Daniel Carrera wrote:
Sigrid Kronenberger wrote:
My point was simply that headline style capitalization is much more
common.
I strongly disagree with you. This might be possible in English books.
Yes, my experience has been almost exclusively with English books (and
mostly
American English books, so I am biased). I have no clue as to how other
languages
deal with capitalization. Don't worry, I'll only work on the English
version.
But your wording is in that way, that it is everywhere the same. And
this isn't true. I have here different German O'Reilly books and they
use here "sentence style".
I could be wrong, but I'm under the vague impression that
heading-style capitalization is more common in the USA than elsewhere.
I am in the UK, and here I see sentence-style capitalization a lot.
This is the paragraph following the one from which you quote:
<quote>
The convention followed by British publishers is the same used in many
other languages (e.g., French, German), namely to use sentence-style
capitalization in titles and headlines, where capitalization follows the
same rules that apply for sentences.
</quote>
Could this be the source of your "vague impression"? The statement
itself is utter nonsense
unless all British books follow this "convention", which I doubt.
I know that Wikipedia is not an authoritative source, but they seem to
agree with my impression:
So it's not an authoritative source, but it agrees with you, so you'll
use it?
Consider this, from Wikipedia's own page,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:
<quote>
But Wikipedia's status as a reference work has been controversial. Its
open nature allows vandalism, inaccuracy, and opinion. It has also been
criticised for systemic bias, preference of consensus to credentials,
and a perceived lack of accountability and authority when compared with
traditional encyclopedias.
</quote>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalization#Headings_and_publication_titles
It's an interesting read. It says that adding extra capitals is an old
form of emphasis. I guess that the implication is that it's been
phased out over time. I think I rad somewhere that once upon a time
people even used extra capitals to emphasize regular text.
Here's the entire paragraph (not just the piece that agrees with you)::
<quote>
Among U.S. publishers, it is still a common typographic practice to
capitalize additional words in titles. This is an old form of emphasis,
similar to the more modern practice of using a larger or boldface font
for titles. The exact rules differ between individual house styles. Most
capitalize all words except for internal closed-class words, or internal
articles, prepositions and conjunctions. Some capitalize longer
prepositions such as "between", but not shorter ones. Some capitalize
even only nouns, others capitalize all words.
</quote>
Notice that on this page, the author(s) cannot decide how to spell
"capitalize".
Cheers,
Daniel.
OOAuthors has decided to use sentence-style capitalization, and I accept
that.
I simply don't accept the silly (that is, they don't agree with me)
arguments in its
favor. Diversity is a lovely thing.
Best regards,
Lou Iorio
Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico
