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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sangahyando" data-source="post: 3167577" data-attributes="member: 114046">I highly doubt that all birders, or other people in favour of capitalization of species names, would warrant the epithet "fanatical", especially given the origins of that word. I know I don't care for it. In my (limited) experience, the ones most affected by these issues are journalists who don't properly research their subject (i.e. reading a paper on a species they don't know about, and not checking out a handbook or, horribile dictu, Wikipedia, for background info - including the name - on said species). I trust that professional biologists wouldn't have a problem with such a simple rule. And the general public will usually get it wrong, either way. Which is lamentable, but not relevant to your argument. In fact, given that capitalization of species names is logical, we might even see an increase of correct usage from people who're alien to the subject.In any case, it's not like spelling reforms were ever brough about by majorities. Usually the majority has no strong feelings for either side of the argument. And people who contribute data to birding websites, or do some casual birding (in some previous post in this thread, the strange argument has been brought forward that this issue were mostly a concern of competitive listers), while no majority, aren't exactly a tiny group. In fact, if we were to count, these people (for whom it's convenient to capitalize species names) would surely outnumber scientific authors (in the field of biology). In short, the "majority" argument is irrelevant because the majority of our species has no opinion on this matter.</blockquote>

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