As I say, I'm not trying to be difficult. If my comments are not
welcome, I will leave the list.
The Chicago Manual of Style does give a brief mention of sentence style
capitalization with
regard to table captions, but not to titles. The words "completely
legitimate" do not appear
in the text. I'm 100% sure.
Your unsubstantiated statistics of "99+%" (twice) carry no weight with
me. Neither does your
"waste of time" argument. It takes no more time to get titles right than
it does to get any
other writing right. It would be easier to avoid capitalization (and
punctuation for that matter)
in all writing, but that would be wrong.
I can certainly live with your rules; I was simply looking for
justification. I have seen none
yet.
Best regards,
Lou
Jean Hollis Weber wrote:
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
