4-99 (December 1999) Mailing List Discussions by Brigitte Beuttenmüller

Comments have come in from members and many different countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Israel) proving that capitalization is an ongoing problem for many of us. Many thanks to all contributors!

The following summarizes the replies to the question of "capitalization of headings and titles" in the mailing list tcf-gen during the last months.

A member has written: "We think that there is a 'right' way to do things, and my memory says that this 'right' way varies between the USA and Britain."

She suggests different possibilities:

• Capitals For Everything In The Title
• Capitals only for Nouns in the Title ('German method')
• Capitals only for the first word in the title
• Capitals for Longer Words in the Title (>3 Letters)

And finally, she puts the following two questions:

• which is the 'correct' way in Britain and the USA
• which possibility is best for readability (for non-native speakers)

Common practice, according to members from an internationally operating company in Germany, used to be for many years:

Capitalize in Heading and Title:

• First and last word
• Nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives
• Subordinating conjunctions (for example: before, after, when...)
• Hyphenated compound words
• First word following a colon

Do Not Capitalize:

• Articles (a, an, the)
• Coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, so)
• The word 'to' when it precedes a verb
• Prepositions with fewer than five letters.

This relatively complicated method has recently been changed in one branch of the company to a solution as simple as to capitalize only the first word.

Another member quotes the "Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications" - and for those of you who don't have easy access to this book, here is the cited chapter:

 

Capitalization of Titles and Headings

Many books and Help topics now capitalize only the first word of chapter titles and other headings; design guidelines are less formal than in the past. The following guidelines represent traditional title capitalization standards. They are especially useful in answering questions about capitalization of adverbs, prepositions, verbal phrases, and the like. If your design does not use traditional capitalization, follow your design guidelines.

• Capitalize all nouns, verbs (including is and other forms of to be), adverbs (including than and when), adjectives (including this and that), and pronouns (including its).
• Always capitalize the first and last words, regardless of their part of speech ("The Text to Look For").
• Capitalize prepositions that are part of a verb phrase ("Backing Up Your Disk").
• Do not capitalize articles (a, an, the) unless an article is the first word in the title.
• Do not capitalize coordinate conjunctions (and, but, for, nor, or).
• Do not capitalize prepositions of four or fewer letters.
• Do not capitalize to in an infinitive phrase ("How to Format Your Hard Disk").
• Capitalize the second word in compound words if it is a noun or proper adjective or the words have equal weight (Cross-Reference, Pre-Microsoft Software, Read/Write Access, Run-Time). Do not capitalize the second word if it is another part of speech or a participle modifying the first word (How-to, Take-off).

Capitalize interface and program terms that ordinarily would not be capitalized, unless they are case-sensitive ("The fdisk Command"). Follow the traditional use of keywords and other special terms in programming languages ("The print Function," "Using the EVEN and ALIGN Directives").

• In table column headings, capitalize only the first word of each column heading.

A member from Britain wrote (and a member from Denmark supports it): "... that the first word and all the 'main' words in a title should have initial capitals, and all the 'joining' words should be left in lower case, e.g.:

• To Be, or Not to Be, That is the Question.
• Business Case for Selling Fridges to Eskimos.

What you should not do (normally), is use capitals throughout, e.g.:

• TO BE, OR NOT TO BE, THAT IS THE QUESTION.
• BUSINESS CASE FOR SELLING FRIDGES TO ESKIMOS.

It is a proven fact that text in all capitals is harder to read. To prove this to yourself, cover the top or bottom half of a line of text. If the text is all capitals, you will have great difficulty making out the words. If the text is a mix of capitals and lower case, you can normally make out the words. This is important when you realize that, when people are reading, they actually 'scan' the text, (they don't read every word), and make up the rest by logic and assumption."

A member from India quotes the Chicago Manual of Style (14th edition):

"In regular title capitalization, also known as headline style, the first and last words and all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and subordinating conjunctions (if, because, as, that, etc.) are capitalized. Articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, for, nor), and prepositions, regardless of length, are lowercased unless they are the first or last word of the title..."

The writer feels that "there is more on the subject. However, I have never seen anyone adequately justify the use of leading caps on every word in a title."

Another member quotes John Kirkman´s "FULL MARKS - Advice on punctuation for scientific and technical writing" (Ramsbury Books, UK). He says that, conventionally, the main titles of books and chapters have had initial capitals for all main words, and he quotes the Chicago Manual of Style. But he then says that modern practice both in the UK and the US varies greatly, from capitalizing almost every word to simply an initial capital only for the first word of a title. His conclusion is that all variations are acceptable, and that the important thing is to decide on how you want to do things and then stick to it!

This member brings a very valid point into the discussion: "Perhaps main words were capitalized previously because there were not many different formats (font size, bold, italics etc) available to distinguish titles from the rest of the text. Personally I find titles in bold, in a larger font size and with only the first word capitalized, more effective than the old style."

And another important aspect which must always be taken into account is: for some types of publications "what you choose will depend on how much choice you have. As you know, it isn't possible to use bold, etc, in titles in aerospace documentation, so in that case, caps and sometimes underlining are the only distinguishing features available."

 

Summary

There are many modern style guides and they are much more liberal than the traditional ones: you can make your own decision what you can do, what you want to do - but once you have, stick to it!

"transline Deutschland - Übersetzungsdienst für technische Übersetzung"