GraemeLyons
Member
(This post is lifted directly from my blog here where all the 150+ 'signatures' currently sit. The idea is that this collection of influential UK naturalists can be used as leverage against organisations, publishers and publications that force you to write species names in lower case).
Last year I wrote this post. It is by far the most viewed post I have ever written on my blog in 12 years of blogging, with over 3000 views! So I thought we needed to put a little more momentum into it.
So, if you agree with the following statement, why not put your name to it and ideally, let me know who you work for OR say 'rather not say'. Either comment or message me directly. And please share this post like mad so we can get a big list of names going. Yes, some big organisations are doing it wrong but some are getting right, like Butterfly Conservation, BTO and (now) Sussex Wildlife Trust. And publications like British Wildlife and Adastra also get it bang on. If you can think of anymore, please feel free to comment too.
"English names of species should be correctly capitalised and hyphenated, effectively treated as proper nouns. This should be mandatory and standardised, as is the format for scientific names. There are many different reasons to do this explained more fully in the above mentioned post but perhaps none are more troublesome than the fact that lower case should be reserved for the generic sense, i.e., we have three species of forester moth in the UK, one of which is the Forester. Without the species being correctly capitalised, there is no way to distinguish species from genus. And there are a many different ways this can go wrong, from Small Blue becoming small blue to Little Ringed Plover becoming little ringed plover. The excuse that "capitals look bad on the page" is not a valid excuse. If you are writing primarily about species, they should be written with capitals.
- Little Ringed Plover NOT little ringed plover
- Kentish Plover (above) NOT Kentish plover
- Silver-washed Fritillary NOT silver washed fritillary
- Forester (or The Forester) NOT forester (or the forester)
The argument that species should be treated as proper nouns is important. Yes, each species might be comprised of countless millions of individuals but by definition, they are distinct at the genetic level. There is (roughly speaking) one distinct set of code per species. It is this that should be treated as a proper noun. If we can be bothered to capitalise the names of man-made dog breeds and models of cars, we owe it to the natural world too."
Organisations, publications and projects that get it right.
- Butterfly Conservation (BC)
- British Trust for Ornithology (BTO)
- Sussex Wildlife Trust
- British Wildlife
- NBN
- iRecord
- British Birds
- British Ornithologists' Union (BOU)
- State of Nature
- Back from the Brink