User talk:Bigjimr
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Your most recent edits there bring up an interesting question about capitalization. We generally follow the convention here of not uppercasing prepositions and such in titles, so I was going to change "Till The Night Is Gone" to "Till the Night is Gone". But I figured you might have had a specific reason for changing it, so I went and looked at the CD cover, and noticed that it uppercases all the words in the title. But are the actually the official name of the album? Album cover art typography, of course, is not a very good definitive source for such. Other places that sell it lowercase the little words; I haven't found it on Rhino's site, unfortunately.
On the same note, Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life And Times of Doc Pomus seems to capitalize "and" but not "of". Go figure. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 16:42, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
The question of capitals in titles is indeed an interesting one. The difficulty with "not uppercasing prepositions and such" is that it is impossible to achieve consistency. Are there hard-and-fast criteria for not starting a particular word with a capital? And, if there are, what are they? Your description of the convention suggests that the part of speech is one of these criteria: you mention prepositions. But is the fact that a word is a preposition enough justification on its own for not giving it a capital (as, for example, in "All around My Hat")? And what of the "and such" in your phrase "prepositions and such"? Which other parts of speech can also do without capitals? Judging by your preferred form of the title under discussion, articles ("the") and Verbs ("is") don't need capitals either - but does this apply in all circumstances? Patently not.
It seems to me that in practice it is overwhelmingly the length - or rather the shortness - of the words, rather than any grammatical considerations, that leads some people to prefer some words without a capital. But this inevitably leads to inconsistencies, as is perfectly illustrated by the book title you refer to. As a matter of interest, how does your convention cope with titles that contain a preponderance of short words: All I Have To Do Is Dream, for example, and All Day And All Of The Night?
To my mind the obvious solution, which is generally, though by no means invariably, practised here, is to start every word in the title with a capital, irrespective of its length or part of speech. Consistency is thereby achieved, and 99 times out of 100 the end result looks better, at least to my eyes. Furthermore, it is in most circumstances not then necessary to enclose the title in quotes when referring to it: the capitals show clearly its entire extent. (Where, for example, a reference to a title appears with an all-lower-case "and" in its midst, it is often necessary to resort to quotation marks or italics or some such to avoid misleading the reader, who would otherwise think, at least to begin with, that there were two separate titles.)
In any event I agree with you entirely that the cover (or indeed the label on the disc itself) is no guide to correct English, be it British English or American English; I cannot claim to have seen the Doc Pomus CD so it is merest coincidence - although I am of course pleased to hear it - that the title printed on its cover also has capital initials throughout. In a not dissimilar context I should perhaps mention the song Wondrous Stories, by Yes. On my copy of the single the printed title was wrongly spelt Wonderous Stories. I contend, however, that references to this song should have the correct spelling - wondrous - even if it turns out to be the writer of the song himself who was responsible for the wrong spelling. And I would similarly contend that references to other titles should generally conform in all respects to accepted standards of English, even where this is not the way they appeared on the record or its sleeve or whatever (excepting, of course, titles that were deliberately misspelt, as was customary with songs by Slade). It is not unknown for great authors to be unable to spell or punctuate properly, but their works are routinely corrected before they reach the reading public. Song titles, alas, are not subject to the same editing process before publication, but as I see it that is no excuse for passing up an opportunity to correct them afterwards, i.e. when referring to them now.
Be that all as it may. Given that Doc Pomus was American, I would have to say that if you prefer "Till the Night is Gone" to Till The Night Is Gone then do please have it the American way and accept my apology for having changed it.
Invitation[edit]
Discussion has commenced on the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company article. As you were an editor of that article, I would like to invite you to join in this discussion so as to promote not only an informative and usefull article for wiki, but also one that covers all points of view. Please give us your thoughts and comments for format and content for this article on the discussion page. Thanks.
Mobile 01Talk 00:45, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Edit summaries[edit]
Thanks for your recent edits on Boeing 747. Please provide an edit summary with your changes in the future. -Fnlayson 20:51, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
Edit Summary & Previews[edit]
Please describe your edits with the Edit Summary box. It is located just above the Save button you use. This makes it easier to understand edits when reading the page's History of edits. Also, please use the Show preview button to enable you to combine edits and reduce the number of Saves that you do. This avoids bulking out the edit History with lots of small edits. The Show preview button is located just to the right of the Save button that you use. Thanks. Hu 00:41, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks[edit]
Thanks for your nice edits to Reese Witherspoon, great copyeditor you are! Please keep up the good work. :) PeaceNT (talk) 08:18, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
The Smiths[edit]
These are great edits you're doing; I'm glad you share my distaste for the conditional used in place of the past tense. If you use an edit summary it helps others to know what you're doing. Remember also to uncheck the minor edit box for edits like this. Keep up the good work! --John (talk) 20:30, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Amy Lee[edit]
I see you are doing some great tidying, thanks for the effort! I would like to caution about moving punctuation marks, however. With your edit to Amy Lee, you moved some periods and a comma outside of the quotation marks, when they were actually part of the quotation. If you find yourself making this type of change often, please make sure and check the source to ensure the quotation is not in any way changed. Cheers! — Huntster (t • @ • c) 07:25, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
- Hi again. You made a similar edit as the one above. Please be careful regarding such edits...if the punctuation is part of the quote, then it should be inside the quotation marks...if not, it can go outside. Don't make such changes without confirming what the original quote is. Thanks :) — Huntster (t • @ • c) 14:28, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Emanuel School[edit]
Just a quick note to say "thank you" for your recent edit to Emanuel School. It has improved the readability no end.—GrahamSmith (talk) 19:36, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
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A barnstar for you![edit]
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The Original Barnstar |
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