Capitalization of Common Bird Names? (1 Viewer)

[Mark Lew1s]

Perhaps my argument would be more persuasive if I randomly capitalise words and write "end of" to shut down further debate?

Ha! It probably wouldn't!

I only wrote 'end of' because, like it or not, those are (currently) the 'rules', as your wiki info backs up. I'm not interested in shutting down debate at all - and as I stated earlier, I'm very much in favour of languages evolving through common usage. If we are discussing what is the 'right' thing to do re capitalisation, then at the moment, using lower case letters for bird names is 'correct'. There are some good arguments and clearly some good support for that to change, which wouldn't bother me in the slightest.

Perhaps debate might be further encouraged by not ending your posts with snide comments?

 

[Hauksen]

Hi Paul,

If we are discussing what is the 'right' thing to do re capitalisation, then at the moment, using lower case letters for bird names is 'correct'. There are some good arguments and clearly some good support for that to change, which wouldn't bother me in the slightest.

I'm not even sure it would be a change at all, as there seem to have been two sets of competing rules in use for centuries:

The tradition of capitalising bird names in English ornithological literature goes back at least to "The Ornithology of Francis Willughby" (1678) and you can't get much further back than that. It was followed by Bewick, Montagu and others into the 19th century and beyond.

The two current English-language bird guides I have, one of British and one of American origin, both follow this tradition, too.

It's not so unusual that specialist groups develop specialized language and even grammar, so the question of which set of rules to follow might depend more on the audience you have in mind than the correctness of any of the two sets.

Regards,

Henning

 

[Andy Adcock]

Ha! It probably wouldn't!

I'm very much in favour of languages evolving through common usage.

As long as that does not mean the Americanisation of English language and spelling on this side of the pond, they can do with it what they want over there.

Too late in mainland Europe I'm afraid but it bloody annoys me when the BBC use an American spelling, grrrrrr

'Foolish Yankees' .....Kim Jong-un :-O, no offence meant, just thought this was funny




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[Jos Stratford]

I only wrote 'end of' because, like it or not, those are (currently) the 'rules'. If we are discussing what is the 'right' thing to do re capitalisation, then at the moment, using lower case letters for bird names is 'correct'.

I think it open to debate whether capitalisation or no capitalisation is 'correct' according to current 'rules' - totally depends on whose rules, and if purely on grammatical grounds, then depends on whether you can define specific bird names as proper nouns, and I don't see any definition of a proper noun that necessarily excludes it.

Grammar aside, if it is clearer to use capitals and already pretty widespread in popular use, then pretty much I would say it is the right thing to do anyway.

 

[Andy Adcock]

Grammar aside, if it is clearer to use capitals and already pretty widespread in popular use, then pretty much I would say it is the right thing to do anyway.

Being a bit controversial, not like me at all, maybe bird names in private reports and lists which are not capitalised, may be simply down to laziness as much as anything else?

I often have to go back where I've missed a capital and if it's a long report it can get tedious having to keep capitalising names within a sentence or summary.

I'm for capitalising personally, just think it looks far better, right or wrong.


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[McMadd]

Being a bit controversial, not like me at all, maybe bird names in private reports and lists which are not capitalised, may be simply down to laziness as much as anything else?

I often have to go back where I've missed a capital and if it's a long report it can get tedious having to keep capitalising names within a sentence or summary.

I'm for capitalising personally, just think it looks far better, right or wrong.


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There's that thing called Find and Replace...

 

[Andy Adcock]

There's that thing called Find and Replace...

Did not know that......:-C

How would it recognise to replace an upper case letter, mid-sentence?


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[Jos Stratford]

There's that thing called Find and Replace...

Is there a function for 'find bird name with little letter and change to capital'?

 

[Andy Adcock]

Is there a function for 'find bird name with little letter and change to capital'?

Exactly, just spoken with my wife about this, she's very techy, she says that you'd have to search every, potential, capitalised word e.g Warbler?

How would you search the first part of the name, still seems like it would be a lot of work?



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[John Cantelo]

I've just re-read the whole of this thread and the argument for lower case names seems to amount to little more than doing so is an established convention. As I pointed out previously, the convention of using capitalised bird names in English goes back to the roots of English ornithology. Hence, at some point, the convention seems to have changed to using lower case (although this never seems to have been universal). What was changed once can be changed again. Returning to the earlier norm presents no problems whatsoever, the criteria for doing so seems clear and easily applied and this usage seems to be gradually replacing the old standard. The Victorians & pre-Victorians managed to capitalise bird names without getting confused so I'm sure we'll cope. Using capitals offers some clear advantages which have not been challenged. The options seem to be to stick with blind convention or adapt to a more user-friendly approach.

 

[Jos Stratford]

I've just re-read the whole of this thread and the argument for lower case names seems to amount to little more than doing so is an established convention. As I pointed out previously, the convention of using capitalised bird names in English goes back to the roots of English ornithology. Hence, at some point, the convention seems to have changed to using lower case (although this never seems to have been universal). What was changed once can be changed again. Returning to the earlier norm presents no problems whatsoever, the criteria for doing so seems clear and easily applied and this usage seems to be gradually replacing the old standard. The Victorians & pre-Victorians managed to capitalise bird names without getting confused so I'm sure we'll cope. Using capitals offers some clear advantages which have not been challenged. The options seem to be to stick with blind convention or adapt to a more user-friendly approach.

Hear hear.

End of, as someone once famously said.

 

[Andy Adcock]

Hear hear.

End of, as someone once famously said.

Seconded


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[McMadd]

Is there a function for 'find bird name with little letter and change to capital'?

Of course...o

 

[McMadd]

Exactly, just spoken with my wife about this, she's very techy, she says that you'd have to search every, potential, capitalised word e.g Warbler?

How would you search the first part of the name, still seems like it would be a lot of work?

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I'm assuming you've spotted a mistake as you mentioned earlier..."I often have to go back where I've missed a capital and if it's a long report it can get tedious having to keep capitalising names within a sentence or summary."...type that incorrect version to the Find and the corrected version to the Replace fields...at least you capture repetitions of that mistake...

So..

Find: warbler
Replace: Warbler

Of course that'll screw up all your Leaf-warblers...

Having the grammar and spellcheck on should also capture a few as bird names aren't part of the standard dictionary package I should suspect...

There ain't no easy way

cheers, McM

 

[Andy Adcock]

There ain't no easy way

cheers, McM

That was my point......



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[Nutcracker]

So..

Find: warbler
Replace: Warbler

Of course that'll screw up all your Leaf-warblers...

If you use a space as the first character of the search string, you'll avoid that problem :t:

 

[Andy Adcock]

If you use a space as the first character of the search string, you'll avoid that problem :t:

It's still not a cure for checking an entire document unless you know where your mistake is?

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[kb57]

At the end of the day as has been demonstrated by both sides, this is just a matter of personal preference?

I personally find capitalisation of English names in a document unattractive, a bit 'shouty'; my use of lower-case is deliberate, and not the result of any laziness. I refuse to accept it is 'wrong', but equally I accept that the alternative view has equal merit. So can we just live and let live with this?

Where I think we have to be careful is the attitude to American spellings, which I think spills over into an unnecessary chauvinism. I can understand the desire to preserve British (and Canadian etc.) English spellings ('license' is my personal hate word), but we really need to move towards an international nomenclature for English names of birds. Great northern diver for sure sounds better to me than common loon, and there maybe isn't a lot of logic in splitting Stercorarius spp. into skuas and jaegers. But I'd be happy to use them in the interests of international communication. I might even be persuaded to use capital letters.

And before anyone points it out, I know we'd still have Dovekie in Clements and Little Auk in IOC...so obviously no easy answers...

 

[Andy Adcock]

At the end of the day as has been demonstrated by both sides, this is just a matter of personal preference?

I personally find capitalisation of English names in a document unattractive, a bit 'shouty'; my use of lower-case is deliberate, and not the result of any laziness.

Not being patronising but you do understand that we're not talking about capitalisng the whole species name, just the first letter of the first word and the species i.e Purple Heron, I don't think that looks 'shouty' at all?


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[Andy Adcock]

Where I think we have to be careful is the attitude to American spellings, which I think spills over into an unnecessary chauvinism. I can understand the desire to preserve British (and Canadian etc.) English spellings ('license' is my personal hate word), but we really need to move towards an international nomenclature for English names of birds. Great northern diver for sure sounds better to me than common loon, and there maybe isn't a lot of logic in splitting Stercorarius spp.

Chauvenism, not nationalism?

There is no nation, more vocally patriotic and protective of things 'American', bloody hell, they even claim the apple pie that we were probably eating 500 years before America was found! Surely as Brits, we need to be proactive in protecting our own grammar and spelling?

When the BBC produce a report from the states from say the 'Defense department', they will write it as such, why when we have the English word 'defence', they wouldn't write the equivalent in French or German and it serves only to confuse our kids who are learning to read and write?


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