I am also a professional technical editor, and one of the people
who decided that our books would use sentence style capitalisation.
I'm not at home, so I don't have my reference material with me,
but I can assure you that I do have style guides that endorse
sentence style capitalisation, and I have many books (mainly in
the computer industry) that use sentence style capitalisation.
I am 99+% sure that the Chicago Manual of Style says either way
is completely legitimate. They may use the other style
themselves, but that doesn't make sentence style inappropriate.
"Traditional" heading capitalisation is not needed to set off
headings when one is using different font sizes and weights.
Headings are obvious. Editing the old caps style to get it right
is a waste of time, so we are using sentence style.
And I can tell you that 99+% of users will not notice the
difference. Professional editors notice, but I have seen studies
that show ordinary readers do not. So your argument that readers
will think we didn't take the time to "get the headings right"
carries no weight with me.
Regards, Jean
Lou Iorio wrote:
I'm not trying to be difficult, and I admit to being something of a
dinosaur, but
can you point me to a style guide that endorses this? You picked a book
at random,
and it used sentence style capitalization? Amazing. I've never seen one.
Here are some
books I grabbed at random, and all use traditional capitalization of titles:
...
In fact, I can't find a single book that uses sentence style capitalization.
I am also a professional technical editor, which only means I get paid for
what I do.
There is a clear benefit to providing users with what they expect in a
document.
If readers believe the author didn't take the time to get the titles
right, what does
that say for the rest of the document? I simply don't agree with the
"easier to
get right" argument.
Best regards,
Lou
