Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (capitalization)

Capitalization discussions ongoing [keep at top of talk page]

This section is an excerpt from Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Capitalization discussions ongoing (keep at top of talk page).[edit]

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Capitalization of geologic names

This is a problem I've been having for many years and I can't find any guidelines for it on Wikipedia. Some sources fully capitalize the names of geologic features while others do not, making it difficult to decide what format is more appropriate for an article title. This has resulted in inconsistencies throughout Wikipedia. For example, Dieng Volcanic Complex vs. Paipa-Iza volcanic complex and East African Rift vs. Bahr el Arab rift. The closest guidelines I could find are Wikipedia:Manual of Style # Geographical items and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names) which are for geographical features rather than geological ones. Volcanoguy 01:23, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is more of a WT:MOSCAPS question, since this isn't about article titles in particular. The answer for this is the same as for any other capitalization question: Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. (From lead of MOS:CAPS.) So, if these kinds of features are not capitalized across the vast majority of all reliable source material, they shouldn't be capitalized on Wikipedia. N-grams may not always be much help, since some of these terms don't appear in enough books to even rate on the graph [1][2].  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:21, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I would generally agree with SMcCandlish and the broad guidance at MOS:CAPS. Such noun phrases (titles) are of the format proper noun that should be capitalised, followed by a descriptor (eg rift). There is a common misperception that if the first part of the noun phrase is capitalised, then all parts of the phrase should be capitalised. True proper nouns are not descriptive (eg a volcanic complex at a certain place is a descriptive name, with the place midifying the descriptor). When we are dealing with a descriptive term in a noun phrase, the presumption should be that it is not capitalised unless the evidence of usage is telling us otherwise. If there isn't evidence of vast usage of a term then one cannot assert capitalisation in a vast majority of sources. This just comes down to whether we have a statistically significant sample set to reach a conclusion on whether something should be capitalised. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:05, 14 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Right. And the MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS gist is: default to lower-case, unless that vast evidence of capitalization can be shown.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:20, 14 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
OP observes, "Some sources fully capitalize the names of geologic features while others do not". Per the basic criterion of MOS:CAPS ("only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia"), where that observation is true, we use lowercase. Dicklyon (talk) 03:25, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I do see a lot of inconsistency in this space. We've had recent multi-RM discussions with consensus to lowercase "plate" and "fracture zone", and we have one open now about "terrane". Probably we'll do more, but I expect some of the Basins, Rifts, Troughs, Ridges, Faults, Grabens, Cratons, and such are actually proper names, consistently capped in sources. Not all are, though, especially those with "system" or "zone" appended, as here or here. Dicklyon (talk) 05:19, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Australian Government

Not planning on looking into this much, but is this correctly capitalized? InfiniteNexus (talk) 06:48, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Seems to be, at least in this sense (of the extant goverment that officially calls itself the Australian Government, of the nation-state of Australia). There has been other colonial-onward governance in Australia (which was originally called New South Wales), i.e. "Australian government" as a mass noun or "Austrlian governments" as a plural count noun, for which the Australian Government might not be the proper name. E.g., the Australian Constitution (1900) would seem to have it in long form as the Executive Government of the Commonwealth of Australia, usually shortened in one phrasing or another, with capitalization of those forms inconsistent. Anyway, "the Foo Government" seems marginally the most common construction (in English) for these things, e.g. the United States Government (abbreviated U.S. Goverment, US Government, or in some inside the Beltway contexts as USG), but quite often it's the other order, e.g. Government of Canada ("Canadian government" seems to be a journalistic shorthand, not used officially, and usually without "G"); and the Government of Ireland since 1920 ("Irish government" also frequently occurs, but usually without "G", and does not appear to be an official name, though I ran into a little use of it seemingly informally in some departmental materials). The UK is weird; the Government of the United Kingdom has quite a bit of currency and seems to be usually treated as if a proper name, but the real/official proper name is technically His [formerly Her] Majesty's Government, and "the UK government" seems to usually be lower-cased as a descriptive appellation (even at governmental sites). UK and some other parliamentary countries are a bit odd also in that they distinguish between "Parliament" and "the Government", despite the government being run by the Prime Minister who is of the parliament (the legislative body) and not a non-parliamentary official (as in most presidential-type systems); plus the term "government" gets used in a count-noun, common-noun way differently, to mean specific governments put together by specific PMs ("Rishi Sunak's government" or "the government of Riski Sunak"). In American usage, Congress is part of the US government (the US system of governance), but not part of the capital-G US Government (the executive branch), so I guess it's not that dissimilar from the distinction the UK Parliament is drawing, despite there being much less separation of powers in the UK and most other parliamentary systems. Gets complicated in other ways in the UK; e.g. the overall parliament in Great Britain now calls itself the UK Parliament, but was historically more often the Parliament of the United Kingdom (often informally the British Parliament, which seemed more often to be capitalized than to get a "p", though it seems to be slipping into disuse now, is usually found in non-UK media, and usually with "p"). Meanwhile the devolved one in Scotland is officially the Scottish Parliament not "the Scotland Parliament" or "the Parliament of Scotland"; same with the Scottish Government (not "the Government of Scotland", etc.). Various states (often of a "revolutionary" character) often have more complicated names for their governments, like Supreme Political Council, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:20, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#"Acronyms in page titles" is mis-placed in an MoS page. In short, the material needs to move to a naming-conventions guideline, but which page? WP:NCCAP is one of them, but might need a slight rename.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:19, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]