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Capital Letters?? (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Steve Lister
- Start date
Charles Harper
Régisseur
Edward woodwood
Member
i think this has been explained about four times in the above thread now....
ICZN are the last word on this - must be on the net somewhere.
to open another can of worms Steve - grammar - shouldn't it really be capitalise in UK not capitalize?
Ian - you can have mute swan instead of Mute Swan if you like but name me a journal that won't throw it back at you and say 'what are you on?' :eek!: if you insist on it.....
ICZN are the last word on this - must be on the net somewhere.
to open another can of worms Steve - grammar - shouldn't it really be capitalise in UK not capitalize?
Ian - you can have mute swan instead of Mute Swan if you like but name me a journal that won't throw it back at you and say 'what are you on?' :eek!: if you insist on it.....
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Obviously bowing to our north American members.Tim Allwood said:to open another can of worms Steve - grammar - shouldn't it really be capitalise in UK not capitalize?
I'm sure Steve wouldn't lay down any rules on grammar, there won't be any rules in the utopian society of the future
Andrew
wibble wibble
Tim Allwood said:i think this has been explained about four times in the above thread now....
ICZN are the last word on this - must be on the net somewhere.
to open another can of worms Steve - grammar - shouldn't it really be capitalise in UK not capitalize?
(Now go check my posts and get your own back.)
Edward woodwood
Member
ooooo get you two!
eye flout konveshun u mus kno dat bi now boyz!
eye flout konveshun u mus kno dat bi now boyz!
Thanks for that neat explanation, Steve.scampo said:
In business at least there does seem to be an increasing trend towards capitalisation of any noun the writer thinks is important and specific, but, as you point out, many people don't know or care about grammar these days.
Edward woodwood
Member
I spend a lot of my time editing ornothological papers and stuff to strict scientific conventions. Bird Forum is a place i don't have to be grammatically correct - if we start all that.......
Nightranger
Senior Moment
Tim Allwood said:
Yep, I was thinking about all situations though and I think we are tying ourselves up a little. The RSPB and most other official sources for information tend to follwo scientific convention. However in ordinary conversation, it would be acceptable to use whatever convention one chooses providing the end result is clear. I tend to use italicised wording in brackets when replying to people by email or letter and referring to a scientific name. This is simply my style of writing to avoid breaking the text (and therefore, the gist) up. I tend to use bracketed text quite a bit but it is equally correct to separate a scientific name with a spaced hyphen. If a bird name begins a sentence then it is correct to capitalise the verb (sorry, that sounds a bit too obvious) and I suspect that is another reason why people feel that names should be capitalised despite convention saying otherwise.
Examples:
If I was mentioning mute swans in the text body my preference would be "...the mute swan (Cygnus olor) is..." although this could also be written as "...the mute swan - Cygnus olor is...". If I started a sentence "Mute swans are..." I may not use the scientific name qualifier especially if I had previously done so. I should point out that I would probably have to refine this when talking to anyone outside the UK because some common names are country specific. Indeed, I answered an email reporting a Steppe buzzard where the correspondent used the scientific name Buteo vulpinus whereas this is actually a subspecies (Buteo buteo vulpinus). Interestingly, this is also one of those should I or shouldn't I situations because steppe is not really a proper noun but it is often written that way. (Oooh my head hurts...LOL).
Nightranger
Senior Moment
Bluetail said:
LOL. I was once taken to task for calling myself a Wildlife Advisor when it is equally accurate to use advisor or asdviser in this context. The correspondent never did acknowledge the correction. :C
birdman
Орнитол&
Proper Nouns, in English, whilst all names, aren't necessarily all individuals - we include georgraphical names and languages also, obviously, although other languages don't necessarily.
That brings me quite neatly to steppe vs Steppe.
I think I'm right in saying (and I know I am when it comes to Karst) that the Steppe / Karst (or should that be The Steppe / Karst???) was the origin of the name for other similar areas which became known as steppe or karst - again, the definitive vs generic argument.
That brings me quite neatly to steppe vs Steppe.
I think I'm right in saying (and I know I am when it comes to Karst) that the Steppe / Karst (or should that be The Steppe / Karst???) was the origin of the name for other similar areas which became known as steppe or karst - again, the definitive vs generic argument.
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birdman
Орнитол&
Not if I've got anything to do with it!!!Bluetail said:Quite the opposite, Tim! In the OED -ize is the standard ending and -ise a variant of it. In practice the latter is steadily ousting the former.Tim Allwood said:to open another can of worms Steve - grammar - shouldn't it really be capitalise in UK not capitalize?
No need to be puritanical here, I agree. On the other hand there are a few posters who would be a lot easier to understand if they learnt some basics. We have one who never uses any punctuation or capitalisation at all, another who capitalises every word and at least one other who invariably puts an apostrophe before the s in every plural. OK, you can still work out what they're getting at, but it doesn't make for fluent communication.Tim Allwood said:
There: I've now upset several members. Apologies to anyone I've offended, but I have a rather low tolerance threshhold because I see so much poor writing in my daily work. I'm seriously considering sending back such gobbledygook with a note saying I have no intention of reading it until it has been translated into English!
look's as if I'm one of the culprit'sBluetail said:
scampo
Steve Campsall
The rule still holds: a name intended to identify an individual takes an initial capital letter, a generic name does not. Why a genus receives a capital I do not really know except that it is a hangover from early times, Linnaeus himself presumably - it does at least allow the genus to be recognised from the species (e.g. Buteo buteo). The italicisation is another thing altogether - all foreign, unnaturalised words are conventionally italicised in English, e.g. per se.birdman said:
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