Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters/Archive 39

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RFC on capitalizing after dash in sports article names

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Consensus was reached in favour of no capitalisation. Timceharris (talk) 00:58, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

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Should the first word after a dash in the name of a sports article, such as Rowing at the 1988 Summer Olympics – Men's coxed four, be capitalized?~TPW 18:45, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Leaning yes. Outside sources for events often use title case, which could constitute an exception to the guideline for sentence case. Senorangel (talk) 03:50, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

• No, capitalization after the dash is contrary to everything in WP:AT, WP:NCCAPS, MOS:CAPS, etc, which say we use sentence case and avoid unnecessary capitalization. Others have their own style, often using title case in titles, but this would be not even that, and it would be (and is) an outlier w.r.t. normal Wikipedia article titles. Dicklyon (talk) 04:57, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
• No thanks: that's a weird look; draws attention to itself. Tony (talk) 09:15, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
• No Per above. Also, see MOS:SENTENCECAPS. We don't cap after a colon or a dash. Collectively, the guidance cited says No. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:56, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
• Comment From our policy on Article titles. WP:LOWERCASE says — Titles are written in sentence case. The initial letter of a title is almost always capitalized by default; otherwise, words are not capitalized unless they would be so in running text. WP:CONSISTENT says — We strive to make titles on Wikipedia as consistent as possible with other titles on similar subjects. We follow patterns from article titles for similar topics to the extent that this is practical. So at this point, I would say all these sports articles have been consistent in their titles over the years.

And on another note, since this has the potential to affect thousands of articles from a quick review - 1988, 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008, 2004, 2000, 1996, etc. Do you think this RfC has been advertised widely enough for a clear community consensus that has the potential to invoke a mass change of article titles? Isaidnoway (talk) 20:23, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

I just wanted to point out that the women's sports articles appear to be titled the same way - Rowing at the 2020 Summer Olympics – Women's coxless four, and the mens and womens Winter Olympic articles are too - Ski jumping at the 2022 Winter Olympics – Men's large hill team. I came to a very rough count of around ~3600 articles whose titles would be affected. And that is just the Olympic articles, I'm not sure about any other National/International sporting event articles that may have similar titles with men and women capitalized. Isaidnoway (talk) 00:01, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

When we downcased things like "– Women's Doubles" to "– Women's doubles", there were about 20,000 tennis articles (outside the Olympics, which didn't have that problem). It's straightforward to compile a list of article moves and to get a bot approval to do the moves if there's a consensus to do so. It's also more or less straightforward to update all the links. Dicklyon (talk) 19:18, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

• Comment Generally sentence case is used. However, exceptions appear to exist for event names that are usually capitalized in independent sources. This could vary depending on the common usage. Senorangel (talk) 01:57, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

  Be aware that "usually capitalized in independent sources" is a weaker criterion than MOS:CAPS specifies, which is "consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources". Dicklyon (talk) 19:18, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

  Looking at titles with dashes, I do see that many of them have proper names after the dash, so those would not be changed. I'd focus on narrower sets such as "– Men's xxx" and "– Women's xxx" for starters (also Boys', Girls', Team, Individual, and such things found to be common in sports articles). Dicklyon (talk) 19:34, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

• No, except for course for a proper name like "Japan". The portions following the dash are not sentences and are not independent subtitles, and could actually be written with a comma (we just happen to have selected a dash). There is no cause for capitalization here, and all our relevant guidelines (MOS:CAPS, WP:NCCAPS, etc.) are consistent in telling us not to use capital letters except when necessary. That a few wikiprojects have gotten into a bad habit behind their WP:OWN / WP:LOCALCONSENSUS garden walls is no reason at all for us to codify some kind of inexplicable exception for them. PS: This really should have been opened at WT:NCCAPS, because MoS is not a title guideline (except inasmuch as a style matter that applies to running prose also applies to the article title; but this is a title-specific question).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:42, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

  When I posed this simply as a question, an editor suggested posting a request for comment here among several options. I would certainly welcome help in promoting it more broadly. ~TPW 13:45, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

  I posted a pointer to it at WT:NCCAPS and the talk page of another naming criteria guideline (I forget which one, but it seemed relevant at the time). Someone else posted a similar notice to WP:VPPOL and I think that in particular will net significant input.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:43, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

• No. SMcCandlish's example about commas is useful. Overall, in the long run, the temporary disruption from a bot run moving a bunch of pages is less of a problem than the creep from making an arbitrary exception to our normal rules to acommodate these pages would be. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:58, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
• Yes – Just like how the first letter after a colon should be capitalized (see what I did there?). Primarily from a visual standpoint, this just makes more sense and looks better. Keep in mind that an article title is not a sentence, even if we use sentence case. An en dash basically starts a new "sentence". InfiniteNexus (talk) 03:45, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

  Please read MOS:COLON. The guidance tells us specifically that we do not cap after a colon. Cinderella157 (talk) 04:01, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, in prose. InfiniteNexus (talk) 04:15, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

  Whenever I see an argument "primarily from a visual standpoint," I have to what information this conveys that we do not think is necessary for anyone who receives information via their ears instead of their eyes. ~TPW 15:08, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

• Per Isaidnoway, the scope of this is just too broad. Plus, there's already concerns about mistakes in updating these articles. Perhaps if the scope was narrowed, but for now I would be against mass changes. Thanks! Nemov (talk) 18:36, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

  Would you comment more on the concern about the broadness of the scope? My sense of how "too broad" is used is "too vague." Isaidnoway's comment was about the quantity of articles. Is your comment about the technical ability to make a change to multiple articles? That's the sense I get, since you linked to a thread about semi-automated changes.

  Regarding mistakes, the mistakes I have discovered have to do with the gender being capitalized elsewhere in the article, which I surmise (without evidence) might be due to it being capitalized in the article title. I haven't kept a running list of examples, but if you'd like I will keep you posted should I discover more. ~TPW 14:43, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

• No. WP:NCCAPS refers to MOS:CAPS for when to capitalize, and CAPS' MOS:SENTENCECAPS is clear that we should not capitalize after a dash. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 22:58, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
• Comment The people !voting "no" are all citing NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS. If there is consensus that those guidelines say not to capitalize after an en dash (or colon), then it's time to change that guideline, because it's ridiculous and misguided. Article titles and section headings aren't sentences; they're sentence fragments. Even if we are using sentence case, it doesn't mean we have to follow punctuation rules for sentences. InfiniteNexus (talk) 22:31, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Executing on the above RFC

(listed as a subsection with the RFC so that subscribers to that RFC would be notified)

To get us started on how to put the above result into action, I've compiled a list of 40,000 or so articles that could use a lowercase after the dash. It's too many to list in one page, so I split into these two: User:Dicklyon/Cap after dash titles and User:Dicklyon/Cap after dash titles more. Someone (including me) should look the lists over carefully to see if my query swept up anything it shouldn't have. When we're happy with the lists, we can ask for a TolBot task and get bot approval to automate the moves (I won't be executing that, but I can help get the lists in shape and so on). Dicklyon (talk) 19:05, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Some findings so far:

• Some of the items listed include things like "– Men's Elite Division" or "– Women's Open Division". I don't see these terms much in sources, so it's hard to say if they should be considered proper names; seems to me that "– men's elite division" etc. would do just fine, but that goes beyond the immediate (word after dash) question. I can remove them from the list if lowercase turns out to be controversial. Dicklyon (talk) 20:16, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

  Checking books, with query for "handball" with "open division" or "elite division", I find those terms usually lowercase; so I'll go ahead and fix those. Dicklyon (talk) 20:42, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

  I moved those 9, including lowercase "men's" and "women's", so can take them out of the list now. I've only done case cleanup on 2 so far; they're a mass of over-capitalization, with things like "Semi Final" and "Left Back" and "5th Place" etc. Dicklyon (talk) 00:38, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

• There are 206 with "– (Men's|Women's) Freestyle ..." where Freestyle needs to be downcased to match the rest of the wresting and other sports' "freestyle". I just hadn't gotten around to moving them. I'm started this RM discussion to fix them. Dicklyon (talk) 20:54, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
• WAIT... I just saw this bot request. This was already handled in a couple of large rfcs' for tennis articles a year or so ago. Compromises and agreements were made in those decisions. We aren't changing things again because of an rfc that none of the projects were privy to! I just had to change a few back because it was brought to my attention on my talk page. We decided the first letter after the ndash was to remain capitalized in rfc's where projects were informed. Sneaking something by and then doing bot requests would require another bot request by the project to move them all back! Or The project would need to move them back one by one. Goodness... I thought we had finalized this garbage with all the past un-needed moves. This little-bit-here, then little-bit-more, little-bit-later, stuff has got to stop. Please pull those tennis articles off your lists of lower-casing. Heck you probably missed 99% of the tournaments since every single tournament ever done uses the format, plus every player article also uses the format. Fyunck(click) (talk) 00:40, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

  The close of this RfC would state: ... there is no consensus on capitalization for sporting events in general, and there is a rough consensus that specific capitalization rules for the tennis project are permissible at this time ... [emphasis added]. The other two discussions linked on your TP were not RfCs. Consensus can and has changed. It sounds very much like you are accusing either the nom of the RfC here (or perhaps somebody else) of bad faith or worse? Cinderella157 (talk) 04:15, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

  No it has not changed either in tennis or olympics where all articles are done this way properly. At least not per a consensus where all the sports projects are informed. The same folks who wanted it changed before are pushing it again. This was a done deal so we wouldn't have to go through it again. Thousands of fixes were done the last time and then we moved on. The nom here was not done in bad faith. However the list of pages to automove by someone who knows how contentious this is is mighty strange. He had been in another discussion very recently that might have gone downhill had I not suggested a compromise alternative that all seemed to agree with. Plus he gave a message to another editor about how tough this might be if we had to, god forbid, let many sports projects know about this potential change. Kudus to Dickylon by the way for letting that editor know there could be heavy feedback to page moves from some projects. Had another editor not informed me of their unhappiness I might not have noticed till 100s of automoves happened. That should never occur when almost every Olympic Project and Tennis Project article would be affected. There were large discussions and rfcs... one of which you mentioned... another discussion here. Another right here. The ndash is used as a separator of sentence fragments in multiple projects. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:39, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

  I would suggest a review of WP:CONLEVEL. Neither tennis nor any other project on WP is a walled garden exempt from the broader community consensus. You appear to be being somewhat liberal in your representations of matters and continue to appear to be casting aspersions about the conduct of other editors. This was already handled in a couple of large rfcs' for tennis articles a year or so ago. My response (immediately above) did refer to the three discussions you initially linked on your talk page, including those two you now link here. I will say it again, only one of those was an RfC. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:23, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

  Plus in the previous discussions (RFC, RM, and others) there was never a consensus about the dash, or about caps after the dash. These remain open questions. Dicklyon (talk) 03:07, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

  "Heck you probably missed 99%..." – I'm only looking at article titles, not all the other places that might be miscapitalized, which of course should also be fixed. also, the "tennis is special" argument didn't carry much water last time, and still doesn't. Dicklyon (talk) 05:07, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

• Per the concerns I raised above at #Headings: should content after a colon be capitalized?, I am preparing a formal RfC on challenging/changing the guideline. I cannot force y'all to wait until then, but please consider doing so. Thank you. InfiniteNexus (talk) 00:42, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

  I'm not in a hurry. More discussion is good. Dicklyon (talk) 04:14, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

I think the fundamental problem is that we don't have any guidance on such a role for the dash in titles. Guidance says we don't do subtitles, but that's how some want to use the dash. I think the reason we don't is that we want to be able to directly use titles in article text (perhaps with pipe trick), and this construct won't work for that. As Fyunck points out, we avoided a case disagreement elsewhere by some rearranging. Maybe that's a good idea here, too. E.g. "2023 Blah Blah men's singles" without the dash. Or "Men's singles at the 2023 Blah Blah". Dicklyon (talk) 17:40, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Guidance says we don't do subtitles – Wait, which guideline? InfiniteNexus (talk) 21:23, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: Could you clarify? The RfC I'm preparing is basically ready to go, but I'd like to clear this up first. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:44, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

See my response below; I answered after Fyunck. Dicklyon (talk) 15:22, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:25, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

There is something else too. Wikipedia changes by usage... it always has. If Usage has swayed a great deal one way then we can incorporate that into our rules as acceptable. Like the English language. It's like weed. Communities getting tired of making criminals out of 25 million people then legalize it instead. We've done that at wikipedia for a couple decades. But Dickylon's suggestion at least is something to look at. It could certainly be done but for linking, visual help, and sorting, it seems unwieldy and unnatural. Look at this years 2023 Wimbledon and it's branches:

• 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Day-by-day summaries
• 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Men's singles
• 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Women's singles
• 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Men's doubles
• 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Women's doubles
• 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Mixed doubles
• 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Wheelchair men's singles
• 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Wheelchair women's singles
• 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Wheelchair quad singles
• 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Wheelchair men's doubles
• 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Wheelchair women's doubles
• 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Wheelchair quad doubles
• 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Boys' singles
• 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Girls' singles
• 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Boys' doubles
• 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Girls' doubles
• 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Boys' 14&U singles
• 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Girls' 14&U singles
• 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Gentlemen's invitation doubles
• 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Ladies' invitation doubles
• 2023 Wimbledon Championships – Mixed invitation doubles

There's like 260+ events a year like this in tennis alone. It is much easier to look at these as subsections of an event rather than heaps of articles starting with "Girl's singles." And tennis isn't the only sport with women's singles. All the Olympic articles are done this way too, so they'll have a big say in starting 120 years of olympics with discipline/year/event rather than year/event/discipline. These work very well as a subsection of sentence fragments and I can't fathom why anyone would really want to mess with them. While it's interesting, I can't see where it does anything but make things messier by using:

• Ladies' invitation doubles at 2023 Wimbledon Championships
• Wheelchair quad singles at 2023 Wimbledon Championships
• Women's singles at 2023 Wimbledon Championships

I really think our readers respond better to and expect "2023 Wimbledon Championships" right up front with an essential subsection of "Wheelchair men's singles." It's tighter, it's more readable, and it's more natural. It's not broken in the least. I'm thinking there aren't a lot of sports that have a need for this type of subtitle sectioning... tennis, Olympics, badminton, curling, other international events like Pan-American games, etc... but this format works quite well for all the sports. We need to show some flexibility here when something works. And we certainly need every sports project and sub sports project notified if all their articles could suddenly change. Fyunck(click) (talk) 22:16, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Probably I was recalling this bit at WP:AT#Subsidiary articles: "Do not create subsidiary articles – Do not use titles suggesting that one article forms part of another: even if an article is considered subsidiary to another (as where summary style is used), it should be named independently. For example, an article on transport in Azerbaijan should not be given a name like "Azerbaijan/Transport" or "Azerbaijan (transport)", use Transport in Azerbaijan." To me, it would make more sense to just have 2023 Wimbledon Championships with sections Day-by-day summaries, Men's singles, etc. Yes, I realize they'd be big. Or use names that don't use subtitles, per that section (in different words). Dicklyon (talk) 23:48, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

And that might work best for many articles, but not all articles.. especially sports articles. Subjects that are huge yet intrinsically linked to the subject. We don't have to be a cookie-cutter, especially when something else works much better and has worked well for so long. I think it is a help to our readers the way we do it, and I will always side with what I feel is best for our readers. Fyunck(click) (talk) 00:23, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm definitely with you there. It's just not clear what's best, as this two-part dash-separated title is almost unique to sports, and confuses me when I'm used to caps signaling proper names. Why not just 2023 Wimbledon Championships day-by-day summaries and 2023 Wimbledon Championships men's singles? Or leave out the word Championships even? Dicklyon (talk) 02:04, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Championships is there because it's the official title of the event. In tables, to save room, we simply use Wimbledon. It seems like "2023 Wimbledon Championships day-by-day summaries" doesn't break it down as visually clear as the way we've done for years and years... that's it's an article on 2023 Wimbledon with in essence a subheading of "Day-by-day summaries." As if in an article you have the title but you also have section headings that would begin with a capital. I'm sure that's why every single Olympic and international event article does the same. Did you ever ask the Olympic Project why they do it that way? It is much clearer to my eye when it's separated by an ndash as two separate sentence fragments. Actually all our titles used to be separated by a simple hyphen but we changed it years ago. Could we do it as "2023 Wimbledon Championships men's singles?" It's certainly better than "Men's singles at the 2023 Wimbledon Championships." But it's not better than "2023 Wimbledon Championships – Men's singles" or even "2023 Wimbledon Championships: Men's singles." The ndash is analogous to a slash in some respects... two separate things in one title. It makes it very clear to all our readers. Dealing with sports all my life it seems pretty easy but perhaps being so sports-centric in my life it makes me unaware of how it looks to folks who might only work on something like presidential bios. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:50, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

It's clear you have thought through your reasons for preferring the dash. I appreciate your clear rationale. I don't have any preference about dashes myself, other than consistency across the site to avoid unnecessary conflict by minimizing special rules that editors are expected to know before reviewing articles of a specific subject.

Since the request for comment was about the capitalization, I'm hoping to better understand why you think the big letter is important after that dash. ~TPW 14:36, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I did find where the Olympic Project discussed this in 2008. So it's been fine with Olympics for 15 years and not sure why anyone would want to change what's worked for so long. Simply incorporate it like we do with flag icons for sports with sourcable use of flag icons for international sports. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:56, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

 Note: Please see #RfC on capitalization after a colon or dash. InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:48, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I'll repeat something I said somewhere in one or another of these discussions: This entire squabble is a silly waste of time, because if WP:AT policy (specifically WP:COMMADIS, and note there is no "WP:DASHDIS" or "WP:COLONDIS") were being followed, there would be no dash or colon in any of these page titles, but a comma, and obviously no capital letter would follow the comma. They should all be mass-WP:RMed to use commas instead of dashes, per the title policy, then this entire silly "debate" just instantly goes away.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:59, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Shoot the Chute

Should the term Shoot the Chute be capitalized? In reading the article, I get the clear sense that this is a type of carnival ride, rather than a brand name; the fact that there have been at least three manufacturers brings it home for me. I think it is a common term that should not be capitalized. ~TPW 14:27, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

"Shoot the Chute is an amusement ride", it says. I'd look to sources to see whether they treat that as a proper name. From books n-grams, looks like it's only half capped, so we should default to lowercase. Dicklyon (talk) 04:24, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for giving another opinion. ~TPW 15:18, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, this shouldn't be capitalized if we don't capitalize "fun house", "ferris wheel", and other carnival attractions. Within this classs of things, if it's not a trademarked name, then it's not a proper name.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:02, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

ALL-CAPS for "keywords for lexical sets"?

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics#ALL-CAPS for "keywords for lexical sets"?. Involves MOS:ALLCAPS.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:52, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Provinces of Italy

On the Provinces of Italy page, there are both upper and lowercase "Provinces" in the list (e.g.: "province of Arezzo", and "Province of Naples"). Could someone very kindly fix this for all the provinces of Italy? Thanks in advance. JackkBrown (talk) 11:48, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

International incidents and affairs

To me, named 'incidents' and 'affairs' are not meaningfully proper nouns in themselves, and the current distribution of articles on Wiki seems to go either way, e.g.

Dreyfus affair Iran–Contra affair Kornilov affair Sokal affair	Petrov Affair Gaspee Affair
Gulf of Tonkin incident May 15 incident Nanjing incident of 1616	Mukden Incident Marco Polo Bridge Incident Nanjing Incident (1976)

Though, oddly, on a skim there seems to be far more capitalized 'Incidents' than there are 'Affairs', perhaps this is due to different source language trends, since 'incident' seems to be a common East Asian translation, while 'affair' is more European? Either way, I think they are pragmatically equivalent, and as a rule they should both be lowercase in the form {} affair. Remsense聊 16:47, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

They do sound like generics, so would generally be lowercase, unless for particular ones they are consistently capitalized in sources. Some of those incidents have been increasingly capitalized over time, but are still not consistently so. The Petrov Affair is consistently capped in books, as far as I can tell, but the Gaspee is a mostly-lowercase affair. Dicklyon (talk) 04:18, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

I fixed the Gaspee affair. Dicklyon (talk) 05:43, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Remsensel, I agree. They should be downcased unless there are compelling reasons for capping. Tony (talk) 09:50, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

I started a move discussion for a few of these that were not easily moved, at Talk:Marco Polo Bridge Incident#Requested move 31 October 2023. Dicklyon (talk) 00:18, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

RfC on capitalization after a colon or dash

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

This discussion concerned capitalization following dashes and colons in article titles, section titles, and list items. This was a well-attended followup RfC to an earlier RfC that had resulted in the imminent renaming of tens of thousands of articles.

A prliminary note: editors responding to the RfC as stated seemed to have two readings. The more common reading ended up being that either uppercase or lowercase after such punctuation would be allowed for, this reading became an explicitly proposed alternative partway through the discussion. Some editors did seem to read the RfC as being a strict switch to uppercase, but this was less common and did not gain much traction.

Given the format of this RfC and the variety of supports and opposes, we have a clear outcome but an undecided implementation, which I will describe.

The ideas of applying WP:RETAIN and WP:CONSISTENT were invoked explicitly and implicitly and were well recieved. Evidence of current practice was provided in support of the proposals. Arguments in opposition relied largely on the guidelines in question, and specific preferences in external style guides. There were also arguments that articles should be titled differently, which I will address again later.

With that in mind, the outcome of this discussion is rough consensus to allow for lowercase or capital letters after dashes or colons in article titles, section titles, and list items. Because of the way the discussion developed from the initial RfC, I believe that the implementation must be discussed, including which specific pages and sections to update, and how to do so, including how to incorporate ideas from RETAIN and CONSISTENT. There doesn't seem to be a desire for substantial additional verbiage in the guidelines.

This outcome overturns the outcome of the earlier RfC specifically about sports articles.

There was a concern that such sports event articles constitute subsidiary articles, but that was both explicitly rebutted, as well as implictly rebutted. These articles are currently widely accepted on Wikipedia, and there was no consensus around changing WP:AT to allow for subsidiary articles.

There were some concerns about how some of these articles are titled in general, with various suggestions for possible improvements. One thing seems clear, if editors have a desire to change the naming patterns of such sports event articles, which number in the tens of thousands, or articles with colons and dashes more broadly, a lot more legwork, advocacy, and consensus building is needed prior to an RfC to try to change such titles.

Lastly, editors voiced concerns about canvassing. Aside from a single procedural oppose there was no followup on this through the rest of the discussion, even amongst those who disagreed with the accused, so I have considered the concern lightly, and didn't see it shifting this outcome. If I have erred in this, I will be understanding of the need to go to WP:AN. (non-admin closure) —siroχo 10:49, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

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Should MOS:COLON, MOS:ENDASH, WP:NCCAPS, MOS:SECTIONCAPS, and MOS:LISTCAPS be amended to allow for the first letter after a colon or en dash in an article title, section heading, or list item to be capitalized? InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:45, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

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Current Wikipedia guidelines dictate that the first letter after a colon (or en dash, by extension, since they function the same way when being used as separators) in an article title, section heading, or list item should be in lowercase, as the phrase that comes after the colon or dash is not a complete sentence. However, this rule is near-universally ignored by editors (see data presented above here and here), because common sense tells us that this does not make sense. Unlike in prose where the rule does make sense, article titles, section headings, and list items are not complete sentences but rather sentence fragments, so it is illogical to apply capitalization or grammar rules intended for prose.

Capitalizing the first letter after a colon or dash is the widespread standard among English-language publications that use sentence case in article titles. For example: Reuters ([1] [2] [3]), the Associated Press ([4] [5] [6]), The Washington Post ([7] [8] [9]), the Los Angeles Times ([10] [11] [12]), CNN ([13] [14] [15]), CNBC ([16] [17] [18]), ABC News ([19] [20] [21]), etc. For article titles and section headings, the use of colons and dashes is akin to subtitles in titles of works, in that they both provide supplemental or explanatory information attached via a punctuational separator. MOS:TITLECAPS instructs that the first letter of a subtitle always be capitalized, even if it is an a or the or of; the same logic should apply here. For list items, you can liken them to Wikipedia glossaries, only instead of line breaks, we are using colons or en dashes.

Examples on Wikipedia articles

Example of an article title: From Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics – Men's individual road race Capitalized (de facto) Not capitalized (de jure) Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics – Men's individual road race Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics – men's individual road race Example of a section heading: From David Bowie Capitalized (de facto) Not capitalized (de jure) 1962–1967: Early career to debut album   1962–1967: early career to debut album   Example of a list item: From The Empire Strikes Back Capitalized (de facto) Not capitalized (de jure) Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker: A pilot in the Rebel Alliance and apprentice Jedi Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker: a pilot in the Rebel Alliance and apprentice Jedi

See also past discussions that tangentially touched on this subject: Aug 2023, Jun 2023, May 2023, Oct 2022, Dec 2021, and Oct 2021. InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:45, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

• Note - MOS does not specifically say how to handle ndashes in titles, so there is no "dictate" capitalization or usage of the ndash itself at wikipedia as seen in last years discussion here or at MOS. Fyunck(click) (talk) 22:47, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Survey

• Support as proposer. InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:45, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Note: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style and Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (capitalization) have been notified of this discussion. InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:45, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

• Support Actually I don't think Wikipedia guidelines say anything about ndash capitalization. It's always been pretty silent on the situation. It says ndashes can also be equal to a slash "/" which may or may not have capitalization afterwards. Most bio titles wouldn't need to use a colon or ndash... you'd get a tree or two broken off from the main article. Some sports like the Olympics or tennis are quite different, and it's why Wikipedia has usually been fairly flexible in how it operates, especially when you get heaps of specific disciplines such as Olympic swimming. It's what make Wikipedia great... it evolves with editors. It's only natural to have articles broken down into heading/subheading Swimming at the 2020 Summer Olympics – Women's 100 metre backstroke. It's easier to read for our millions of viewers. Every Olympic article and tennis article is done this way. The Olympics Project handled this way back in 2008. Tennis Project since 2006. When did this procedure suddenly start giving readers problems? I thought we had moved on from this in a recent RFC?. All sports projects need to know about this potential change. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:42, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
• Support- I think this makes sense. I agree that the endash or colon in these cases acts as a bridge between a title and subtitle so I agree with capitalising the first word after it. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 21:21, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
• Support for article titles and section headings, neutral regarding list items. – Capitalizing the "subtitle" (usually separated by a colon, less often by a dash) is intuitive and widely used in English. Gawaon (talk) 21:49, 20 September 2023 (UTC) Update: See the following "Comment on style guides" for additional justification. Gawaon (talk) 16:37, 23 September 2023 (UTC) Update 2+3: I somewhat modified my vote (twice) to explain my position regarding list items. Gawaon (talk) 18:09, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
• Comment on style guides: Since some here have doubted that the suggested usage corresponds to popular practice, here's what two of the most widely used style guides say on the topic – italics added by me for emphasis:
  • The Chicago Manual of Style, section 8.158: "In sentence­-style capitalization, only the first word in a title, the first word in a subtitle, and any proper names are capitalized." As example they give: "The house of Rothschild: The world's banker, 1849-1999".
  • Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (a.k.a. APA style), section 6.17: "In sentence case, lowercase most words in the title or heading. Capitalize only the following words: the first word of the title or heading; the first word of a subtitle; the first word after a colon, em dash, or end punctuation in a heading; nouns followed by numerals or letters; proper nouns."

These style guides aren't arbitrarily picked. I used the Massviews Analysis API to check which pages in our Category:Style guides (including subcategories) are most widely read and checked the first three that are actually style guides. For two of them, the results are as above. The third, The Elements of Style, is a much shorter work which, as far as I could find, doesn't contain any detailed rules for capitalization or sentence style. Gawaon (talk) 16:37, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

• Comment I have no opinion one way or another, but when I see things like this come up again and again, I do think that some editors have completely lost sight of what wikipedia is supposed to be about. Whichever way these RfCs go (I use the plural because no doubt this issue will arise again) if an editor so feels strongly about change to launch an RfC and they win the RfC to change the status quo, they should change all the relevant pages themselves so as to allow other editors to spend their time on more meaningful editing. There are still many pages in need of more sources, better sources and more information. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 22:02, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

  Boy that's a good point. However this particular Rfc, as worded, would require no changes to articles if passed. The proposer did this to head off changes by bot to these articles and these articles, plus all the peripheral articles that would need reworking/rewording. But for sure we have so many real issues to work on to make our articles better I'm amazed these piss-ant capitalization issues keep taking us from creation and vandal fighting. Fyunck(click) (talk) 22:36, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

  I really care so little about the ins and outs of ndash capitalization. I havent even read the RfC proposal, as this would waste five minutes of my time on an issue I do not care about. But I do care about and keep an eye on the editing of tennis articles (I read your post on the tennis project page which alerted me to it) and I can see how you and another prolific tennis editor are continually left to pick up the pieces when editors come along and change trivial things such as capitalization. As you rightly say, this takes you away from vandal fighting. I know you and I have had our disagreements in the past, but you do prevent a lot of vandalism of tennis articles. My main criticism on these issues is not directed primarily at you, because you are the one reacting to the problems caused by others, but I still think it is important for all editors to prioritise the use of their time to deal with the most important issues. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 23:39, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

  I wasn't the one who dug this matter up — I agree it's trivial and should be left alone in a perfect world, and in fact, that is how we have been operating for years. But now, since editors have decided to crack down on this non-issue, let's just settle the matter once and for all. Capitalizing after a colon or dash is already the status quo in practice, but the problem is that this technically breaches our MoS. InfiniteNexus (talk) 04:12, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  You started an RFC on a question that you think is trivial? Good job. Dicklyon (talk) 05:04, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  It's a trivial matter that needs to be definitively settled so we can move onto more important things. "Trivial" as in we should leave them alone; who cares whether or not they're capitalized? But since you and others are trying to force everyone else to use lowercase, which is against the norm no matter what the MoS says, I have a problem with that. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:52, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  Fyunck, how do these ongoing case-fixing issues keep you from creation and vandal fighting? Why not just carry on? Dicklyon (talk) 05:04, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  We all have limited time to perform additions, and fight vandalism. Maybe your time is unlimited but mine isn't. I haven't looked at 100s of articles on my watchlist for two days because I'm writing here or informing projects of the strange rfc that just took place and this rfc. I'm sure vandalism happened in several places and it will now slip by because of what I deem silly capitalization limits. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:09, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  You can just not participate in stuff you think is silly. Dicklyon (talk) 17:20, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  Trying to prevent silly mass-renaming initiatives by others is certainly a noble (and non-silly) goal. Gawaon (talk) 17:51, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. This is too vague and over-broad, and predicated on a falsehood. Nothing at all in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Titles of works#Capital letters (or elsewhere in MOS:TITLES) suggests to use lower-case for the first letter of a subtitle, and even says Subtitles: ... For titles with subtitles or parenthetical phrases, capitalize the first word of each element, even if it would not normally be capitalized, if the element is ... given in parentheses or following a colon or dash: "Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)", "Linking Albinism and Immunity: The Secrets of Secretory Lysosomes", Star Trek: The Motion Picture. This is about externally published works. When it comes to our own pagenames, there is no reason to capitalize the "w" in "women's" in "Swimming at the 2020 Summer Olympics – women's 100 metre backstroke". That we're using an en-dash here is entirely incidental, and it could just as easily be a comma (and actually should be, per WP:COMMADIS; there is no "WP:DASHDIS"). The "women's 100 metre backstroke" portion of this is not an independent subtitle, but just narrowing detail to more WP:PRECISEly identify the topic of the article. It's a form of disambiguation. In the actual title of a published work, like the "Luke Skywalker: A pilot in the Rebel Alliance and apprentice Jedi" example given above, capitalization would follow the colon because there we are dealing with a subtitle, and we could not replace the colon with a comma. In short, we already capitalize after a colon when something is a subtitle, and we have no reason to capitalize after a colon or an en dash when something is not a subtitle, such as PRECISE-narrowing additional detail in WP's own article titles. This proposal is so vaguely worded that it would probably result in a whole lot of mis-capitalization of partial-sentence phrases after colons and en dashes in mid-sentence that have nothing to do with titles of anything at all. Also the claim that "this rule is near-universally ignored by editors" is ridiculously overblown. And "you can liken them to Wikipedia glossaries, only instead of line breaks, we are using colons or en dashes" makes no sense at all; most glossary entries are lower-case because they are not proper names, and a title and alleged subtitle of something are completely unlike separate glossary entries in any way. I agree with Fyunck(click)'s observation that this proposal was written simply to thwart one other particular editor, and that "we have so many real issues to work on to make our articles better I'm amazed these piss-ant capitalization issues keep taking us from creation and vandal fighting". This is petty "title-warring" and a desperate attempt to preserve over-capitalization in a subset of sports articles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:13, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

  An additional oppose reason: This proposal conflicts directly with WP:CITE, which permits use of any real-world-attested citation style. Some of them use lower-casing of everything in an article title other than the first letter and proper names, colons and dashes notwithstanding. This is why you'll see article titles in citations so often in the form "Foo bar: baz quux", especially in science articles (and you'll see it in the wild constantly if you spend any time at all on JSTOR and other indexes of journal articles). The claim below that "Foo bar: Baz quux" is some kind of "standard in English" is blatantly false.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:59, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  I don't agree with the last sentence. I find this is an attempt to preserve normal capitalization over the few who want under-capitalization. But I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:22, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

  Nah, see canvassing note below.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:00, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  To preserve normal capitalization over the few who want under-capitalization Yep. In past discussions, the main weapon used by pro-lowercase editors has been the MoS and NCCAPS, which prevented logic from prevailing. Everyone was so preoccupied with whether or not they were following the guidelines, they didn't stop to think if they should (i.e. no one stopped to consider whether the guidelines should be changed). InfiniteNexus (talk) 04:12, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  Half of this !vote makes no sense, and it seems like you're not getting my point.

  • I never suggested that MOS:TITLECAPS says to use lowercase for the first letter of a subtitle; my point is that we are giving subtitles of works an exception to the all-lowercase rule of WP:NCCAPS, so why not this? The colon or dash is being used in a title/heading/list the same way as a colon or dash in a subtitle of a work.
  • The en dash in "Swimming at the 2020 Summer Olympics – Women's 100 metre backstroke" is not being used for disambiguation purposes. "Swimming at the 2020 Summer Olympics" is not a type of "Women's 100 metre backstroke".
  • The Luke Skywalker example is a bullet point from a list of cast members, not a "title of a published work". According to MOS:COLON, we're supposed to use lowercase since the character description is an incomplete sentence ... but nobody, even FAs, follow this rule because it's stupid.
  • This proposal is so vaguely worded that it would probably result in a whole lot of mis-capitalization of partial-sentence phrases after colons and en dashes in mid-sentence that have nothing to do with titles of anything at all. How is it vague? We are specifically talking about colons and spaced en dashes when they are being used as a separator in article titles, section headings, and bulleted list items. I don't think we can any more clearer than that.
  • The glossaries example is in reference to the fact that the first letter after a line break is capitalized, even if it is a sentence fragment and not a complete sentence. For example, at Wikipedia:Glossary#3RR, the "A" in Abbreviation for three-revert rule. is in uppercase even though it is an incomplete sentence. The glossary entry could might as well have been styled as 3RR: Abbreviation for three-revert rule. instead of using a line break. That was my point.

  And finally, this is not just about sports (an area on Wikipedia I have never touched nor cared for), and it is not just about the previous RfC. There has always been confusion over whether policy permits the first word after a colon or dash to be capitalized in titles, headings, and lists; it's just that until the prior RfC, we have largely turned a blind eye to articles that technically breach the MoS. Now, editors have dug up this trivial matter and threatened to take action. InfiniteNexus (talk) 04:13, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  What I frequently find in articles like "Swimming at the 2020 Summer Olympics – Women's 100 metre backstroke" is that "women's" is then titled in the lead and elsewhere, likely because some well-intentioned editor presumed it's a proper name for the sport, because why else would it be capitalized in the title? ~TPW 13:54, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  That's a complete misrepresentation. The S in women's would be upper case for the same reason as the S in swimming is upper case-because it's the start of a title or subtitle. Nobody thinks it's a proper name.  — Amakuru (talk) 20:39, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  and yet, I find it in the lead of sports articles. I haven't been compiling a list, but if you would like then I'll do my best. ~TPW 13:57, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

  Here one: Weightlifting at the 2002 Commonwealth Games – Women's 58 kg; the lead has "women's" capitalized, when it's in no way a subtitle in that context. It's been that way since the beginning, from which I gather the creating editor followed what was done in a similar article to make that decision. ~TPW 16:22, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose—per SMcCandlish. Tony (talk) 23:17, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
• Comment: See blatant "call to arms" WP:CANVASSING at sports wikiprojects, e.g. here. This WP:GANG + WP:BATTLEGROUND behavior.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:00, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  Absolute baloney and you should know better. I told people that the sports projects involved should be notified, and I did so. It can affect so many. What was ridiculous was trying to change things with no mention to the project's involved. So many sports articles could be forced to change, if a bot goes through the articles and auto-changes them, that it is quite important no matter what side you come down on. At least everyone will be aware as long as they subscribe to the projects involved. Fyunck(click) (talk) 01:32, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  Take it to ANI if it's that inappropriate to notify relevant projects of an RfC that affects a multitude of their articles. ― "Ghost of Dan Gurney" (talk)  04:35, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  He's done this before to me so I'm getting used to it. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:09, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  The notice posted at the various sports wikiprojects is a campaign speech; it isn't a neutral notification – as such, it is canvassing. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 12:20, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  It looks to me as if a handful of editors are trying to force a much larger group (sports Wikiprojects) to accede to their will, frankly. Considering this, the message was fine. ― "Ghost of Dan Gurney" (talk)  14:30, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  Nothing Ghost did was WP:CANVASSING. Implying they did feels contrived. It also goes against good faith to assume an editor reaching out to the several parties affected might have done so for "support" !votes. So, please consider good faith. Conyo14 (talk) 18:14, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  Repeat: "The notice posted at the various sports wikiprojects is a campaign speech; it isn't a neutral notification – as such, it is canvassing." Having an open discussion is not "forcing" anyone to do anything, and you're engaging in the fallacies that a) everyone participating in a wikiproject is part of a hive mind that agrees about everything, and b) that wikiprojects are a tail that wags the entire dog of Wikipedia, and get to make up their own rules to apply to categories of content they "claim". This is directly against WP:CONLEVEL policy, and such behavior by wikiprojects is the entire reason we have that policy, and the entire reason for several ArbCom cases that all came down with the result that wikiprojects do not dictate a damned thing about any topic, ever, and cannot be used as canvassing farms to thwart site-wide consensuses like policies and guidelines.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:54, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  Be careful... your hammering of everything that WikiProjects do is showing through. I let the projects know as is normal. Was it more emphasized so they'd notice... perhaps a bit. But then again the last sneaky RFC that attempted to wipe out all the capital letters in dozens of WikiProjects gave no notice at all to those projects of what was about to happen. That is a disgrace to Wikipedia. And a bot was about to be formed that wiped them out en masse to boot. Stop the high-almighty routine and move on. While I'm getting used to these attacks on my character from you, it does take up space and time here. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:12, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  Horseshit. I'm in dozens of wikiprojects and most of what I do on this site is within the scope and work of one or another of them. That doesn't mean that everything imaginable that pertains to a wikiproject is proper and good. Abusing them as canvassing farms is a good example of something that is not good but is connected to wikiprojects.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:01, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

  I think it's also fair to say that en masse changes across all of Wikipedia ought to have en masse notifications. Especially considering this is the site of English usage in editing on Wikipedia, it probably should not be decided one group of people, but rather several groups of people. Conyo14 (talk) 22:11, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  SMcCandlish, Fyunck(click), Conyo14, GhostOfDanGurney, in the future it may be helpful to use the standardized {{please see}} template for notifications to avoid disagreements 🙂 (Commenting as an uninvolved third party)— Frostly (talk) 05:01, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

  Can also use {{FYI|pointer=y}}. But it won't make any difference if the poster of the template follows it with an extremely biased call-to-arms canvassing message.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:01, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per SMcCandlish. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:36, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per SMcCandlish. Star Garnet (talk) 01:01, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
• Support - I genuinely don't understand this persistent crusade against what seems to be specifically sports articles, but regardless, all of the "capitalized" examples look more proper. I also disagree with SMcCandlish's Women's 100m backstroke example; it does seem like an independent subtitle to me, which is being used as WP:NATURAL disambiguation. ― "Ghost of Dan Gurney" (talk)  02:23, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  I think the reason it appears that sports articles are being targeted is because sports articles are the only ones for which this local style is being applied. I haven't seen anything similar outside of sports, but Wikipedia is vast and others might be able to link to examples.

  As for the idea that capitalization makes the wording "look more proper," that sounds like a preference. Do you have any sources that back up that assertion? ~TPW 13:59, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  Capitalizing the first letter after a colon or dash is the widespread standard among English-language publications that use sentence case in article titles. For example: Reuters ([17] [18] [19]), the Associated Press ([20] [21] [22]), The Washington Post ([23] [24] [25]), the Los Angeles Times ([26] [27] [28]), CNN ([29] [30] [31]), CNBC ([32] [33] [34]), ABC News ([35] [36] [37]), etc. I understand we're WP:NOTNEWS and all, but I would say this shows a rough consensus amongst US-publications. ― "Ghost of Dan Gurney" (talk)  14:35, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks. I was actually looking for sources supporting the "look more proper" assertion, in particular. It helps me wrap my mind around a discussion when I can separate what's sourced and what's preference. ~TPW 15:12, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose, mostly – The crux as I mentioned in a discussion above is in WP:AT#Subsidiary articles: "Do not create subsidiary articles. If we really do mean to allow subsidiary articles, then maybe this kind of subtitle format will make sense, so let's discuss that first. At the other end of spectrum, however, the suggestion for "list items" seems very broken. The example given is more like typical use of colons in sentences than like subtitles, and there's no reason to capitalize there. For headings, in the middle of these, I don't see a clear case; the colon after dates is not clearly a title:subtitle kind of relationship, so lowercase seems fine. If there's a clear case of wanting subtitles in headings, let's look at that. Dicklyon (talk) 05:01, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
• Alternative proposal I have thought some more about the comments above regarding the triviality of this issue, so how about this: instead of mandating one capitalization style over another, let's make this a MOS:RETAIN issue and make both ways acceptable (while keeping in mind WP:CONSISTENT). InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:55, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  See now that's the way it should be. Simply retain what we already have and not force 10s of thousands of articles into some rigid format. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:02, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  I also concur with retaining the existing style because it's trivial nonsense to mass move thousands of articles to conform to a style decided in a single discussion on an obscure guideline talk page where the participants are the same half dozen editors every time. The tail does not wag the dog, and guidelines need to be changed to reflect actual practice in articles, not the other way around. oknazevad (talk) 08:28, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  That's asking every editor to know what special rules apply to different subjects. That's not the sort of consistency I think would serve the project. ~TPW 13:48, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  If you want all of our articles to be consistent without needing to re-educate editors on capitalization rules, then you should change your !vote to Support. As I have stated several times, capitalizing after a colon or dash is the de facto norm, despite the fact that MoS tells us not to do so. This RfC is not an attempt to change the way we capitalize, it's to legitimize what the vast majority of editors are already doing (and extinguish calls for mass-changing articles to lowercase by a vocal minority). InfiniteNexus (talk) 20:22, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  While I'm not sure how we should weigh "what the vast majority of editors are already doing," it's probably worth asking: do you have statistics to back up that claim?

  Also, I do not vote, even with an exclamation point. ~TPW 14:01, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

• I think the bike shed should be painted pink, but other than that I agree with SMcCandlish. older ≠ wiser 12:30, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose on procedural grounds. In addition to the concerns raised over the broad scope of this request and the possibility of canvassing, a request for comment should be worded neutrally. The phrasing "because common sense tells us that this does not make sense" is not neutral.~TPW 13:51, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  Hi TPW. No comment on the rest of your points, but the neutrality requirement for RFCs applies to the question itself, which is just "Should MOS:COLON, MOS:ENDASH, WP:NCCAPS, MOS:SECTIONCAPS, and MOS:LISTCAPS be amended to allow for the first letter after a colon or en dash in an article title, section heading, or list item to be capitalized?" Neutral enough, I think. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 13:57, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks, I'll take another look. ~TPW 15:14, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

• Support where appropriate. It is standard English usage.  — Amakuru (talk) 20:35, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  Except it certainly is not. It's one of multiple common styles. But I won't repeat myself; see previous comment: [22].  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:00, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

• Support And any feelings of neutrality should be considered !support, IMO. Because there is no good reason to change, as demonstrated through article status quo and external sources, and so we shouldn't. No good will come either way, there's probably no bad to come either way, so why make an unnecessary change to countless articles. And if there is an effect, it'll be that inconsistency is introduced if the changes are made. So just don't. Kingsif (talk) 21:56, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
• Support Let's not bring the English-language Wikipedia in conflict with the English language itself. This is standard linguistic practice and should stay that way, regardless of what a handful of editors here may think. I also find InfiniteNexus' alternative proposal above an adequate option. The Kip 00:21, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose as unnecessary (SMcCandlish has it covered pretty well); the sole purpose of the proposal appears to be to protect existing bad over-capitalisation (mostly sports event article titles), which is obviously a terrible reason for changing guidelines. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 09:41, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  Bringing guidelines in line with actual practice both on and off Wikipedia is the best reason to change a guideline. Guidelines describe what is, the do not dictate what a handful of busybodies think should be. oknazevad (talk) 13:24, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  That isn't what is being proposed here, and hurling insults about probably isn't the best way to convince anyone otherwise. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 13:48, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

• Support It took me some time to think about this, since honestly I don't care what happens to the sports pages, but the other main thing that bugged me was what would happen on other projects (i.e. the articles above unrelated to the sports). So, I wanted to do some research and I got some:

1) From What do you mean when you say to use "title case" for proposal/project titles? via The University of Arizona, "In title case, capitalize the following words in a title or heading: the first word after a colon, em dash, or end punctuation in a heading"

2) From When to Capitalize after a Colon via The Chicago Manual of Style: "In headlines or chapter titles or other display type, it’s normal to cap after a colon, even if the title or heading is in sentence case (see CMOS 8.158) and whether or not the part after the colon is a grammatically complete sentence."

3) From Punctuation and capitalization via Royal Roads University: "When using a colon to join two clauses, capitalize the first word of the clause after the colon if it is a complete sentence"

4) From Title Capitalization Rules various different styles of writing which secondary, reliable, and independent journalists, book writers, etc. will use.

I am not disparaging the obvious though, Wiki MOS is different on purpose. Just, feels contrived to be different on one question, what defines a proper noun? In my honest opinion, I have seen thousands of articles where the journalist will capitalize the article heading (and even the subtitle). Conyo14 (talk) 18:47, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose capitalisation after a dash in article titles when that which follows a dash would not otherwise be intrinsically capitalised. The noms premise is that the advise of WP:P&G not to capitalise in this situation is consistently ignored and that WP:P&G should be amended to reflect the common practice. The evidence offered for this is a reference to two lists here and here. The assertion drawn from this evidence fails to consider the history of these article titles. The listed titles are all sports related. They do not represent a common practice across WP but in a specific area of WP. Fyunck (at #Executing on the above RFC) has referred to three discussions that occurred at about the start of 2022. Prior to these, these dash-constructed titles in the form meet-event typically used title case which is clearly contrary to WP:P&G. The meet part of these titles are of such a form that there is no apparent distinction between the application of sentence case v title case. However, the event part clearly used title case (eg Women's Singles). The close of this RfC would state: ... there is no consensus on capitalization for sporting events in general, and there is a rough consensus that specific capitalization rules for the tennis project are permissible at this time ... [emphasis added]. The result was that the article titles were changed to reflect sentence case, save that capitalisation after the dash remained an artifact of the original inappropriate use of title case. The noms premise and interpretation of the evidence is therefore incorrect in light of the context as to why this situation exists. MOS:TITLECAPS has no application to this particular question, since it only applies to instances of title case and WP article titles are written in sentence case. We now have the result of #RFC on capitalizing after dash in sports article names, which would tell us not to capitalise after the dash for sports articles. As to the use of the dashed construction, I do disagree with its use for some of the reasons already mentioned, and particularly where there are two dashes in a title (eg 2007–08 UCI Track Cycling World Cup Classics – Round 3 – Women's individual pursuit). But that is not a question at present. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:01, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

  We all agree that article and section titles are in sentence case, but what you seem to ignore is that "capitalize after a colon or n-dash" is a regular part of the rules for sentence case throughout the English-speaking world, as various people have pointed out and Conyo14 has shown with several links. Gawaon (talk) 06:13, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

  Please note that my comment at this time is to one particular aspect of the proposal. [W]hat you seem to ignore is that "capitalize after a colon or n-dash" is a regular part of the rules for sentence case throughout the English-speaking world ... That is a pretty bold statement made without substantiation (a faulty generalization) - I support it happening. I know it happens. Therefore, it happens everywhere most of the time. To the sources provided by Conyo14:

  • 1 applies to title case, not sentence case, and is therefore irrelevant.
  • 2 is actually a CMOS discussion page. CMOS doesn't cap after a colon generally in sentence case but does in some specific instances that are perhaps too "subtle", including in headings and titles. It is an interesting article that considers that there are different styles that exist in respect to colons but certainly does not support the almost always everywhere premise. It would conclude by saying: If it’s equally correct to uppercase or lowercase after a colon in most instances, why does the matter deserve attention at all? Editors have actual errors to attend to. Why not let this slide? That’s an option. But the best reading experience results from a great many editing choices that are insignificant in themselves. Taken together, they add up to elegant and coherent writing.
  • 3 would capitalise after a colon if it is a complete sentence (or in a reference).
  • 4: In sentence case, the first word and all proper nouns and proper adjectives are capitalized. All other words are lowercased (just like in a regular English sentence): Bank of America is missing out on Wall Street’s boom. Umm, certainly doesn't support capping after a colon in any context.

  To, ... as various people have pointed out ...: I consider the comments of those that have supported the proposal so far in order.

  • The noms statement can be broadly characterised as a faulty generalisation in respect to assertions and evidence. It provides examples that only support the premise, rather than an unbiased survey (cherry picking (fallacy)). It makes an appeal to common sense (an argument from incredulity). Doesn't really fly for me.
  • To summarise: don't change sports titles. Lacks substantive reasoning.
  • I think this makes sense. Lacks substantive reasoning.
  • Yourself: It's intuitive and widely used in English. Lacks substantive reasoning or evidence.
  • ... look more proper. Lacks substantive reasoning - opinion.
  • It is standard English usage. Lacks substantiation.
  • Because there is no good reason to change [things that don't comply with the existing guidance] ...
  • This is standard linguistic practice ... - an assertion made without evidence.
  • ... I have seen thousands of articles where the journalist will capitalize the article heading (and even the subtitle). Yes, but are they using sentence case or title case. TBH, I couldn't see any logic to what was being said.
  • Support per InfiniteNexus. Offers nothing independent.

  If the premise is that capitalisation after a colon in sentence case is a consistent universal practice, then let us look at more sources:

  • The APA would cap after a colon in sentence case headings and titles. More generally, only a complete sentence after a colon is capitalised (see here).
  • The AGSM uses sentence case for headings and makes no exception after a colon generally when in a heading or title. It would only cap after a colon for a complete sentence (see here).
  • Online Grammar (an Australian site) states: only the first word and proper nouns have initial capitals. It makes no exception for a colon.
  • The University of Maine Uses sentence case for certain headings. In sentence case only the first word of the sentence and all proper nouns are capitalized.
  • The London School of Economics uses sentence case for titles and list items. The use of case (ie upper or lower) follows the normal rules of a sentence in the English language. Specifically, capital letters are used for the first letter of the first word; proper nouns; and abbreviations/ acronyms. All other words are lower case. [emphasis added]
  • Grammarly states: If the colon is used to introduce an independent clause, capitalization is optional.
  • Monash University states: If a colon introduces a complete sentence, more than one sentence, a formal statement, quotation, or speech in a dialogue, capitalise the first word of the sentence - otherwise, don't.
  • ANU states: ... only the first letter of the heading or title is capitalised, along with any proper nouns.
  • ABC (Australia)for headlines states: Capitalise the first letter of the first word and proper nouns only: Lorde talks about headlining Splendour. No exception for colons.

  I don't think that I "ignored" anything. My view was that I: Oppose capitalisation after a dash in article titles when that which follows a dash would not otherwise be intrinsically capitalised. If anything has been ignored, it is that I have expressed a view at this time on one particular aspect of the RfC. I am yet to address views on the other aspects of the RfC, as I indicated in my edit summary - there is [m]ore to follow on other questions. Cinderella157 (talk) 14:56, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

  Note that "headings and titles" is what this RfC is all about, so calling these "specific instances that are perhaps too 'subtle'" wholly misses the point. For the rest of your style-guide research, while interesting, I'd wonder how many of them actually cover this specific case – sentence style for titles and section headings – rather than talking about capitalization rules in general. If they only cover running text, then what they have to say is irrelevant. Of course different rules apply to running text – nobody suggests that you should capitalize each word after a dash or colon in running text. Only if they have rules for sentence-style headings, that's where it gets interesting. And as I point out in my newly added Comment on style guides above (written after your comment), two of the most influential style guides (CMOS and APA) are in agreement with this RfC. (Personally, I haven't found any counterexamples of style guides yet, but it's possible that they exists.) Gawaon (talk) 18:41, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

  Where I have stated, ... some specific instances that are perhaps too "subtle" ..., subtle is in quote marks because it is being quoted from the source in respect to capitalisation after a colon in running prose. I did report that CMOS would capitalise after a colon in sentence case headings regardless of these subtleties. I don't think it is I that have totally missed a point. I have already listed CMOS and APA, and what they have to say on the subject, so adding them again achieves nothing of substance. Counterexamples do exist, they are reported and they can be read. As to [how] many of them actually cover this specific case, where they do (and many do), I have reported this. If a guide gives advice on capitalisation in sentence case generally, it is nonetheless relevant if they do not specifically mention headings and titles. The only reason to do so would be if there are rules different from the general advice for sentence case. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:28, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

  1. [23]applies to title case, not sentence case, and is therefore irrelevant. Is title case not what this RfC is about??

  Conyo14 (talk) 23:59, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

  Conyo14, no. WP uses sentence case for headings and titles. This RfC is about a specific issue of capitalisation when using sentence case in headings, titles and lists. It has nothing whatsoever to do with titlecase. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:41, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

• Comment SMcCandlish would observe, This [RfC] is too vague and over-broad. I tend to agree. It would apply to both colons and dashes (different forms of punctuation, albeit that they are somewhat similar) in three different situations (albeit that titles and headings are also similar). In total, there are six different discrete situations to consider. One cannot reasonably assert that the evidence and rationale by which a proposal may be supported or opposed in each particular situation would be the same. Nor can one reasonably assume that there is good reason to support or oppose the proposal in all of these situations. What I am seeing in a number of responses so far is blanket support or opposition being given where the rational being given clearly indicates that the view applies to perhaps only one of the situations in question. How are such comments to be weighed by the closer? Because the RfC is more complex than a single question, I have responded to a single situation so far and will give further responses dealing with the other situations in due course. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:30, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

  Well, more precisely, one can blanket-oppose this because it's a proposal for a major change based on the flawed reasoning you outline. That is, blanket support has no clear rationale, while blanket opposite actually does: we should not be making questionable changes to guidelines at all. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:58, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

  We are not dealing with "six different discrete situations", we are dealing with one: the use of a punctuation mark as a separator in a non-prose context. InfiniteNexus (talk) 23:04, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

  We are not dealing with the use any punctuation mark as a separator but two specific punctuation marks. It is not just any non-prose context or even one non-prose context, but three - two of which are similar but not identical and one of which is unrelated to the other two. While you may not see the distinction, others do. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:34, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

  Why three different contexts? I'd suppose "article title" and "section heading", but that's only two. So what's the third? Gawaon (talk) 06:25, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

  Gawaon, ... an article title, section heading, or list item to be capitalized? [from the RfC question - emphasis added]. This somewhat goes to prove my point, that people are offering support for the proposal without fully understanding what they are supporting. Cinderella157 (talk) 06:44, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks, I do indeed not see why one would use caps in the middle of list items. Maybe anyone has good examples of where that's usual and makes sense? Until such show up, I will adapt my vote above accordingly. Gawaon (talk) 10:21, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

  One example I can think of off the top of my head is film cast lists, such as the one I cited in the opening statement (The Empire Strikes Back#Cast). More examples: John Wick (film)#Cast, The Shawshank Redemption#Cast, Avengers: Endgame#Cast, Seven (1995 film)#Cast, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl#Cast, Saving Private Ryan#Cast, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (film)#Cast, Tropic Thunder#Cast, etc. These are all featured or good articles, selected randomly from WP:FA and WP:GA. InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:37, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

  Hmm, interesting. I'm not wholly convinced, I think something like "Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, a pilot..." would work as well if not better. And for the cases where one or more full sentences follow, capitalization after the colon is already allowed per the current rules. But considering that it seems common enough at least for cast lists also in other cases I guess I'll change my vote to neutral regarding list items (neither wholly convinced, nor strictly against). Gawaon (talk) 18:07, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

  More evidence I randomly chose some ten movies in a row (The Wizard of Oz (1939 film), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Hunt for Red October (film), To Kill a Mockingbird (film), Battle of Britain (film), Zulu (1964 film), Blazing Saddles, Some Like It Hot, Breakfast at Tiffany's (film) and The Odd Angry Shot) and none of these evidenced the use of a colon let alone capitalisation after a colon. Of the movies listed by InfiniteNexus, Avengers: Endgame and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (film) use a mixed style - where there is a long description of the character, the actor as role: appears as a heading, followed by a line-break.

  As the movies listed by InfiniteNexus are reported to be GA and FA articles, I took a random sample (every fifth article) from this list of 187 FA articles in the Film project. The initial 21 samples was reduced to 11 samples where samples did not use the a description that might be preceded by a colon (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Manhunter (film), Pather Panchali, Rob-B-Hood, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Thing (1982 film), Bad Times at the El Royale, Prometheus (2012 film), Star Trek: First Contact, The Dark Knight and Trading Places). Of these only Rob-B-Hood and The Dark Knight would capitalise after a colon in a line of text. Prometheus (2012 film) uses the actor as role: as a heading, followed by a line-break for all roles. It is arguably a different case to that being considered. Trading Places uses lowercase following the colon. In most other cases, what precedes a description of the role is a comma. This supports the observation made by Gawaon that it would work as well if not better using a comma instead of a colon. A total of 3 randomly selected samples evidencing use of a colon is not sufficient to determine consistent widespread use of capitalisation in such a situation - use in list items. However, we can conclude that a colon is probably being misused in such circumstances. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:23, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

  This is not an omnibus bill. Even if you insist that we are dealing with three/six different situations, you must recognize that they are connected and similar to each other. Also, have you given any thought to the alternative proposal I suggested above? InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:42, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose capitalisation after a colon in article titles and capitalisation after a dash in section headings. The premise of the RfC is that the proposed capitalisation is a consistently followed global capitalisation convention and that WP:P&G contrary to said convention is near-universally ignored by editors. Neither of these two premises have been objectively established. There is no evidence whatsoever of capitalisation occurring in these two cases, let alone that it is a near universal practice. Therefore, there is no sound basis to support the RfC in respect to these two cases. Cinderella157 (talk) 03:56, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose capitalisation after a colon or dash in list items. The only evidence presented relates to casting in films where there may be instances of capitalisation after a colon in cast lists. This is a very specific case that does not evidence a widespread practice of generally capitalising after a colon in list. There is no evidence offered at all, of capitalisation after a dash in list items. The premise of the RfC is that the proposed capitalisation is a consistently followed global capitalisation convention and that WP:P&G contrary to said convention is near-universally ignored by editors. Neither of these two premises have been objectively established. Where I have looked for more evidence (see above), it is quite clear that where a colon is being used within cast lists, it would be preferrable to use a comma. Consequently, I see no sound basis to support the RfC in respect to these two cases. Cinderella157 (talk) 11:13, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

  You've already !voted. Conyo14 (talk) 00:00, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose capitalisation after a colon in section headings. The only evidence offered in respect to this case is where that which occurs after the colon is the first letter in the heading (eg 1962–1967: Early career to debut album). This is a very specific instance and quite probably an artifact of a perception that the first letter in sentence should be capitalised - regardless of whether it is preceded by other characters such as numbers. To quote from this web page, many style guides advise against using a numeral at the beginning of a sentence. The page then cites several acknowledged style guides. I recall that there was some advice that may have addressed this to a degree but I believe the specific examples that might have clarified this have been removed and I don't see any specific advice that would clearly resolve how to deal with this specific issue (capitalisation of the first letter v capitalisation of the first character of a sentence). If there is any change required to the MOS it is probably this issue (SMcCandlish?) but this is not the question at hand. There is no evidence offered of capitalisation after a colon in section headings that do not suffer from this ambiguity. The premise of the RfC is that the proposed capitalisation is a consistently followed global capitalisation convention and that WP:P&G contrary to said convention is near-universally ignored by editors. I do not see that this has been established in this particular case that the RfC would embrace. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:32, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

  Comment for closer - This is the second oppose by the same editor regardless if the two opposes aren't entirely the same thing... they touch on the same thing. They should have been done in the same Oppose section. I've never seen the "opposes" separated like this and I want to make sure the closer, who might not realize it's the same person, realizes it's doubled up. If this get's merged into the same oppose section you can remove my post here. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:07, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

  With any luck, the closer will be evaluating the strength of the arguments, rather than their number; that should render this concern moot. If the closer does a count instead, I'd support a review. ~TPW 14:07, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

  I don't think that will help in the least as compared to what Wikipedians actually want. Just because some want to write a Tolstoy-length speech here (and do it over and over) doesn't make their argument any better. What other guides may do doesn't necessarily mean anything to Wikipedia. Look at diacritics. 99.9% of all sources don't use them for people in English. It isn't even a contest. But Wikipedians decided to go against the overwhelming majority of sources and use them here at Wikipedia. The rfc for that was pretty much a larger show of hands and is now a done deal.

  With the Dash there was a status quo. All was fine. No one wanted to change anything in MOS since it was vague on the issue of dashes. Editors did their own thing fighting vandalism, adding much need content, and straightening up charts and such. Most editors don't look at MOS discussions. There's a niche that loves that aspect but most could care less. Probably vice-versa too where the MOS editor may not deal with the day to day upkeep of something like Olympic sports.... especially in an Olympic year. It's pretty tough. Then a few folks here tried to change things that have stood for 15-20 years a couple weeks ago, quietly, without letting anyone know about it. Some of them knew what would happen if more folks were informed about it per a discussion on your talk page. Then there was talk about creating a bot that would changes 40,000+ articles. Not even counting all the peripheral articles that link to the articles that potentially could change. The links might be redirected but there is also lots of actual wording that would need to change. It would be a LOT more than 40,000+ articles that need tweaking. That's when the dam burst and why we are here today. That's also what a good closer will look at. Fyunck(click) (talk) 22:25, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

  Cinderella157, what are you doing? You have now opposed this RfC four times. Yes, we all know you're against it, but surely saying it once is sufficient? Gawaon (talk) 12:50, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

  Gawaon, I have not opposed this RfC four times. There are six different permutations to this RfC. I have made four comments to oppose specific permutations of this RfC. I have also previously explained from early on why I was addressing the RfC in this way. Cinderella157 (talk) 13:09, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

  Well, let's just hope that the closer won't get confused by your arguably confusing behaviour. Gawaon (talk) 14:54, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

  You are creating the illusion that there is more opposition to the proposal than there actually is. InfiniteNexus (talk) 22:11, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

• More style guides These guides specifically refer to headings/headlines and titles, and do not cap after the colon.

The Guardian When a colon is used in a headline, the next word is usually lowercase, eg Osborne: there is no plan B.

University of Cambridge Use sentence case for headings and headlines (and also remember to use lower case after a colon)

University of Oxford Headlines, journal articles, chapter titles and lecture titles: Only capitalise the first word... ‘Multiplicity of data in trial reports and the reliability of meta-analyses: empirical study’

Imperial College London Sentence case should be used for headlines and the titles of articles, chapters and lectures... ‘The impact of sleep and hypoxia on the brain: potential mechanisms for the effects of obstructive sleep apnea’

Cinderella157 (talk) 08:55, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

The Guardian style guide goes on to say, One exception to this rule is in web furniture where the colon comes after the title of a series, for example as in the headline “Digested week: Words mattered to Stephen Sondheim”. Similarly, in a standfirst after a descriptive tag such as “Exclusive” or “Analysis” the next word should take an initial cap. Another exception on the web is when the colon introduces a complete sentence in quotation marks, such as Maro Itoje: ‘Whenever England take the field we should win’. In special cases, capitalization is not just allowed, but required. XOR'easter (talk) 19:52, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, we would cap a quotation introduced by a colon but that is not in question here. The Guardian would cap after a colon "in web furniture where the colon comes after the title of a series" but not for titles and headings outside this context. However, the premise of this RfC is that this type of capitalisation is a consistent universal practice, when the evidence is clearly showing that it is not. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:57, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

• Support per InfiniteNexus. RegalZ8790 (talk) 03:32, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
• Support per Fyunck(click). Bgsu98 (Talk) 13:09, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
• Support per Fyunck(click) and others. Kante4 (talk) 07:16, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
• Comment Several users have questioned the claim that the MoS is near-universally ignored when it comes to titles, headings, and lists. For article titles, the use of a colon or dash is rare (not counting titles of works) and mostly pertains to articles about sporting events. The lists compiled by Dicklyon illustrate that. For section headings, "Year: Description" is the most common use case. Wracking has already conducted a random sample survey above, but you can do one yourself too! If you go to a random BLP, and it has "Year: Description" section headings, chances are the description bit will be capitalized. For list items, it would not be possible to comb through millions of articles to find those with bulleted lists using colons or dashes – yes, I have tried, but my regex searches have all timed out, but perhaps someone else with more advanced regex skills will have better luck. InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:19, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
• Support There are cases where it makes sense, so the Manual ought to say that it is allowed. XOR'easter (talk) 19:57, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
• Support allowing both. Capitalization and non-capitalization are both well-represented in the wild, as evidenced above, and natural for content writers to write and readers to read. Generally, there's no need for imposing global consistency on this matter which is something of an edge case. In the article title context, editors can consider consistency with similar articles, among the WP:CRITERIA, WP:TITLECHANGES, etc. Adumbrativus (talk) 02:51, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
• Support per nom and Fyunck(click). Capitalizing the first letter after a colon or dash is a widespread standard among English-language publications and should not be an issue at all on Wikipedia.--Wolbo (talk) 16:49, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
• Support capitalization of the first word of a subtitle following a colon. my understanding is that this RFC would allow editorial discretion in cases where our current MOS has been interpreted as requiring subtitles to start with lower case. lowercasing the initial word of a subtitle is contrary to many other style guides. perhaps the lowercase-enthusiasts would also support lowercasing the initial word of a sentence that does not start a paragraph. perhaps that would even be a consistent style. but it would be a nonstandard style and despite its elegance we should not use it. for the same reason we should not insist on starting subtitles lowercased. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:32, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

  Due to the rather broad wording of this request for comment, it's possible that you didn't realize that this is about dashes and colons, not just colons, and not dashes or colons. ~TPW 18:02, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

  due to the length of my response, it's possible that you didn't read the part about how this would restore editorial discretion in all of these cases rather than a forced nonstandard lowercasing by the lowercase-enthusiasts. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:26, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

  Your response was not overly long, but it did lack any reference to "dash," and specifically expressed support in reference to "colon." I was checking out of concern that you may have had more to say, because I wouldn't want any editor's thoughtful and constructive comments to be silenced. Thank you clarifying that your brief response should be broadly construed. ~TPW 14:06, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

• Support per XOR'easter, Adumbrativus, David Eppstein, etc. I see no reason (policy-based or otherwise) to centrally regulate this rather than allow discretion. It logically leads to (manual) mass-edits and bikeshedding in articles that, I assume, are far from FA-class. Too much time has been spent on this, and will continue to be spent on this unless the proposal passes. Follow WP:RETAIN, and focus on scrutinizing the substance of our articles, not the style. DFlhb (talk) 02:51, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per SMcCandlish and Cinderella157. An additional consideration is readability: a string of material written in lower case forms a readable sentence whereas a capital letter is a visual interruption, justified to flag things like proper names but otherwise carrying no utilty. The previous sentence being a good example; why capitalise the 'a' after the colon? Hence the logic behind the style guidelines cited by Cinderella above. Further, language and its usage perpetually evolve, and in the internet age the direction of travel is toward reduced capitalisation. I don't see the benefit to readers of changing our guidelines to make a step in the opposite direction? MapReader (talk) 08:33, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

  Nevertheless, the specific example you give should (in article space) already be capitalized per MOS:COLON: "When what follows the colon is also a complete sentence, start it with a capital letter". Generally I'd say it's a question of striking the proper balance: ALL UPPER-CASE TEXT, as the Ancient Romans did it, is not great for readability, but neither is all lower-case text. An upper-case letter here and there is not going to hurt, and indeed makes things easier and more agreeable for the reader. Gawaon (talk) 09:35, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, but personally I would adopt something like the authoritative style guidelines cited by Cinderella above. Thinking we have gone too far with the capitals already is a legitimate reason for opposing the original change as proposed. MapReader (talk) 13:06, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

• Support This is a common sense proposal that will help avoid a "one fits all" approach that's better applied to math than the English language. Nemov (talk) 20:00, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose the only reason to have a subtitle as part of an article title would be if creating a subsidiary article, which should not exist per WP:AT#Subsidiary articles. (t · c) buidhe 20:47, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  Keep in mind, however, that the proposal is not just about article titles, but also about section headers (and even list items). Gawaon (talk) 21:47, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  However the rfc was created because of page moves of decade+ article title consensus, not section headers. If those articles weren't being moved we wouldn't be here. And it's not just about a change in MOS which doesn't really address the subject of ndash. It's also about the issue of moving 40,000+ consensus article titles and the peripheral 10s of thousands of articles that get affected by those moves. That's what happens with an oppose. Support is actually the status quo of what we have now. Fyunck(click) (talk) 22:34, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  Fair enough, and I agree. But the article titles you mention are in any case not in violation of WP:AT#Subsidiary articles, so it seems the above Oppose is neither complete nor particularly well-founded. Gawaon (talk) 06:19, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

  Agreed. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:24, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

  That is not the only reason. It would also be reasonable to have a subtitle in the name of an article whose subject has a subtitle in its name. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:38, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, but if it is a title (of a work), it would come under MOS:TITLECAPS and is also outside the scope of this RfC. Cinderella157 (talk) 22:55, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support – This does not seem to merit a site-wide style mandate, and bots should not be mass-changing capitalization in this type of situation. Leave it to local editorial discretion, and if inconsistency becomes a noteworthy problem at some future time more specific cases can be reconsidered then. –jacobolus (t) 17:39, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support - It is a trivial issue, but on the basis of Olympic sports and their various events, it simply makes no sense to have them be in lowercase. - Mjquinn_id (talk) 18:16, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

  Eh? MapReader (talk) 20:02, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

  Is this person confused on what support and oppose means in the context of the RfC? Conyo14 (talk) 20:09, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

  I was thinking the same thing. Maybe @MapReader: doesn't. Support means a couple things here. 10s of thousands of decade-long consensus articles would not change with support and they would with oppose. And MOS, which is vague on what happens with an Ndash, would be flexible on the situation with support, and rigidly outlaw capitals after ndash/colon if opposed. Support is the status quo in articles, with the assumption that MOS could be tweaked to make it clear that flexibility is allowed in situations.... especially every Olympic article. Oppose makes us change 40,000+ articles and fix 10s of thousands more peripheral articles, with the assumption that MOS could be tweaked to make it clear that no capitals are ever allowed after ndashes or colons in article titles (barring a proper noun). So the "eh? response is quite strange. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:37, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

  The debate is about capitalisation, or not, after a colon. I struggle to see how Olympic events are relevant in any way? Proper names due to be capitalised in all positions with text would remain in capitals, regardless of the punctuation preceding. Names that aren’t due to be capitalised within articles would follow whatever guideline is agreed when they follow a colon. This really isn’t a debate about the nature of the word that might follow the punctuation. MapReader (talk) 20:49, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

  Sporting events are extremely relevant. Not only do we see things done a certain way in the real world, many of us feel Wikipedia needs a little flexibility in the face of decades-long consensus views. It shouldn't just be decided by those who happen to enjoy working on MOS topics. Topics that are directly affected should also have a say since WikiMOS is made up of all our views. We stray a lot from Chicago MOS or AP MOS because editors decided ours would be different. That's cool. But sometimes through the years you blink and realize something got changed by 10 or 20 editors. Usually it's a good change, but not always. Some of us feel that this potential limitation would not be a good change, so we support the status quo and do not wish to change 10s of thousands of articles. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:10, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

  After a colon or a dash. See the first example: Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics – Men's individual road race. Support means to leave that as it, oppose means changing it to Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics – men's individual road race. Gawaon (talk) 21:02, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

  Now I think all y'all are confused. MapReader, Gawaon, and Fyunck understand the RfC, the person who doesn't is User:Mjquinn_id. Conyo14 (talk) 21:07, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

  Mjquinn_id and I seem to understand it the same way, so that doesn't make much sense. Gawaon (talk) 21:14, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

  Oh, yeah, apologies, I think it's everyone else. Conyo14 (talk) 22:01, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support for the capitalisation after dash as it is followed everywhere. The small caps thing is wholly unnecessary. Also I think this rfc should have it's own page because the discussion has gotten too long. zoglophie^•talk• 17:10, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose the actual advice for colons says, "When what follows the colon is also a complete sentence, start it with a capital letter, but otherwise, do not capitalize after a colon except where doing so is needed for another reason," which suggests to me that "another reason" can be almost anything you want. which means that if you think the next letter needs to be, or should be, a capital, then do that. but if you don't, then don't. the rule as currently written permits intelligent choice. the proposal, as written, says, "be amended to allow for the first letter after a colon or en dash in an article title, section heading, or list item to be capitalized," and you can currently do that. the current guidelines actually permit that. and there is therefore no need to change anything. unless, what I think the proposer is actually suggesting is that instead of being permitted to do this, it should be mandatory. and that I think is a ridiculous suggestion, which I would oppose. Cottonshirtτ 07:06, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

  No, the sentence continues: "needed for another reason, such as for a proper name" (emphasis added). You can't just capitalized because you think that's a good idea, the "other reason" simply means that there is another reason why the next words needs a capital letter – it's a proper name, part of a title ("The Simpson"), or something like that. Gawaon (talk) 07:14, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

  Which also means: If you want the right to use a capital letter there, you need to Support rather than Oppose this RfC. Gawaon (talk) 07:15, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

  You are correct. @Cottonshirt: should realize that a bogus rfc just before this had agreed to remove all capitals after the colon/dash. They were about to create a bot to remove all traces of those capitals because of the bogus rfc. That's why this rfc was created. Perhaps what Cottonshirt means is a double !vote. He opposes changing the actual wording in MOS because MOS currently allows (though vaguely) capitals after a dash/colon, but he supports quashing the recent bogus rfc so that we can continue to allow capitals after a dash/colon, just has been done for decades. I think that's what he meant. Sort of a support/oppose. Is that about right Cottonshirt? If so your post should indicate as much. Cheers. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:31, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

can we at least agree that none of the policies, guidelines, or other documents in Wikipedia's myriad of confusing and often contradictory aids to editors are actually mandatory hard and fast rules. they are just guides, to help editors, and to provide a framework of assistance. they are, I think, deliberately written to provide editors with the flexibility to handle situations the policy writers had not thought of. so, just because MS:Colon says you can do x does not mean you have to, always, invariably, without exception, do x. it just means that if you do x this is not demonstrably wrong. at least that is how I read them, and I think they are called "Guidelines," and "Policies" rather than "Rules" for that very reason. which is, for the most part, a good thing.

this proposal, as written, asks: "Should [list of stuff] be amended to allow for the first letter after a colon or en dash in an article title, section heading, or list item to be capitalized?" and my answer is that [list of stuff] are already written to permit that, and that there is no need to amend anything. my understanding is that I am therefore opposed to the proposal to amend them. they should be left as they are.

then Gawaon said: "No, the sentence continues: "needed for another reason, such as for a proper name (emphasis added)." and I reply that "such as for a proper name" is not a complete and exhaustive list of other reasons. it is an example, to help editors understand what another reason might look like. you are free to have reasons that are not proper names. that is exactly what, "such as," means. then Gawaon said: "You can't just capitalized because you think that's a good idea." and I reply, but that is exactly what MS:Colon actually says. if you think you have a reason, go ahead. you might end up in some edit war with an editor who disagrees with you, but neither side will be able to use MS:Colon as justification for their position. Cottonshirtτ 11:06, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, let's say that your reading of MOS:COLON is somewhat unorthodox. The Wikipedia:Manual of Style intro says: "It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply." – "Occasional exceptions may apply" does not mean: "Do what you want, whenever you feel like it". But if that's your reading of it, I guess that can't be helped. Gawaon (talk) 11:19, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

as for Fyunck(click), I can't reply to an RFC I have not seen and I don't understand the term "bogus RFC." although I am prepared to admit that I might be confused about something because I have never actually participated in an RFC before. my purpose is to vote for leaving the wording of the [list of stuff] as it currently is. thank you both for engaging. Cottonshirtτ 11:06, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

I think if you want the control and judgment to go back to the editors, it's support. If you want the succeeding word after a colon or dash, provided it's not an obvious proper noun, to be lowercased no matter what, then you oppose. Conyo14 (talk) 00:28, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

What editors? Everyone here is an editor. You mean for control and judgment to be confined to a special class of people in a wikiproject claiming scope over the article category, and that is directly against WP:CONLEVEL policy (in fact, it's precisely the kind of "walled garden" wikiproject stake-claiming that that policy was enacted to put a stop to).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:07, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Literally any editor, not just spelled out in a terrible format by a specific group of trustees that determine the manual of style for all of Wikipedia without telling anyone. It's like "we discussed it internally, you should've been there." Just saying. Conyo14 (talk) 07:07, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

And yes, my comment goes for any project on Wikipedia. Conyo14 (talk) 17:26, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

I'll repeat something I said somewhere in one or another of these discussions: This entire squabble is a silly waste of time, because if WP:AT policy (specifically WP:COMMADIS, and note there is no "WP:DASHDIS" or "WP:COLONDIS") were being followed, there would be no dash or colon in any of these page titles, but a comma, and obviously no capital letter would follow the comma. They should all be mass-WP:RMed to use commas instead of dashes, per the title policy, then this entire silly "debate" just instantly goes away.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:07, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Next steps

I thank the closer for closing the RfC. In their closing statement, they wrote that there is consensus to allow for uppercase, but that there doesn't seem to be a desire for substantial additional verbiage in the guidelines. At present, MOS:COLON states: When what follows the colon is also a complete sentence, start it with a capital letter, but otherwise, do not capitalize after a colon except where doing so is needed for another reason, such as for a proper name. Because what follows a colon in titles, headings, and lists is typically not a complete sentence, editors have interpreted MOS:COLON as calling for the use of lowercase. As such, I do believe it is necessary to note an exception to the three instances listed. InfiniteNexus (talk) 16:36, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

The closer also said we needed to discuss wording "including which specific pages and sections to update, and how to do so, including how to incorporate ideas from WP:RETAIN and WP:CONSISTENT." Now, must we tweak the wording? It certainly can be left as ambiguous as I think consensus was more of leave things as they are in our articles and we don't care as much for major changes to MOS. But it would help in avoiding future arguments to at least acknowledge somewhere in MOS that rules are not being broken in using a capital after dashes and colons. Probably a single sentence, not as much an exception, but as a clarification. Fyunck(click) (talk) 04:03, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

The current wording is not ambiguous because it specifically says not to capitalize for incomplete sentences — which is what article titles, section headings, and list items often are. The following should be added to MOS:COLON: When a colon is being used as a separator in an article title, section heading, or list item, editors may choose whether to capitalize what follows, taking into consideration the existing practice and consistency with related articles. InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:32, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

It is ambiguous. Many are not incomplete sentences, and if you went by that the very start would also be incomplete. It is ambiguous as to how to handle the first word after a colon/dash and always has been. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:46, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

MOS:ENDASH would then need to be changed in a similar manner, right? I wonder whether it's not simpler and more appropriate to change WP:NCCAPS, MOS:SECTIONCAPS, and MOS:LISTCAPS, since they are more specialized for the usage situations where capital letters are now allowed. For example, I would suggest adding a new sentence to (or right after) the first paragraph of MOS:SECTIONCAPS: "However, after a colon or dash, editors may choose whether to capitalize what follows, taking into consideration the existing practice (especially in other section headers in the same article)." And then give an example in two "green" variants, showing that both lower-case and capital are correct. WP:NCCAPS and MOS:LISTCAPS should then be adapted in a similar way. Gawaon (talk) 17:59, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

That was the original proposal, to add wording to the different MoS guidelines where applicable, but since the closer has determined that there is no consensus for substantial additional verbiage, I am trying to limit the number of guidelines we amend. As MOS:COLON is the only one that "forbids" capitalizing after a colon, it is the only one where additional verbiage is essential. MOS:ENDASH doesn't say anything about capitalization, but since they function the exact same way when being used as a separator, it can be understood/interpreted that the new wording on MOS:COLON applies to them as well. InfiniteNexus (talk) 19:38, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Well, your original proposal was to change five places – I don't think that's necessary, but changing either two (MOS:COLON and MOS:ENDASH) or three (WP:NCCAPS, MOS:SECTIONCAPS, and MOS:LISTCAPS) of them seems necessary to document the consensual outcome of the RfC, otherwise parts of it would inevitably and silently dropped. Just talking about colons and hoping that editors will implicitly realize that this advice might also apply to dashes will surely not work. It's necessary to document the relaxed rule after dashes too, otherwise editors would soon argue again that no capital letters are allowed in such cases. So if you prefer changing MOS:COLON, sure – but I'd still suggest changing MOS:ENDASH in a similar way, and I don't think anything the closer said goes against that. Gawaon (talk) 19:09, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:48, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

WP:MOS takes precedence over all other MoS pages. We can't have the main page say not to capitalize and the subpages say the opposite. I will try to adjust MOS:COLON and MOS:ENDASH. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:32, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Done. Because of how the § Dashes section is structured, I couldn't find a way of incorporating the new wording without doing so twice. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:40, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

"Agri Valley" or "Agri valley"? In the "Area of production" paragraph (at the end of the paragraph) of the "Peperone di Senise" page

Hi, is it correct to write "Agri Valley" or "Agri valley"? JackkBrown (talk) 23:47, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Both ways are common in sources, so MOS:CAPS would suggest we default to lowercase in Wikipedia. Dicklyon (talk) 05:20, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Commonwealth Final

Does Commonwealth Final require an RM? GoodDay (talk) 00:24, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

I just moved it to Commonwealth final. So we'll see. Dicklyon (talk) 00:47, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I've page moved five-related pages, aswell. GoodDay (talk) 01:00, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

What do articles related to five have to do with this, aswell? Dicklyon (talk) 04:13, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Why did you leave Speedway capped in British Nordic Speedway final and such? Dicklyon (talk) 04:18, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Wasn't certain if that word was to be lowercased. GoodDay (talk) 04:21, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

If "British Nordic Speedway" was a thing, as the capitalization suggests, then it would be OK. But if you read the lead sentence, you see that's not at all what it means. Dicklyon (talk) 05:00, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Ok. GoodDay (talk) 05:06, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

If the ngrams for Commonwealth Final were made into a dance step we'd have the new Lindy Hop. Randy Kryn (talk) 05:15, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Wait, are we capping dance names now? Dicklyon (talk) 06:25, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

If the shoe fits dances. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:43, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't see why we wouldn't capitalize "Lindy", it is derived from a proper name. The capitalization of "Hop" seems weird, though. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:06, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

It should be "Lindy hop", per MOS:DANCECAPS. "Lindy" is a proper name (nickname of Charles Lindbergh), "hop" is not, and dances with multi-part names are not proper names in and of themselves (e.g. Viennese waltz not "Viennese Waltz"). Nearly all of the dance-related articles were massively over-capitalizing every term that pertained in any way to dances, including even dance steps and techniques, due to the capitalization-happy activity of a handful of editors in the 2000s. These have mostly been cleaned up since the late 2010s, but a handful of stragglers remain as to article titles, plus a lot of straggling over-capitalized text within articles, especially on more obscure dance subjects (though the present "Lindy Hop" problem is the result of the specialized-style fallacy, namely that dance magazines/websites, which are not independent of the subject, have a strong tendency toward overcapitalization of all dance names and other dance terms. Aside: Some have argued unsuccessfully in the specific case of waltz to capitalize it as a German noun, though it's actually Waltzer in German, and the word waltz is fully assimilated into English and usually uncapitalized [24] (search excludes most false positives for Waltz as a surname), nor is "Viennese waltz" a German phrase; in German it would be Wiener Walzer.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:48, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Siege of capitalisation

The manual doesn't make it entirely clear whether 'Siege of' should be capitalised and it seems to be falling between the cracks of the naming policy and causing confusion. Most sources capitalise Siege of (Place) and then use the lowercase for generic uses as with Battle of and the battle. At the moment the word siege is only listed under generic uses which I think is causing the confusion. What's the view on this? Ecrm87 (talk) 12:12, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

See MOS:MILTERMS. Basically, we follow the general advice of MOS:CAPS for "siege of", "battle of" etc. Unless there is evidence that the name of such an event is consistently capped in sources, then we don't cap it. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:52, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

One reason we have to examine source usage is to determine whether “siege” is used merely as a description of the type of battle (lower case) or used as part of a proper name for the battle. Lots of battles include sieges, but not all are routinely NAMED the “Siege of X”. Blueboar (talk) 14:00, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

As far as I can tell 'Siege of' is consistently capitalised in sources but because the word 'siege' is included in the section about lowercase then editors are changing any reference to 'siege' to lowercase. A good example is Siege of Saint-Omer where editors have changed the opening sentence to include 'siege of' My feeling is that 'Siege of' should be written with a capital, whereas any mention of 'the siege', 'laid siege', etc should be lowercase. Ecrm87 (talk) 12:20, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Every so often I search up articles with leads starting with "The Siege of ..." and lowercase "siege" there. I just did a hundred or so of those, which is probably what prompted this inquiry. They were less then 10% of all "The siege of ..." articles, a combination of new ones and ones that had been re-capitalized without comment, presumably because editors felt that the capital letter there matched the title better. I'm willing to admit the possibility that there might be one or more that are consistently capitalized in sources, but I haven't been able to find one (except I seem to recall there was one that was the title of a play or something, but now I can't recall or find it). See some sample stats. Dicklyon (talk) 04:31, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

As for the Siege of Saint-Omer example, only the lowercase version has enough occurrences in books to show up in the n-gram stats. See book hits for a better view of how common each is. Certainly nowhere close to "consistently capitalised in sources" as Ecrm87 claims. Also note that the ones with capitalized Siege are mostly table or list entries, not in sentence context, so don't provide any information on the question of whether they'd treat "Siege of Saint-Omer" as a proper name or not. Dicklyon (talk) 04:38, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

@Crecy1346: maybe you can say why you re-capitalized that one back in 2022? Actually, I see you re-capped quite a few in 2022 and 2023, but haven't edited in the last few months, so I'm not expecting an answer. Dicklyon (talk) 04:43, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

• I watch Yorktown campaign and noticed a direct link to Siege of Yorktown that was capitalised in prose, where I was aware that siege was not capitalised in that article in prose. It is a common error to just copy and paste an article name when making a link, without actually considering the appropriate capitalisation of the first word. Yorktown campaign makes piped links to several other siege of X articles, which I looked more closely at because of this discussion. In each case, ngram evidence did not support the capitalisation of siege in prose for siege of X, nor did those articles do so. While there may be instances where it might be appropriate for us to capitalise siege of X in accordance with MOS:CAPS and consistent usage in sources, this does not appear to be particularly common. Even if it were common, we would still defer to the guidance at MOS:CAPS in each specific instance per MOS:MILTERMS. Cinderella157 (talk) 11:24, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

  I read and edit in things like Scottish and Irish history pretty often, and have no interest in down-casing military-conflict terms that have demonstrably become accepted as near-universally-capitalized proper names in English RS usage, but I do think we need to avoid falsely treating every descriptive turn of phrase for such a conflict as if it were a proper name.

  With capitalized "Siege of Saint-Omer" too rare a phrase to turn up in ngrams, I tried looking around otherwise. Most Google hits for the term are titles of works, by Stefano della Bella and P[i]eter Snayers. There would be a high risk of WP:SSF in a case like this, with some editors trying to argue that it "must" be a proper name just because the handful of military-history sources that bother to cover the topic lean toward the bad habit of capitalizing everything like this (every appellation of any battle, any term used for an identifiable phase of a battle, and other random descriptive phrases that identify something of military-history interest). This would likely be reinforced by regional and general history material from the Victorian era through mid-20th century, that also happened to cover the conflict, leaning toward capitalization simply because the habit in English of that period was to "big-note" events with capital letters all the time, a habit which has fallen into disfavour in modern source material, and which is not permitted here (MOS:SIGCAPS). WP really doesn't care how writers generations ago approached this question; only modern sources are relevant for our style questions (which is a good reason to restrain viable ngram seraches to maybe 1980 and later or even 2000 and later, depending on the nature of the question). In researching tartan and Highland dress and Scottish clans, I run into this over-capitalization problem in older material constantly, in regard to far more than mil-hist matters.

  However, in this particular case, the term shows up in enough academic material to put this to rest: all Google Scholar hits are lowercased except seemingly two [25]. It's not a large body of data, due to topical obscurity, but it's sufficient to show that it's not consistently capitalized in sources. If the ratio were the other way around I would conclude it is probably consistently enough treated as a proper name for WP to do so. Other terms even in this case are in attested use, e.g. "[b|B]attle of Saint-Omer" [26] (with capitalization varying depending on the proclivities of the writer/publisher). While it is possible for a single event to have multiple proper names in this language (e.g. the Great War and World War I for the same conflict), this is rare, and conflicting "names" for something as obscure as the conflict at Saint-Omer doesn't encourage treating either as a proper name.

  Our typical procedure (in RM discussions, etc.) with regard to modern conflicts is to not treat any term for a battle (or whatever) as a proper name unless there is a demonstration that both a particular one is vastly preferred by sources and that it is consistently capitalized by them, including in everyday writing like news, not just specialist mil-hist or poli-sci or governmentese material. For historical ones, the question is somewhat clouded by old-source writing, as noted above, but this can be worked past by simply excluding pre-modern sources from the capitalization analysis since they cannot tell us anything useful about current style questions.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:58, 6 January 2024 (UTC)