Talk:John Keefer Mahony

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Military history: Canadian / North America / World War II Start‑class

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Capitalization edit

Latest comment: 7 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

@Ahunt: Per MOS:JOBTITLES and MOS:MILTERMS, ranks are not capitalized unless used as part of the name ("Early in the action Major Mahony was wounded", but "Mahony was a lieutenant colonel"). Also, "the words for types of military unit (army, navy, fleet, company, etc.) do not require capitalization if they do not appear in a proper name. Thus, the American army". The word major by itself is a common noun, not a proper name; look in any decent dictionary. Now that you know, please restore my edits. Chris the speller ^yack 17:31, 7 April 2017 (UTC)Reply

I guess Wikipedia does this differently than Canada does. Here the rank titles themselves are proper nouns and are always capitalized. Are we not using Canadian English for this article? - Ahunt (talk) 18:02, 7 April 2017 (UTC)Reply

@Ahunt: The difference between proper nouns and common nouns is the same in Canada as in any other English-speaking place. The WP article Proper noun says "A proper noun is a noun that in its primary application refers to a unique entity, such as London, Jupiter, Sarah, or Microsoft, as distinguished from a common noun, which usually refers to a class of entities (city, planet, person, corporation), or non-unique instances of a specific class". Plumbers, nurses and majors are classes of jobs, while King of Romania refers to a unique entity, at least at one point in time. In any of the English-speaking countries, military ranks are often capitalized for no good reason, but are not consistently in upper case. Military organizations tend to wallow in this kind of self-aggrandizement even more than civilian organizations, who love to overcapitalize things in their brochures and web pages. Wikipedia sets it own style: per MOS:CAPS, "Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization. In English, capitalization is primarily needed for proper names, acronyms, or for the first word of a sentence." I think you will have a hard time finding a Canadian dictionary that shows "lieutenant colonel" as always capitalized; other major dictionaries do not. Canadians do not consistently use upper case for military ranks; see this bio. Chris the speller ^yack 21:26, 7 April 2017 (UTC)Reply

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