that we should use whatever style the TM owner uses on its press releases, then most naming or move discussions that came out in favor of standard English would go the other way because people who participate look to guidelines for guidance. I suspect that, before this guideline became well known, very few nonstandard trademarks were standardized. Now, many if not most have been standardized. If the purpose of this guideline were to reflect what editors are doing out there in the "field", then it would say something very different. I don't believe that it's good practice to say that editors of individual articles can come to whatever consensus to ignore the MOS that they please and then implement that. Croctotheface (talk) 06:17, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Right, we seem to be using the word "consensus" differently. A few editors at an obscure article don't represent as broad of a consensus as this guideline. Examples that we would cite in this guideline, such as iPod and Jeopardy! and DeviantArt and TNA Impact!, are based on pretty broad consensuses, because they were debated across pages and months, and there was a lot of community input. Saying that we come to a consensus decision to do something doesn't mean that a few editors make a decision - it's the community that decides what kind of exceptions we make.

Reflecting what editors do "in the field" is precisely what guidelines are for; that's how most of our guidelines have been written. You suspect that, before this guideline was written, very few non-standard trademarks were standardized, but I suspect that this guideline was written precisely because we were already standardizing non-standard trademarks. That's where guidelines come from. -GTBacchus(talk) 06:57, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

If you're saying that the consensus that formed this guideline is broad enough to trump editors at individual articles, then we agree. I thought that you were saying that consensus from individual articles could override the consensus that formed this guideline. I thought you wanted the guideline to be amended so as to say something like, "The MOS says you should standardize, but if you guys want to come to a different consensus, then just do what you want." If you agree that consensus at an individual article does not trump this guideline, then there's no point of contention here. Croctotheface (talk) 07:27, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes, when I say "We use standard English formatting, except when we decide to make an exception", I'm using the strong form of the word "we". I might take issue with some of your language, but I suspect we're in broad agreement that I'm not saying that a few people get to make a decision that flies in the face of a decision made by many. "Consensus at a particular article" - just isn't consensus. Consensus is a community thing. People's opinions at a particular article may or may not indicate what consensus is, but they don't make it.

What I'm suggesting is that we avoid "should" language to the extent that we can, and instead use descriptive language, such as "we have decided such-and-such in the past". We might as well acknowledge that we might decide to make exceptions for reasons other than those already described, and that we may change our minds at any point. It would take a pretty strong demonstration of consensus to start using a bunch of non-standard formatting, but if that happens, then we'll document it here. -GTBacchus(talk) 07:37, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

OK, I'm with you, more or less, as to the first part. It would certainly be possible for the consensus that formed this guideline to change, but it could not simply be ignored on a case by case basis without a reasonable basis. To the second part, I don't think I agree with you at all about the whole notion of "descriptive" guidelines, unless you mean simply that they describe a current consensus and that consensus can change. When I think of some of the core concepts of Wikipedia, like WP:N and WP:AGF, that have "guideline" status, I can't help but think that guidelines are really the norm of enforcement here, and it is right and proper for them to say that editors should do X and should not do Y. WP:AGF, for instance, is comprised of line after line telling editors what they should do. Should we really say something like, "Editors have found it helpful to assume good faith in the past" and leave the door open to changing that? If we really endeavored to "describe" practice in the field, then we would acknowledge that many editors assume good faith but some do not, and make no recommendation at all. Furthermore, for a style guide such as WP:MOS, it's necessary to be prescriptive for the sake of uniformity. Croctotheface (talk) 21:28, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
No, not necessary, because uniformity is not necessary at all costs. We have judged it desirable to be uniform in certain ways, and to let uniformity slip away in other cases. We have every right to decide that. Many of our guidelines are currently written to prescriptively, and ought to be re-worked. As for the idea that we would just describe that "some people AGF and other don't," that's not the idea at all. What guidelines are supposed to do is describe best practices that we've discovered. A guideline such as AGF should be pointing out that failing to Assume Good Faith is pointless, useless, and unhelpful. There is no situation in which not assuming good faith is a good idea. That's what the guideline should be telling people.

(Personally, I think it's absurd that anybody would read WP:AGF. Isn't its message obvious from its title? What's the point of reading it, except to look for loopholes?)

Guidelines describe decisions we've made. Those decisions do indeed provide guidance, because in the context of a consensus-driven project, knowing what decisions have been made is quite helpful in making new decisions. Prescriptive rules are counter to the spirit of WP:IAR. I'd request that you give it a try, and see how well non-prescriptive guidelines work. They might seem like they wouldn't work, but so does Wikipedia. -GTBacchus(talk) 22:53, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

It has to be a little prescriptive and a little descriptive. There are definite English rules, and we all seem to thing it is okay to sometimes make exceptions. Proper nouns must have the first letter capitalized. In some cases we allow exceptions to the rule (as is true with almost every English rule). Why not require that we follow standard English, except where there is strong evidence and a consensus that the rule should not apply in a certain case (such as with eBay or iPod). This is what we do, and I think it's what we want people to do. This guideline still would guide, and for the vast majority of cases, standard English will prevail. Nicholas SL Smithchatter 23:11, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Rather than "require" that we follow standard English (except in certain cases), why not "observe" that a general consensus of Wikipedians has agreed to follow standard English, except in certain cases where a general consensus has agreed not to? We don't want people to use standard English or not according to what a rulebook says. We want them to use standard English or not according to whether or not it makes sense, and to keep in mind that a lot of thought has already been put into just when it does and does not make sense. The results of that thought are documented here.

Doing this makes it much easier to adapt to new situations. People get a lot touchier about "violating a rule" than they do about considering how well a previous agreement applies to a new situation. We don't want Wikilawyering, and hangups about whether or not something is permitted or forbidden. We want to keep people focused on the reasons behind the "rules". -GTBacchus(talk) 02:11, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

In my entire experience editing Wikipedia, I can recall a single instance where I thought that "ignoring all rules" actually improved the encyclopedia. It can happen, but there needs to be a valid basis for it. If you're just defining "descriptive" as "describing the best practice", I don't see how that's different from prescribing what is best. You basically say that nobody could ever fail to assume good faith and be in accordance with the guideline. How is that guideline not prescribing that editors assume good faith? Croctotheface (talk) 23:16, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I've seen many instances where ignoring a rule helped. (Ignoring a rule doesn't necessarily mean breaking it.) The difference between describing best practices and prescribing them is that using descriptive language more clearly captures the nature of our guidelines and policies here. Casting agreements as laws disguises the fact that they're agreements made by a bunch of people on a bunch of pages. It makes it clearer that this page isn't the source of guidance, but that consensus is the source, and that this page is useful for identifying that consensus.

Assuming good faith is something that we've agreed to do because it's practical to do so. It's how you work collaboratively. Casting it as a simple necessity that we've observed makes that clear. Casting it as a law encourages many people to look for loopholes, and to miss the point of why we assume good faith. We don't do it because it's a rule; we do it because it works. -GTBacchus(talk) 02:11, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I suppose we have to rewrite WP:AGF, then, because it's clearly prescriptive. Croctotheface (talk) 04:15, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Rewriting it would probably be helpful, and probably very difficult. I've been involved in some discussions about how to go about making our policy pages less prescriptive, as many feel they should be. It will take a lot of work, but I'm thinking we can start with small changes and a lot of talking.

The best advice is not to read WP:AGF at all, but simply to assume good faith, and not to worry about whether you're in a situation where the rule "permits" you to make an exception. More disputes derail that way than any other way I've seen. -GTBacchus(talk) 04:54, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

(removing indents) I'm sympathetic to the "if it's set up as rules, people will try to find the exceptions" notion, but I don't think the answer is changing the guidelines such that they merely "describe the best practice". I think that suffers from a similar drawback: someone could see that and say that, well, the guideline represents what's best, but there's room for my approach to be at least good, so I'll ignore the guideline. I just think that if you believe people should basically follow guidelines, then there's no point in changing the way that they're worded. More specifically, if you believe that guidelines should be followed, then making them "descriptive" is a distinction without a difference. If people should follow them, then they do prescribe a certain kind of conduct. Croctotheface (talk) 05:10, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I don't think that guidelines should be followed blindly. I think people should act mindfully in each situation, and apply a guideline, when appropriate, fully understanding that it's an agreement and not a law. As for the drawback of descriptive writing, that people will sometimes ignore the guideline, and try different approaches... I'd say that's precisely what we should encourage. People should always be asking whether the reasoning behind a guideline applies to their current situation. That's how we stay alert to dealing with new situations. -GTBacchus(talk) 05:42, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
If the guideline applies, it should be followed unless there's a reason to make an exception. Obviously, guidelines shouldn't be followed if they don't apply. However, as to "encouraging different approaches", I think that necessarily means that I should try a green background because I think it looks cool on, say, the St. Patrick's Day article, or I should assume bad faith, or revert every edit a person makes because one of their edits was vandalism. If guidelines apply, they should be followed. Croctotheface (talk) 05:48, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't think I'm saying something different from that. If there's not a reason to try something different, then it doesn't really make sense to do it. I'm not suggesting that we encourage arbitrary innovation, just that we don't give the impression that our "rules" are somehow finalized, or based on something other than existing consensus, developed in respect to actual concrete pages such as eBay and DeviantArt. I think we would make it clear that certain conventions enjoy broad and robust support. We should also indicate which ones are somewhat shaky, rather than claiming that a consensus exists when there's actually significant dissent.

When I say "some people will ignore the guideline and try different approaches," I don't mean that they'll act at random, and I don't mean that they will persist in doing something if they're approached with discussion. That would be foolish. Some people do that, but they don't last long. I mean that people will ignore it for well-considered, good-faith, BOLD reasons, and this will lead to good conversations. The less the sense of sanctity around the guideline, the easier those conversations are to have in good faith. You know, people will accuse others of bad faith around here just for trying something in a new, and possibly improved, way. Law-like language encourages that kind of nonsense.

I'm not suggesting that we de-tooth the guideline. I just think that it's good to acknowledge that the teeth are nothing other than the community's agreement to do certain things, and that agreement is a dynamic, living thing. It's ok to remind editors that they are the teeth of the guideline. -GTBacchus(talk) 09:25, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Possible additions to guideline

I'm going to take a break from responding to the threads here, since edit conflicts just render my replies obsolete anyway. I guess my question is this: Nicholas, what do you want from the guideline? Your prior change, where you made "commonality" the first principle we look to, flies in the face of the way this guideline was always written and understood. If you want it to say something like, "it's all about consensus", well, the idea behind this guideline is that it represents the consensus of the community in a way that trumps what people editing individual pages might want. If you want to to say that individual talk page consensus could trump this guideline, there's really no point in having this guideline at all. Croctotheface (talk) 02:34, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm having the same problem - anyway, I guess we are stuck in that place, and we need a place to go from there. I must point out that the last thing we want is for Wikipedia Trademarks to be written willy-nilly. I don't want all of our titles to change, and I don't want to throw out the requirement to use standard English rules. Perhaps we should mention that in addition to standard English usage, "overwhelming usage to the contrary" or "overwhelming in common usage" should be considered in deciding how to capitalize a trademark... This addition would not allow all unconventional trademarks pushed by marketers to "enter the vernacular," but it would allow future unconventionally to become common if it was overwhelmingly used. Such an addition would not go against the spirit of the guideline because this is how we conduct such business today, and will in the future. Nicholas SL Smithchatter 02:40, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm actually mostly OK with this, but I'd want to define overwhelming as something approaching 100% of reliable sources. I wouldn't consider, say, 60% overwhelming, even though it's a clear majority of usage. I don't want anything that would call for, say, counting Google hits to try to establish how frequently a style shows up. Perhaps we could get more explicit about what we mean by "inventing new formats". Croctotheface (talk) 02:47, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I am all with you there, Google is not a tool designed for counting proper usage of a word, nor should it be used as such. How about this. Under the nutshell, let's add "Generally, " to the beginning of the sentence, and under the section on inventing formats, something to the effect of "If a trademark's capitalization deviates from standard English in the vast majority of cases, it should be capitalized differently.." arg, that sounds bad, but something like that that sounds better (I'm trying to pay attention to my Copyright class as I am typing this). Nicholas SL Smithchatter 02:53, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Something like that seems like a good solution. We really should define what "inventing formats" is. My concern is that we might not agree on the definition. Croctotheface (talk) 04:01, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I bet defining it broadly might work - say "changing the trademark to a form never before used, and completely outside of the vast majority of usage"... something like that? Nicholas SL Smithchatter 05:05, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I see the difference between "common usage" and "standard usage" is that the latter has been approved by those we consider to be authoritative. For example, many people say 'Hoover' when they mean 'vacuum cleaner'. This is common usage, but because it is incorrect it is not standard usage. But eBay is explicitly recommended by three style guides: AP Style Guide, Guardian Style Guide, Chicago Manual of Style. So it (and iPod) have become "standard", and we can follow this style without contradicting our own guide.
Perhaps this guide needs to do more of citing reliable sources, just as articles in the main space must do. That way we will not be accused of making rules up for ourselves. If we can show for each of our rules that they follow the rules of existing style guidelines, we do not need to change any of them, or worry that we cannot agree on definitions. Whydontyoucallme dantheman (talk) 23:54, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
All of these guides recommend using the trademark holder's preference. I agree, however, as the guideline stands now, we are not to do this. Here's the conflict, we can do one of the following:
  • We can use trademark holder's preferences (all all of these sources prescribe for trademarks)
  • We can use standard English (as all of these sources prescribe for non-trademark proper nouns, and as the guideline now prescribes)
  • We can use standard English with exceptions in some instances of overwhelming evidence of deviation (as is actually done in Wikipedia today)
We just need to decide. Currently we prescribe the second option, but make allowances without reason for a very very limited number of trademarks. As it stands now, this follows no logical process, and confuses editors (such as myself). A guideline which can not be followed is useless. Nicholas SL Smithchatter 00:34, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
For the record, NONE of those style guides use the overarching principle of "owner's preference". Those guides, like ours, are neither hostile toward nor express a preference for what the owner uses, it just does not trump anything. We follow the owner's formatting most of the time, since most of the time the owner uses a format that comports with standard English. As you know, I don't agree with you that "iPod" is nonstandard, but I don't think we need to reach that here. We can just amend the guideline to be clearer about what we mean by "choosing from among formats already in use", as we had been discussing. I don't really take issue with the definition you gave, though I may want to tweak it a bit. For me, the question is where to put it. We could put it right on top, but I don't think it's more important than the most basic of the rules mentioned in the "general" section. Croctotheface (talk) 03:37, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Descriptivist vs. Prescriptivist

Much of Wikipedia policy (and especially, much of the most highly regarded, most well accepted Wikipedia policy) is descriptivist, that is, it describes what is actually done (by reasonable editors) rather than what some wish would be done. I am struck by how this capitalization rule might be one of the more prescriptivist areas... WP editors who formulated the trademark rules have taken it on themselves to prescribe how things will be done, in the face of the rest of the world, at least to a certain extent. It's claimed to be on behalf of the readership but I wonder. Who is really served by WP imposing idiosyncratic rules of capitalization instead of capitalizing things the way everyone else, most notably the trademark developers, does? ++Lar: t/c 20:56, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

If there's a case where "everyone else" capitalizes one way, this guideline does not get at it. If you are asserting, for instance, that "everyone" renders Time magazine AS "TIME", I'd suggest that you look at this search of Google News. There are some cases that are less overwhelming than this, certainly, but it seems that most of the time those discussions come up, the consensus among editors who participate is that we should standardize rather than allow weird formatting. For the record, I think this whole notion that "prescribing" is bad is silly for a style guide. The whole point of a style guide is indeed to say that X should be done and Y should not. Much of the time, people "in the field" want to do something wacky. There are lots of cases where, for instance, commas are placed inside quotation marks. Does that mean we should change the MOS to say that either inside or outside is acceptable? It would certainly be more "descriptive" of actual practice. I think that being "descriptive" might be good practice for guidelines that are not part of the MOS. The MOS must necessarily prescribe what we consider the best practice. Croctotheface (talk) 21:16, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Try this search... On the first page, the only non all caps usage is... ours. I think it's highly presumptive of us to dictate that we know better than the owner, inventor, or developer of a thing what something should be called than they do. In general, style manuals ARE descriptive, not prescriptive. Ours should be too. ++Lar: t/c 23:07, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
A Google News search for "lego" turned up a mixed bag. It's certainly not that we're the only one. How can a style guide not prescribe the style of the publication? Croctotheface (talk) 23:11, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Google searches really are a sticky subject. They really aren't undeniable proof of the correctness of a certain type of usage. Time magazine is far older than Google; for decades Time was written as prescribed by English rules (except of course on the cover page). I think this is why we use "Time." iPod and eBay, however, have really never been referred to as Ipod and Ebay. If we require standard English with very few exceptions (and outline when we have and will allow exceptions), I think we'll be good to go! Nicholas SL Smithchatter 23:15, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Nicholas, I think you also suggest another important point here: as the intro says, our job here is to choose which style to use. In general, we've decided that it is not helpful to use "mimic the TM owner" as our basis for choosing. Rather, when there is a variety of different styles, we've decided that the readers are best served by styles that most comport with standard English. In some cases, such as with iPod, we can have an arguably nonstandard style that is really the only one used, so we choose to use it. (I also contend that, for this narrow class of names, the "official" formatting has become standard English for this one class. You can look at it as an exception if you like, but it is, to me, an exception would nonetheless be contained within standard English.) Croctotheface (talk) 23:21, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Well I was curious as to what would transpire... it's said that WP policy is such a thicket that no one person can get their arms around all of it. It's also said that much WP policy is made by the small groups that hang out at particular policy pages (shifting over time to be sure) and say "this is how it has to be" to all comers. I suspect that possibly, if you could get everyone that edits here interested in this topic all at once, you'd find the consensus isn't actually what you think it is. Or maybe not. ++Lar: t/c 23:29, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'd like to point out that this guideline, as well as the MOS as a whole derives some of its basic rationale from WP:NPOV, which, as we probably all know and agree with, is non-negotiable and hence, inherently prescriptive. In that light it is actually quite desirable for us to "know better" than the respective creator or owner of something and that the likes of PLAYSTATION 3 and TIME are to remain firmly confined to unobtrusive, descriptive notes in lead paragraphs. - Cyrus XIII (talk) 23:39, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I daresay that prescribing that it is "Lego" rather than "LEGO" is very far from neutral. (as is prescribing it to be the other way round), and to call it an application of NPOV is somewhat... amusing, at best. Kind of like when a US politician wraps themselves in the flag. ++Lar: t/c 00:57, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

(another edit conflict)

That certainly is a problem with the "consensus" concept as it is used today - I agree but I'm not sure what to do about it. Crocto, I think you've found the root cause of our disagreement.
  • Are capitalization anomalies such as iPod and eBay now "Standard English," or acceptable exceptions to the rule governing the capitalization of proper nouns?
I do think they are exceptions, and that another iException, or xException may come along in the future. For this reason, I don't think we should limit ourselves by stating that these two specific examples are not standard. There is nothing standard about an i- or e- prefix. There could just as well be an x-, n-, etc... I have also never seen any evidence that these examples are not standard, only evidence that they are exceptions to the rule. For this reason, I have to say that they are not standard. Anything else would be original research. Nicholas SL Smithchatter 00:08, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
As I say above, I see the difference between "common usage" and "standard usage" is that the latter has been approved by those we consider to be authoritative. For example, many people say 'Hoover' when they mean 'vacuum cleaner'. This is common usage, but because it is incorrect it is not standard usage. But eBay is explicitly recommended by three style guides: AP Style Guide, Guardian Style Guide, Chicago Manual of Style. So it (and iPod) have become "standard". Whydontyoucallme dantheman (talk) 00:29, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I'll see if I can rephrase. These style guides don't say that the unconventional capitalization scheme is standard, they say that we ought to simply follow the convention of the trademark holder. Those authorities don't make judgments about the "correctness" or "standardness" of these trademarks, as you seem to be claiming. If ThIs is the way I want to make a trademark, each of these authorities would condone ThIs.
I am okay with ThIs (as they recommend), or This (as we recommend), but we need to pick one.
Bad logic is being used - we can't say we must follow standard English rules for nouns, and then say we will make exceptions for some because they have become standard English and use an authority which says trademark holder preference is the correct form (they don't say that commonly used forms are standard English). Why don't we change this guideline to align with either 1)the authorities on the subject, or 2) standard English for capitalization of proper nouns.
*Note: a trademark is a legal concept, not a grammatical concept. In English, a trademark word is no different than a popper noun (but it need not be a word at all, it need only be a mark). Portraying a trademark as the holder wishes seems to be the correct thing to do, and is condoned by the above referenced style guides no doubt to prevent confusion (whether it happens to be a noun, or a mark, swoosh, swirly, etc...), but, the style guides above are not modifying the English language, they still dictate that all proper nouns remain capitalized as they have always been (unless, as I'm sure I'm being rather repetitive, a writer is conveying a trademark...)Nicholas SL Smithchatter 01:33, 25 January 2008 (UTC) (I kinda went crazy with the bold there - but I don't mean to convey an angry tone though)
I don't think the law/grammar distinction really matters here: when we talk about trademarks, everyone knows what we mean. The Chicago MOS's rationale is similar to mine; words like eBay, they say, are "already capitalized", it's just that the capital falls on the B rather than the E. Even if we agree that this is an exception, I would argue that it's an exception made within the concept of standard English, not an exception TO standard English. Croctotheface (talk) 04:18, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Actually, the AP and Chicago guides state that the first letter should be capitalised at the start of a sentence (e.g., EBay), which is not what we say. Is this intended? (I can't help feeling that "otherwise follow normal capitalization rules" implies it should be capitalised - but in the example, it isn't!)
More generally, if we allow exceptions via consensus, I think there should be a note for this, as there may be a consensus for other exceptions in future. The way it reads now is as if it's an explicit rule that can't allow for exceptions. Mdwh (talk) 02:44, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't think we need to reach EBay vs. eBay at the beginning of sentences; I don't much object to either personally. To the second part of what you said, it's my view that we do not allow exceptions via consensus, at least not talk page consensus. The consensus that formed this guideline is stronger than any consensus formed at some miscellaneous article talk page to accept the nonstandard spelling preferred by some trademark owner. The dispute that had been going on here was more about an editor saying, "Hey, this page says we do X, but I don't think that's standard English, so there's a contradiction." The explanation for that, then, was basically that editors here can form a consensus about either what is or is not standard English or whether or not a certain type of case merits an exception to our "follow standard English" rule. Croctotheface (talk) 03:33, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Well I don't mind whether the consensus for a particular trademark is reached at the article's talk page or here, but either way, my understanding of the discussions here is that an exception was allowed via consensus, and that the exception was made specifically for "iPod" and "eBay", whilst the article suggests this is a rule for all words with a second capital letter, and only those words. Mdwh (talk) 03:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I think the rule is for all i- and e- prefixes, and any similar prefix that would form a similar construction. Croctotheface (talk) 03:39, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
You say that "[the guides] say that we ought to simply follow the convention of the trademark holder", but I think this is not true, at least for TM words. The AP style guide answers 'How would AP handle a brand name that is trademarked all in caps?' with 'Our legal experts say it depends on whether it's a "word" mark or a "graphic" trademark (such as the AP red logo). If it is a "word" mark, there is no need to keep the all-caps.' From searching the site of The Guardian I see that they never capitalise LEGO, for example: [17]. I do not know for sure about the Chicago Manual of Style but if I find a publication which uses it, I think it will also not follow TM holders preference. Can you show me why you think they do otherwise? Whydontyoucallme dantheman (talk) 12:52, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cases like SAT

I am puzzled by the fact that someone would insist that we go with SAT rather than "Sat" because of inventing new formats. The issue here is clearly that the letters are pronounced as if it were an acronym, even though it no longer is. If some sources used "Sat" but still pronounced it ess-ay-tee, then we would still go with SAT even though "Sat" would not be an invented format. The guideline should reflect the actual practice we follow. Second, DVD does stand for, according to the DVD article, "digital versatile disc", so the rule that the most recent edit catalogued it under doesn't even apply, since it's just an acronym. While I do think that we should clarify what we mean by "inventing new formats", the SAT case really isn't about inventing formats so much as pronunciation. Why should the guideline not reflect this? Croctotheface (talk) 18:36, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

It probably should, but if you consider orphaned acronyms like SAT and DVD (though we have conflicting sources on the latter [18][19]) to be inappropriate examples for format invention, what should be mentioned instead? - Cyrus XIII (talk) 19:01, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Pronunciation, as I said. (For the record, I don't think DVD is "ophaned", at least according to our article, but SAT certainly is.) The test is whether the phrase is pronounced as an acronym would be, letter by letter. I think that's the principle that's followed in "the field", anyway. Croctotheface (talk) 19:14, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Ah, I should have phrased that question more clearly. I meant to inquire what you would rather list as examples for format invention. I agree that the pronunciation of SAT already suggests the use of all-caps, even without taking its original function as an acronym into consideration. But I also suspect that the list of "real" would-be acronyms (with per-letter pronunciation but without any original meaning) will be very short. - Cyrus XIII (talk) 20:59, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
While I agree with the pronounciation rule, I think we need broader discussion around this issue, particularly around the titles of articles about companies. We have numerous cases that currently seem contrary to the guideline, for example: WESCO International, NOVA Chemicals, DISH Network Corporation, PACCAR, NVIDIA, CIGNA, ENSCO International, etc. I think it is appropriate to continue to have these as is (I certainly don't want to be the one to kick-off the massive article move effort, and face the consequences), and the guideline should be expanded to reflect this. UnitedStatesian (talk) 19:44, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Face the consequences? The worst thing that could happen is we'd clarify consensus, right? Anyway, you might find the move request currently in progress at Talk:NVIDIA#Requested move 2 interesting. -GTBacchus(talk) 20:00, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Also, see WP:WAX. I agree that those articles should be moved and would support a move request. TJ Spyke 05:12, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Avoid use of trademarks as a noun..."

Could someone please expand upon this? I understand that this is normal practice in the US, and thus for US-hosted Wikipedia, but it isn't normal practice everywhere. For example, a Snickers bar wrapper where I am (the UK) just says "Snickers" on the front; it does not add "bar" in small letters underneath as the American wrapper does. Secondly, are there any exceptions to this rule? I'm sure I've never seen "Ford brand car" or whatever! 86.136.255.69 (talk) 21:05, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Form that most closely resembles standard English

Does this manual suggest renaming all articles on bands to most closely resemble standard English? This suggest moving Röyksopp to Royksopp and Saïan Supa Crew to Saian Supa Crew and not vice versa. I believe this would be wrong. Please add a corresponding note to the manual. Netrat_msk (talk) 12:26, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

As this is obviously a follow-up from a discussion at Talk:L'Arc-en-Ciel, it should probably be mentioned here. Regarding these other examples you mention, rather than deferring you to WP:WAX right away, let me ask you, are there any reliable sources that employ those "proposed" move targets? – Cyrus XIII (talk) 12:49, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
(1) Manual says When deciding how to format a trademark, editors should choose among styles already in use (not invent new ones) and choose the style that most closely resembles standard English, regardless of the preference of the trademark owner. It doesn't say anything about reliable sources. Both Röyksopp and Royksopp, as well as Saïan Supa Crew and Saian Supa Crew are already in use. So according to the current manual, it makes no matter.
(2) However, there are reliable sources anyway. Official Röyksopp web site uses both versions, and Amazon.com names this act Royksopp, in spite of the fact that cover art clearly reads Röyksopp - pretty much like L'Arc~en~Ciel.
The same is true for Saian Supa Crew. Also, please refer to these English and Russian articles. Both are pretty competent, except for using incorrect spelling of band's name. If BBC is not a reliable source then I don't know what is ;-). However, even generally reliable sources sometimes are not 100% accurate - especially when they are dealing with names originally from a foreign language - again, pretty much like L'Arc~en~Ciel. P.S. Sorry for my lame English. Netrat_msk (talk) 10:48, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
These are tough cases. Reliable sources do matter; when we say "already in use", we really mean "already in use by reliable sources". This should probably be amended in the guideline. I don't have much of an issue with the umlauts and such; they don't strike me as especially disruptive, though I'd also be fine with removing them. The tildes-in-place-of-hypens, though, are SO nonstandard that I'm inclined to favor going with hypens there. Croctotheface (talk) 11:26, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] CoLours TV

Should this article be named this? Or should it be Colours TV? It appears the "L" is only stylistically capitalized. TJ Spyke 00:44, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

It looks stylistic to me; I'm 100% behind "Colours TV". Croctotheface (talk) 03:34, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
I concur. It's camelCase, but since "lours" is not be a word on its own (at least not in this context), the capital 'L' would be used purely for decoration. – Cyrus XIII (talk) 12:16, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Conclusion

Having read all the pros and cons of the capitalization, camel-case, initial-caps, punctuation, etc. nightmare that Wikipedia has concocted - I still don't see the point of it all. I think we all need to be humble and show some respect to the name-inventors (whomever they may be) and keep the casing etc. as it was intended. After all, Wikipedia is supposed to be a reference of factual information, and the way a name is intended to be capitalized etc. is part of that information.

Nowadays, when I need to use one of the names in question, instead of using Wikipedia as my one source of reference, I find myself having to visit the name-owner's web-site to find out how they intended to write the name. This extra step shouldn't be necessary. Wikipdeia should be able to tell me, but it refuses to...

-Andreas Toth (talk) 20:06, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

What exactly keeps you from adding a note on official renderings in the respective article leads or upload a logo that illustrates it? – Cyrus XIII (talk) 21:06, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Including that information should be part of the official Wikipedia standard for such names.
Please note that a logo does not always reflect the printed version of the name, e.g., NVIDIA [sic.], so the printed convention should be represented as part of the introduction (the title would have been the most logical place, but that appears to be "inappropriate" for Wikipedia).
-Andreas Toth (talk) 21:18, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
No offense, but this overly negative "you guys got it all wrong"-attitude is less than persuasive. If other established, general-purpose publications (i.e. newspapers) normalize text formatting for the purpose of a consistent and neutral presentation, why should this one not? – Cyrus XIII (talk) 21:28, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, if I offended anyone. The point I was trying to raise is that the current Wikipedia standard may need reviewing to include the above details, and, since I've never done anything like this before, I was trying to suggest (in a rather in-between-the-line-like manner) that, someone with the know-how may take this further. So, to paraphrase myself, should this perhaps become part of the standard, and, if so, how does one start the ball rolling to maybe have it so?
-Andreas Toth (talk) 21:58, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
There is a pretty strong consensus that we should not change the guideline to say that we should use the formatting styles preferred by trademark owners. As Cyrus said, your initial issue (not sure from an article what the official formatting is) can be solved very quickly by adding a single phrase to the articles themselves. If you just believe that we should use official formattings, well, that raises all the issues that have led this guideline to say what it does now. Do we need to replicate color? Font size? Use of the (r), TM, or (c) symbols? I don't think you're likely to succeed at swaying that consensus, though you're welcome to try. Croctotheface (talk) 22:47, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
It is this "single phrase" that I'm suggesting become part of the guidelines for articles involving these sort of names - not the naming of the articles themselves. Basically the official formatting of a name should be represented, in print, with the standard Wikipedia font and color, as part of the introduction sentence of the article. The representation should be as close as possible to to the way the name is represented, in print, by the owners themselves.
-Andreas Toth (talk) 23:13, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
I'd be comfortable having the guideline recommend doing this. It happens quite often in practice, anyway. Croctotheface (talk) 01:22, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Not to mention Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters)#Mixed or non-capitalization already mandates such a note, so adding one here would only improve consistency. – Cyrus XIII (talk) 18:34, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] More about iPod and the guideline in general

I don't see why iPod remains valid as a trademark name instead of converting it to Ipod or camel-cased as IPod. After all, if we are following English grammar rules, then names must start with a capital. Not to offend anyone, but I feel the reason iPod and eBay has remained as this is because of their huge popularity and the media influence their brands have had on people. People have bought in so hard to the way these words "should" be written that they simply cannot see it as being "correct" any other way. But this just highlights my argument against the current Wikipedia naming convention for names like NVIDIA, LEGO etc. i.e., it goes against the norm of what is accepted by those who use these names on a daily basis. -Andreas Toth (talk) 01:53, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

We should really archive this page more; this discussion is from a year ago. Lower [above following page edit] down on this page, I've outlined reasons that I consider iPod standard English. I also want to note that you seem to believe that Wikipedia is the only publication that standardizes nonstandard trademarked words. Quite a few other manuals of style and major publications do what we do; that is, iPod and eBay, but Lego and Nvidia. Croctotheface (talk) 01:58, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Please don't think that I'm that naive (sorry for the missing accent) to think that this is the only place where this happens, I just don't think that because others do something it must be right. Would I jump off a bridge because someone else did or told me to? Of course not - so why follow what marketing dictates? ("Marketing" is what I meant above instead of "media".) If one looked into it, one would probably find that the formatting of names like iPod, etc. are enforced by the huge marketing departments that are behind these brands. In fact, I don't have anything against this, but why should others be treated differently because they don't take such measures? Personally (and this is just my personal opinion, and not anything against Wikipedia or anyone else for that matter) I think it is offensive not to try render anyone's name, trademark or otherwise, the way the owner thinks it should be rendered. I say this, being foreign, and seeing people dropping accents left right and center because they either don't care or simply are blind to those characters, and it upsets me that people don't take a stand when it happens. (Yes, I know, it may seem contradictory that, the original Hungarian rendering of my family-name should have an accent in it, but this is how my family has decided to represent it and this is how we identify ourselves.) Sorry for the rant, but this is a topic I feel quite close to. -Andreas Toth (talk) 03:00, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
To the first part of what you said: as Cyrus and others have said elsewhere, the issue is that our concern is how to best serve our readers. In all of these cases, multiple formatting styles exist in reliable sources, and we are given the task of choosing one. This guideline seeks to select the formatting that best serves the readers; our responsibility is to them, not to trademark owners. In general, we believe that styles that comport with standard English conventions are superior to those that do not. If we changed the rule to say that we should always choose the style that the trademark owner uses or that most closely resembles their logo, then we run into a lot of problems. If Lego never mentions their brand name without an (r) or TM symbol, are we obligated to replicate that every time as well? If we choose to omit such symbols, aren't we already violating the rule? What about colors or font size? Just because press releases are often distributed in a black and white medium doesn't mean that Wikipedia has to be. Why not use the colors of the logo? If we choose not to use them because we find it unnecessary or we believe that it does not serve our readers, are we not making the same kind of editorial decision we've made in this guideline in its current form? Croctotheface (talk) 03:34, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
The only "reliable sources" is the trademark owner not third-party publications. Also, if English conventions are so superior, then there would be no iPod, but Ipod. In one of your comments above, you state that "A big NOOOOO to this idea. The reason we use "iPod" is most certainly NOT that the company prefers it." You also say that "If there is a strong "consensus" among reliable sources that the nonstandard style should be used, then we should probably follow that trend rather than buck it." You also said ""PGA TOUR" has no more communicative power than "PGA Tour"; it's only rendered in all caps because it makes it stand out in paragraphs. That's great for branding and marketing, but our goal is not to support either of those thigns, it's to inform our readers. Trademarks don't deserve special treatment compared to other proper nouns just because the trademark owner wants to grant it to them." You also said "In general, I've found that editors tend to be, for lack of a better term, fans of the subjects of articles they edit. In my experience, "fan" editors tend to believe that the subject of their fandom should be able to do whatever they please with the English language." I also see people commenting that the capitalization in these words are "odd" but that it has become the accepted norm. From a marketing perspective, this is the whole point of the oddity, it makes these names stand out from others. Someone else commented that "I vaguely remember from my schoolings that both the first letter of sentences and the first letter of proper nouns are to be capitalized." while a third person said "Then we would have a verifiable name based on our sources, rather than the opinion of Wikipedia editors."
My argument arises from comments like these that seem to contradict the whole notion of keeping to the English way of rendering names for a neutral impression of an article, especially for highly marketed brand names with huge fan bases like iPod and eBay. This fan-base will tend to render these names according to the way the trademark owners present these names, not the proper English way. Since the fan-base of these products are everywhere, it would be very hard to identify a reliable independent third-party source. Hence, indirectly, this powerful fan-base then ends up dictating Wikipedia's decision of how to render these names. This contradicts the whole notion of neutrality. -Andreas Toth (talk) 20:42, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm not really sure what point you're looking to make about reliable sources at the very beginning of your post. The New York Times is not a reliable source? CNN is not a reliable source? The only place we can go for reliable information about the PGA Tour is the PGA Tour itself? My argument about iPod and eBay has always been that they have become so ubiquitous that it is more standard to just go with iPod. There is a capital near where it's supposed to be. The i- is a prefix, sort of like how we use "un-American" rather than "Un-American". Not every editor agrees with me here, and some people consider this an exception to the use standard English rule based on how overwhelming this usage is. I don't agree with this interpretation myself, but I think it could be the basis of a valid set of exceptions. Finally, it is not mostly the fan base that uses "iPod"; it's a vast majority of reliable sources. We're doing the opposite of what you say we are in this case, as we are following the sources, not the fans. Croctotheface (talk) 22:22, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I hope you're not suggesting that the media dictates how to spell anything, i.e., if the media consistently spells something in one way then it must be right? Thats [sic.], excuse the pun. ;)
Based on what you say, I think it gives an unfair advantage to an established brand. What if a new brand came along and the media, for some reason, chose to be ignorant to the spelling (perhaps directly driven by competitor's smear-campaign), then, what you suggest is that this brand will simply have to suffer the consequences on Wikipedia? My personal preference, and I've stated this before, is that the spelling should reflect that of the owner's representation of their name, just like you and I dictate how our names are to be represented. That way there would be no need for long-winded discussions about how this and that should be represented. There's only one source that will give you the real answer - the owner - no other source can be more accurate than that. -Andreas Toth (talk) 00:42, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I think you can refer to my other comments on this page. I do not believe that we should "count votes" from sources that use a given formatting. I do think that the existence of a style in reliable sources does mean that we should consider it as a possibility. If a style is out there, we should not discount it as a possibility in favor of always saying that whatever the TM owner says goes. Also, I want to say that I don't believe we should "correct spelling"; this guideline deals with how to format trademarks, not changing letters around within them. Your reply did not address my concerns with regard to this rule: what about TM and (R) symbols? If we decide to omit them, then aren't we already departing from what the owner does? Croctotheface (talk) 01:59, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
It's simple: TM, (R), (C), etc., are not part of any alphabet (i.e., English, or foreign), nor are they numbers - they are, as you say, symbols, so they should not be included in the name. The exception would be standard "punctuation" symbols, including ".", "'", and perhaps "!" and "@".
So if we don't "count votes", then how and, most importantly, who ultimately decides upon how a name is rendered? Is that up to you and perhaps a few others to decide? -Andreas Toth (talk) 19:54, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
But isn't the decision to exclude TM, (R), and so forth no different from the decision to render something like "PGA TOUR" as "PGA Tour"? You've made the determination that these symbols are not essential parts of the name, despite the fact that the trademark owner always uses them. How is that different from deciding that the word "tour" is just the word, regardless of whether it's rendered as TOUR or TouR or ToUr? The guideline is clear about how we decide: we choose from among formats already in use. From them, we choose the one that most closely resembles standard English. As far as "who decides", it's a consensus of editors who apply the guideline. It's not me or you or some other individual. Croctotheface (talk) 22:13, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Color, font, etc. of a trademark are not included in an article's text as everything has to render with the defaults that are in place. Special symbols fall into this category as well. After all, when sounding out a name, the symbols are not included, e.g., Name(TM) is not sounded out as 'nametrademark', but simply as 'Name'. If the official rendering includes a symbol then it should be mentioned in the introductory sentences as has been done for UNIX. (Yes, I know, capitalization and most punctuations don't modify the pronunciation of a name, but these are exceptions.)
When you say editors, do these include anyone who edits an article, like you and me, or is there some higher level distinction I'm not aware of? If so, what's this distinction and who exactly are these editors? After all, I consistently see your name on this page and a few others - not enough people, in my opinion, for a fair representation of major decisions such as this one. Even if the representation included everyone, the fact is that most people don't know that votes are in progress on a matter so they don't have their say until, one day, they notice that things have changed, and, when they try to voice their opinion they realize its all too late and that Wikipedia, as they knew it, has changed for better or for worse, and that, following this, there appears to be no way to reverse these decisions. If this is the case (and I hope I'm wrong), the model, in my opinion, is flawed. -Andreas Toth (talk) 20:43, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Your pronunciation test favors the current form of the guideline, as you apparently recognize. Weird capitalization, punctuation, and so forth--all the things this guideline says we should leave out--are not pronounced. I don't understand what you mean by "exceptions;" we make an exception to the pronunciation test for these things but not color, font, or the TM and (R) symbols? Why? Because you like some things and not others? What I mean by "editors apply the guideline" is just that; it's the same way anything else in the MOS is applied to articles. Croctotheface (talk) 21:23, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Please don't try to twist my words, I'm not the one that have made the exceptions by allowing names such as iPod, Yahoo! etc. when others like deviantART and LEGO, for example, have to suffer. Why have these exceptions? Perhaps because people are biased?
By the way, since you didn't provide any feedback on my thoughts about Wikipedia decisions, does that mean there's something in what I said? -Andreas Toth (talk) 23:51, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

(unindenting) Twisting your words? I don't see any twisting at all: after you detailed your "pronunciation" test for excluding things like colors, fonts, or the TM symbol, you said, "Yes, I know, capitalization and most punctuations don't modify the pronunciation of a name." You then said that these are "exceptions", to which I expressed puzzlement. You want us to have a rule that says "render trademarks the way the owner does", right? I don't see the logic behind excluding font, color, or special symbols if we have that rule. You gloss over that and call them "exceptions", but I don't understand what that means. How are these cases different? Could we address this point before we get to the finer points of the specific examples you bring up?

As far as the second part, as I said, this is a guideline just like any other in the MOS. The basic principle behind it--that we should choose formats that best represent standard English--does have the broad support of a lot of editors. The initial discussions that formed this guideline involved many more editors than those of us who discuss here on a regular basis. As I said, it's like any other guideline here, editors reach a consensus, articulate that in the guideline, and then it's applied to specific cases. It's no different from any other guideline in that respect. Croctotheface (talk) 00:16, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

For me, the sensible guideline (for this and for other issues such as the debate about accent and diacritical marks in foreign names or words borrowed into English) is to inquire into how a careful English-speaking writer, unaffiliated with the marketing or legal departments of the company that made the product or otherwise having any axe to grind one way or the other about the rendering of the name, but wishing to "get it right", would be likely to write the name. If these people are writing that they bought an iPod on eBay, then that's how we should write it. If they prefer to buy an Ipod on Ebay, then that would be the better usage. This could change over time as style and taste evolves. *Dan T.* (talk) 03:28, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Dan, how does one qualify a writer and how does one ensure that they are not biased in anyway? For example, what if they own an iPod and love it to pieces or have had one but had a really bad experience with it? Surely this would make them biased and their bias may then be reflected in their writing, no matter how great of a writer they are? After all, there is no such thing as completely neutral person, all people have likes and dislikes, that's life. My reasoning is that, by selecting to go with the owner's way of rendering a name, the only bias is the owner's one, which, to them, is correct. Why should we have the right to tell them otherwise? Yes, we may all have our opinions, but at the end of the day, they should not matter as they are affected by our own biased view of the world. -Andreas Toth (talk) 00:56, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Croctotheface, if you fail seeing the need for a punctuation exception, then how does one write some abbreviations (such as "i.e.") and hyphenated words and names (such as "Mary-Anne")? Also, let's remember that in-name capitalization is already a part of names, such as "McDonald" (not the restaurant). These are the type of exceptions I speak of - things that are not sounded out, but are already a part of the language. However, I think the range of acceptable characters should include some additional ones, such as "!", etc. That's my only exception. -Andreas Toth (talk) 00:56, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't understand the notion of an "exception" that you describe. To reiterate again, you proposed replacing the current "choose the format the most closely resembles standard English" test with one that basically says "follow the practice of the trademark owner." I then asked whether, in that rule, we would need to replicate font size, (R) and TM symbols, or color. You said no. I asked why. You said that those things are not pronounced. I then said that the things that the guideline currently excludes, like nonstandard capitalization, are also not pronounced. You then started talking about "exceptions". Maybe this speaks to the failure of the pronunciation test to achieve a workable result; it certainly doesn't achieve the result that you want, since it would support turning "PGA TOUR" into PGA Tour. My point here is that you concede that we can and should deviate from the practice of the trademark owner when it comes to things like TM or font or color. I don't see how your "do as the TM owner does" position holds up if you're willing to deviate this way. Croctotheface (talk) 01:45, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

You know, we can call it standard English, we can call it following reliable sources, but at the end of the day, we do what we want to do. The community makes a decision, and then we either rationalize it, or we don't. We decided to use "iPod" and "eBay", but not "TNA iMPACT" nor "LEGO". Those decisions were made independently, and then when someone came along and wrote down "intial lower-case letters forming a single-letter prefix may remain lower-case," as an after the fact rationalization of our treatment of "iPod" and "eBay". I think the community generally doesn't like jumping through formatting hoops that trademark holders would want us to - it feels like advertising. I also think the community realizes that "IPod" and "EBay" are more jarring to readers than "iPod" and "eBay", because they're less common.

Most sources such as the New York Times do what we do: "Nvidia", "iPod", "Bell Hooks", etc. As far as punctuation, we've decided at some point to keep the exclamation marks in Jeopardy! and Yahoo! - I'm not sure how that's rationalized, but ultimately, it's just what we decided to do. -GTBacchus(talk) 02:10, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I feel like we discuss the same cases all the time here, but I guess I'll keep saying the same stuff if the same stuff continues to be brought up. My feeling is that Yahoo was wrongly closed as no move. The article does not use the exclamation mark throughout; it's only in the title. The NY Times does NOT use "Yahoo!" To me, Jeopardy(!) is a harder case. Arguably, a show called "Jeopardy" would be different, the exclamation point could have communicative power there. I have less of an issue with titles of television shows or movies or books. I don't think there's any "after the fact" "rationalization" involved with i- and e- prefixes; the issue there, to me, is that this is a new category of construction that is not covered by "punctuation books" and that "proper nouns are capitalized" doesn't really address this. It's the same for camelcase--I don't think any serious copy editor would assert that camelcase is some sort of abomination, despite the fact that compound words are not "supposed" to have internal capitals, or they weren't back in 1910 or whenever. I suppose that what I'm really disputing here is the notion that there is not a coherent principle behind this guideline because some editors believe that standard English can't accommodate iPod. It is not assembled on an ad hoc basis. Croctotheface (talk) 02:43, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't mean, by saying that it's an after-the-fact rationalization, to say that there's anything wrong with that. You can make an argument that "iPod" is standard English, but I think that's a matter on which reasonable people may differ, and at the end of the day, we made a call. I can't say for sure that the people who decided to keep "iPod" the way it is were thinking about a general rule involving initial letters. I don't think we know that, but most of the rules on this website are after-the-fact rationalizations, and that's really alright. -GTBacchus(talk) 02:48, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Using trademarks as verbs

Using a trademark as a verb can genericize a trademark (eg. writing xeroxing instead of photocopying - see Genericized trademark#Avoiding genericide). Wikipedia does not judge whether a trademark has been genericized or not. Courts do. Until a trademark has been deemed genericized in court, I think Wikipedians should respect it. Even though using a trademark is a verb is not illegal (as far as I know - IANAL), what can we say to a trademark owner who wants to protect his/her trademark? That we think the mark is generic? That several sources have used the mark in a generic way? How many sources are enough? That's a judgement that I don't think we should do as wikipedians.

I started this discussion due to some conflicts at Talk:Zorbing.

I propose the following change in policy wording:

  • Avoid use of trademarks as a noun or verb, except where any other usage would be awkward:
    • avoid: Police in Miami confiscated 25 stolen Rolexes. The encryption key could be found by googling.
    • instead, use: Police in Miami confiscated 25 stolen Rolex watches. The encryption key could be found with a Google search.
    • however: The prime minister indicated the Clif Bars were delicious.

— Ksero (talk | contribs) 10:01, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I think this section of the guideline needs revision, but I'm not sure that this is the way to do it. I think that the guideline really wants to say that we should specify the thing that's being talked rather than expect or assume that readers know or need to know "stolen Rolexes" means "stolen Rolex watches". The idea of "trademarks as a noun" is confusing; lots of trademarked nouns, like company names, are and should be used just that way. I'm not entirely sure about the kind of change that I want to make. Croctotheface (talk) 01:46, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Croctotheface. The nutshell summary of "Follow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules, regardless of the preference of the trademark owner." doesn't naturally extend to avoiding verbification. In fact, it seems to point away from it - one obvious way to read this guideline is "The prose is what matters, not the desire of the trademark holder.". In the specific case of Zorbing, I'd say the prose suffers - the alternative term some folks are pushing is "sphereing" (yuk!) RossPatterson (talk) 20:16, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Ksero and believe that the policy should be extended to allow for protection of trademarked brands in order to avoid genericism. I find it difficult to accept that using an alternative term to Zorbing (eg sphereing) will affect the prose so adversely that it justifies the infringement of a registered trademark and allows for brand confusion. 203.109.157.87 (talk) 02:39, 19 March 2008 (UTC) (Lizzie Dean)


Summary of my following opinions:

  • promote generiscisation of a trademark: avoid if possible (agree with Ksero)
  • legal trademark protection: no (disagree with Lizzie Dean, and to some degree with Ksero)
  • good english: yes (agree with Croctotheface and RossPatterson)
  • use generics: if possible

I don't think we can or should use legal decisions about trademark as a sole basis for decisions; it certainly has input, but it cannot be the primary factor. Legal reality (as opposed to real reality) varies from place to place, and regime to regime within a place. While IANAL, I strongly suspect it is possible for a trademark to be legally generiscised in one country and not another, and when a regime change happens, who the heck knows what the end result is. I do think we should recommend use of generic terms where they exist; say "adhesive bandage" and not "band-aid", and note something like (often called band-aids) or (such as those made under the band-aid trademark). "web searching" or "searching on the web" is far preferable to "googling". I therefore agree with RossPatterson on the general concept: we're speaking English here, not Legalese, but I disagree in this specific case; I've renamed the article to sphereing. I'm about to edit it to be less zorb-specific so as to encompass the generic activity. That sidesteps the trademark issue. I'd be fine in theory with someone then going and creating a new zorbing article if there was sufficient zorb-specific content to justify it. -- Akb4 (talk) 20:00, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

My main question about the Zorb issue is whether "sphereing" is a term that's used widely enough. If it is, it's probably better. Croctotheface (talk) 19:39, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Being bold, I decided 25k google hits on the word was enough. But I could see someone making a case for changing it back. -- Akb4 (talk) 08:48, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Direct quotations

The main MoS page states that its style guidelines should be followed "except in direct quotations, where the original text is generally preserved". This exception is not spelled out on this page, but it seems to me that it should be applicable, here as elsewhere, and should be explicitly stated here for the benefit of editors who don't refer back to the main page. JamesMLane t c 23:16, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] dEUS

The discussion about dEUS on it's talk page should apparently be brought here. The point is: de band is actually called 'dEUS', and Wikipedia is probably the only source calling the band 'Deus'. Let's not be an ivory tower, so let's say it the way the whole world says it instead of using Wiki's guideline - which, in this case, would be quite narrowminded.--GraafGeorge (talk) 16:40, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I would agree, but we have to change Wikipedia policy regarding "Form that most closely resembles standard English" to make this change (see above). Netrat_msk (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 17:29, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
Actually, it's not at all the case that WP is "the only source" using "Deus." I see three just in the first page of Google News results. Croctotheface (talk) 17:35, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
(I was just about to make the same point that Croc did.) These discussions have spread across a number of talk pages; note, for example, the lengthy discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music/MUSTARD#capitalisation of band names, which did not end up in consensus for change to the guidelines. I haven't seen a compelling reason to make an exception for Deus to be rendered as dEUS in encyclopedic text. Paul Erik (talk)(contribs) 17:44, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
I never saw the other, quite lenghty discussion. So, I'm sorry for bringing it up again here - but this must be solved: Wikipedia must not force (band names according to) its guideline upon its readers. By the way, I don't see any results in Google News that uses 'Deus', not even on the other pages.--GraafGeorge (talk) 22:56, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
The consensus that underlies this guideline disagrees with you. The prevalent opinion right now is that band names "must not force" their crazy capitalization schemes upon our readers. You can look elsewhere on this page for the reasons behind it. Croctotheface (talk) 23:56, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Uncopyrighted

The non-copyrighted, BBC trademark Image:TARDIS-trans.png is being used to advertise an external site not affiliated to the BBC here on WP, it was being discussed at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Doctor_Who#Template:TardisIndexFile, however I can't find a policy precluding it's use in this fashion! Could someone more familiar with the subject look into it Fasach Nua (talk) 14:39, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

This has been discussed to death on multiple occasion, most notably on the template talk page itself. Since there is no policy excluding it's use either, I see no issue. — Edokter • Talk • 15:58, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
If there is no policy then, it may be worth having one, even if all it does is validate the use of this trademark in this manor Fasach Nua (talk) 06:22, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
Policies should only be created if there are issues that needs governing. Otherwise, policies 'allowing' certain practices are redundant and add to 'policy-creep'. — Edokter • Talk • 13:07, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
There is undoubtably an issue that needs governing here Fasach Nua (talk) 16:27, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I've given my thoughts here. ╟─TreasuryTag (talk ╬ contribs)─╢ 12:58, 9 June 2008 (UTC)