Forum:Need policy on capitalization of races (and I guess other things)

I was just about to de-capitalize all of the "Imps" in Imps (according to what seems to be an emerging tradition concerning races) when I realized that the lorequote has "Imps" and not "imps" in the middle of a sentence. I'm not quite sure what to do about this. Should we have all races in lower case, even if a lorequote from Origin's own texts say otherwise? Should we leave it up to individual pages? I don't really like either of these ideas, but unless someone comes up with something better, I think a Codex-wide policy on style for races should be set. I'm sure whatever we decide, their'll be Origin texts to contradict. And for more than just races as well. AngusM 04:12, May 3, 2010 (UTC)

Oops! Looks like the "imps" are already lower case. I don't know why I thought otherwise. Well, don't be surprised when you see that they are, but my challenge on the need for policy stands, as the lorequote gives "Imps". AngusM 04:17, May 3, 2010 (UTC)

I kinda feel like Races/Professions should be capitalized. Origin was somewhat random about capitalization in their texts/games, but it feels right to me to see "Mage" or "Dwarf" with caps.

I'm not sure I agree with this, for the simple fact that these things aren't proper nouns. In the real world we don't write "Human" or "Carpenter" so I admit it strikes me as a little jarring if I see the opposite on the wiki. I think this is more an issue of grammar than lore precedence. --Terilem 04:44, May 5, 2010 (UTC)

But maybe our style doesn't have to be real world style. We might consider using an in-game style for the Codex. AngusM 04:55, May 5, 2010 (UTC)

I would debate that, given that this is meant to be an objectively written wiki. Even so, a quick look at the manuals reveals that from U5 onwards, professions and races aren't capitalized. Perhaps I haven't looked into it as much as I should but, by and large, adherence to standard English grammar in this case seems to be the norm.--Terilem 05:47, May 5, 2010 (UTC)

I tend to concur. Sticking to proper English grammar should done unless specifically and routinely contraindicated by Ultima. (Dungy 01:35, May 7, 2010 (UTC))

Some other instances going way beyond professions and races come to mind. Adjhar has "Shrine" and I've already raised the issue of "Avatarhood" on Talk:The_Guardian. Of course, with minutia like that, you know that there'll be a ton of other examples we have to set policy for, like "Virtues". This could take a long time. AngusM 04:25, May 7, 2010 (UTC)

I happened to come across "Avatarhood" in the SI manual and it was indeed capitalized. On another note, one that really frustrates me is "blackrock." It's a mineral like diamond or gold, was never capitalized in the games except in the context of unique artifacts, and yet I frequently see it written that way here. --Terilem 17:35, May 9, 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I've been ruminating on how to approach such an insanely massive undertaking, and here's what I've come up w/. First of all, understand that if we do make up our own proper nouns, we will be breaking one of the most fluid principles of the English language. Just today I was reading a Victorian text that had "the Doctor" and you can bet it was before Doctor Who premiered. You'll also notice that other languages (that use case) have very different ideas of what are proper nouns.

Now these are the options I see before us:

1. Adhere to strict English. That means pretty well everything that isn't a person's or creature's name, a specific place, or an organization is in lower case. I guess that covers all of it. That means no "Virtues", "Shrines", "Magic Arrows", "Avatarhood", "Sacrifice", and, of course, no capitalized professions or races. There'll still be controversy, such as someone might try to lower "Great Earth Serpent", but we'll have a much simpler formula.
2. We can adjudicate just about every case. So we'd put a level headings in this page for "Virtues", "Shrines", Weapons, "Avatarhood", Virtues, Equipment, and then debate each one of them, which of course, would be a never-ending process.

So what'll it be? AngusM 03:28, May 10, 2010 (UTC)

Obviously I lean towards the first, as I set out writing under the rules of strict English. Still, I cross-reference with game material (mainly the later games with their more capable writers) to see how they handled it. I do think your definition of proper nouns is more restrictive than it should be though, as seen here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_noun#Proper_nouns_and_common_nouns -- It's simply about uniqueness and context.

I'm not going to get pedantic about every single thing as I may simply go insane by doing so, however I do get slightly bothered when obviously broad words like "mage" or "blackrock" are capitalized. --Terilem 04:23, May 10, 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I talked to a schoolteacher and, not surprisingly, what she told me was: not a whole lot that we don't already know. I showed her Talk:Force_Field_Ring and she felt that "force field" sounded pretty descriptive, thereby making it common. When I said "the Hope Diamond is an item, but a proper noun" and she started talking about how "Hope" sounds like the name of a person or something, which is different from "force field", and her voice trailed off as I could see the gears turning.

So I don't think we are going to be able to avoid going w/2.: the adjudication of every case. This means every word or every family of words. (I dunno, maybe we could go to a grammar forum and find some grammar nerds.) What do you think?

Perhaps in the short-term we can agree about professions and races. I say they should always be lower case, and this should be put into the style guide. AngusM 04:30, May 17, 2010 (UTC)

Ok, in the absence of any further input I'm going to go ahead and change the style guide to reflect that professions and races are common nouns and should not be capitalized. I'm also going to ask that Fenyx make bots to fix these en masse.

If I don't near anything further soon, I'm also going to implement 2., discussed above. I don't think we can avoid adjudicating every possible situation and families of situations. AngusM 19:57, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I accidentally let this discussion slip by. I think races and professions are probably the biggest ones to deal with currently. For everything else, hopefully terms that are clearly common nouns should be avoidable with some common sense, leaving us only to deal with things like "force field ring," which give me a headache. --Terilem 01:21, May 29, 2010 (UTC)

Micromanaging proper nouns[edit]

I've created the proper and common noun lexicon so please continue any discussion on its talk page.