Forum:Consistency with capitalization

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Throughout the times, we've been consistently inconsistent with the use of capitalization, in article title and content. Moreover, we do not seem to have a strong foundation about capitalization in our manual of style. A minor example is Loves to Swim trait. In the game, the proper style is "Loves To Swim," but the acceptable title naming convention would be "Loves to Swim." But, why do we always have to capitalize trait names? Another more apparent example is some articles have careers and skills written in lowercase, while some others are capitalized. Neither is incorrect as it seems, because we don't enforce capitalization of these terms because we have no reason to, and on the other hand, we capitalize them because we're used to doing this. Sometimes we write "Scuba Diving" to refer to the skill, but sometimes we write "scuba diving" or "scuba dive" to refer to the activity. Writing "Scuba Dive" would be wrong because that's not the name of the skill.

Long ago, we used to capitalize every single term used in the series, but then (without written agreement) we stopped doing this and tried to write the content in encyclopedic style. That is, we do not capitalize terms that have no reason to be capitalized, like "Watch Clouds" becomes "watch clouds" and "Goth Family" becomes "Goth family." But even then, a lot of terms still remain being capitalized while some are not.

I'd like to propose that we make a consistent convention of what should be capitalized and what should not. I'd like to propose that the following should be enforced to be capitalized:

• Proper nouns and proper names, which include[1][2]:
  • personal names (surnames, first names, nicknames and pseudonyms);
  • geographical names (names of cities, countries, islands, lakes, mountains, rivers and so forth);
  • names of unique objects (monuments, buildings, ships or any other unique object, e.g. Excalibur--the sword);
  • names of unique animals (e.g. Benji or Bugs Bunny);
  • names of institutions and facilities (cinemas, hospitals, hotels, libraries, museums or restaurants);
  • names of newspapers and magazines;
  • titles of books, musical pieces, paintings or sculptures;
  • names of single events (e.g. Kristallnacht).
• Other names, like names of opportunities, moodlets, and objects
• Game titles and their short titles

On the other hand, several things that we have capitalized should not be capitalized now:

• Motives
• Traits (Animal Lover becomes animal lover)
• Skills (Nectar Making becomes nectar making)
• Talent badges (Toy Making becomes toy making)
• Hobbies (Arts and Crafts becomes arts and crafts)
• Careers and career titles (Architectural Designer becomes architectural designer, Test Subject becomes test subject)
• Majors
• Emotions (Energized becomes energized)
• NPC titles (Witch Doctor becomes witch doctor, Father Time becomes father time)
• Social classes and social groups (Jock becomes jock)
• Life states (Plumbot becomes plumbot)
• Life stages (Children becomes children)
• Interactions (Rally Forth becomes rally forth, Plan Outfit becomes plan outfit, Try for Baby becomes try for baby)
• Game modes (Edit Town becomes edit town, Buy mode becomes buy mode)
• Rabbit holes and lot types (these are generally in lowercase now)
• Names that are not proper names:
  • Plants (Crystal Plant, Money Tree, Flame Fruit, Forbidden Fruit, Life Fruit, Kona Bean, Ginseng, etc.)
  • Food (Fried Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich, Lobster Thermidor, Crepes Suzette)
  • Fish (Robot Fish, Deathfish, Red Herring)
• TS1 NPC names (Nancy the Paper Girl to Nancy the paper girl)

There are some terms that are very commonly capitalized. I don't know which category they'd fall on; either they should change or they remain as they are:

• Terms using the word "Sim," such as plantSim, Simology, Simbot, etc.
• WooHoo
• The Grim Reaper (Grim Reaper is a proper name, apparently)
• TS1 NPC names (Nancy the Paper Girl to Nancy the paper girl) (added)

I've probably missed any, or some people might oppose some changes. Please share your opinion about this. Nikel _{Talk – Vote!} 04:33, August 4, 2015 (UTC)

Discussion

I agree that there is a lot of inconsistency and confusion about capitalization. With the exception of page titles and section headers, and the word "Sim" which we seem to always capitalize, we don't have any real rules or guidelines for when something should or shouldn't be capitalized. I think that your list of do's and don'ts is a pretty good starting point. In a lot of cases, it's hard to generalize and you have to almost take it on an individual basis. But we should definitely adopt some sort of standard, at least broadly speaking.

Regarding the questionable terms... I would say that Grim Reaper should continue to be capitalized, since that is a proper noun. You could argue that if we continue to insist that 'Sim' is capitalized, then it should remain capitalized wherever it's used, but you could also make the argument that Sim shouldn't be capitalized, in which case the ambiguity over terms like plantSim and Simbot are resolved. And I don't think that woohoo necessarily needs to be capitalized.

Really, any terms that we're currently capitalizing might appear "correct" to us in that form simply because they are familiar in that form, not necessarily because it is correct. When was it decided that we should capitalize sim, for instance? Why is it incorrect to leave the term 'sim' in lower case? I don't know, but for whatever reason we do choose (currently) to capitalize it, and when I look at the term in lower case it just looks wrong for that reason, not because it is actually incorrect in any way. -- LostInRiverview ^{talk • blog • contribs} 05:02, August 4, 2015 (UTC)

General guidelines for capitalization would be a good thing to create. Personally, I believe that we should have things capitalized as they appear in-game, i.e. leave it as Nancy the Paper Girl, for two reasons - firstly, its just a personal preference, and secondly, capitalizing everything the same way as it appears in-game would save a lot of time thinking up specifics and would just create a general catch-all. It would still take a bit of effort, I've got no idea how various terms are treated in-game when they're in the middle of a sentence so somebody might have to look into that. ―ฬђ ^talk 08:17, August 4, 2015 (UTC)

In all series, interactions are capitalized like a title—every word is capitalized except prepositions. In game strings, every term is capitalized, so whenever you see the word "Trait," "Loves the Outdoors," "Hygiene," "Cooking," "Science," "Curious Family," and almost every single thing listed above, they're always capitalized. The goal here is to make our style consistent: capitalize all or nothing (with exceptions of course). I'm inclined to "capitalize nothing."

I don't like to follow in-game style, which is to capitalize everything. Think of how the article titles now "Goth family" and "Singles household" but we then decide to change it back to "Goth Family" and "Singles Household," and then every occurrence in the paragraphs should also be changed. The general rule would be everything that has its own page would be capitalized in the paragraphs.

I actually don't mind "Sim" being capitalized. I feel like "Sim" is kind of a special, made-up term that's unique to the series. Capitalizing "Sim" is generally acceptable and deemed correct somehow, even though we have no concrete reason for it. As for "WooHoo," I also think it's special because it's a unique made-up term that distinguishes it from an exclamation. You can argue my arguments though. This is just what I think about them. Nikel _{Talk – Vote!} 02:00, August 5, 2015 (UTC)

"Sim" and "WooHoo" are all unique terms and they should remain capitalized the way they are, since they are so widely used that way. "sim" and "woohoo" just look wrong (but then again, so does ideal plantsim). Also, "Grim Reaper" is always capitalized, as a quick Google search would clearly confirm. I think we can get away with "the Grim Reaper", simply because (I think, since I have only played TS1 and 2) TS1 is the only game that ever used "The Grim Reaper" (note the "The" in his name), yet most people just write "Grim Reaper" anyway, just like we never write "The God" or "A God", just "God". --I am k6ka ^{Talk to me!} _{See what I have done} 03:27, August 5, 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Nikel, in that I think we should follow a general rule of not capitalizing unless there is a reason to. That brings me back to 'Sim', and I will repeat a point I made above: "any terms that we're currently capitalizing might appear "correct" to us in that form simply because they are familiar in that form, not necessarily because it is correct." K6ka mentioned that "sim" and "woohoo" look wrong, which is the same point that I had made; just because they look wrong doesn't mean that they are actually wrong. I look at sim, at least, as being a synonym for 'human;' we don't capitalize human or man in sentences, and sims are a life state just as humans are. You could look at it another way, even; race. You could say that sims are a "race" of simulated people, but even if you do that, you still wouldn't capitalize it, just as you wouldn't say (as an example) that "Barack Obama is a Black man," you'd say that "Barack Obama is a black man." In this case, "Bella Goth is a sim," not "Bella Goth is a Sim." - LostInRiverview ^{talk • blog • contribs} 03:59, August 5, 2015 (UTC)

Adding more: I did a little digging into the 'Sim'/'sim' argument. It appears as though EA capitalizes Sim when referring to the life state. To be exact, it looks like their pattern is to capitalize any life state that they created; for example, zombie would not be capitalized but Plumbot would be, and cat is lowercase while Sim is uppercase. Outside EA/Maxis, it appears as though most trend towards capitalization, but it is not universal. How much of that is a deliberate lower-case, versus simply being too lazy to capitalize it when writing, I couldn't guess. I don't care either way about upper-versus-lowercase for sim/Sim, but I think we should make a decision based on something rational, not just because that's the way that we've always done it. Additionally, I think there is some logic in having "fictional" (i.e. Maxis-created) lifestates keep the same capitalization, meaning if we capitalize Sim, we should also capitalize Plumbot, Simbot and Servo, as well as any other lifestates that Maxis may have created. - LostInRiverview ^{talk • blog • contribs} 04:15, August 5, 2015 (UTC)

I have been following this discussion, but haven't participated until now because I really don't know who my thoughts on the matter are. I wholeheartedly agree that we need to have some sort of standardization. I can understand the rationalization for generally opting for making titles lowercase. In fact, I would be okay with that decision if it were made, and I am probably not the only one. The crucial aspect would be to make some sort of clear and precise definition of the exception. I agree with LiR that saying that something just looks right wouldn't fly. Of course, neither is saying generally proper nouns are capitalized. While it is true that scuba diving isn't a proper noun, one could argue that the skill of scuba diving is because it is the name of the skill rather than the act. That would be to say that an article titled "scuba diving" would be about the act while an article titled "Scuba Diving" would be about the skill.

It was that reasoning of proper names that lead to my naming of fanon pages with "Family" rather than "family" for pages about various families. I do, however, understand the reasoning being not capitalizing family. One wouldn't do so in the statement of "Bella Goth is a member of the Goth family." It is just that seeing "Goth family" in the infobox just doesn't strike me as correct because it is being used as a title which would mean that family would have to be capitalized.

Having said that, I really don't know if I can contribute much substance to this discussion that will lead to a conclusion. I can say that I do feel that making a clear manual of style with precise definitions is truly needed. I would support the community consensus on such a manual of style. -- Icemandeaf (talk) 06:45, August 5, 2015 (UTC)

@LiR: I'm not sure if EA limits the use of "sim"/"Sim" to life state context only. As I said, EA tends to capitalize most terms in the game, but not always. Maxis-created life states would be Sim, Plumbot, Simbot, Servo, and PlantSims. I might favor this, but why is it only bound to life state context?

@WH: I realized that "Alexander the Great" counts as a proper name, and therefore, the "Great" has to be capitalized. Maybe this is applicable to TS1 NPCs as well? I'm really not sure about that either. I've been researching a bit about proper name, and there's no explanation about "Alexander the Great" example. Or maybe it's only bound to adjective and not a noun? Because according to my reference, "Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York City" has the "mayor" in lowercase, unless the word is written before the name. English is confusing. Nikel _{Talk – Vote!} 05:48, August 12, 2015 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Bumping. I don't want the discussion to just dry up without any conclusion here. After all, this is about standardization. I see that the topic has drifted to whether we should capitalize "Sim," which expanded to life states, instead of capitalization in whole.

I notice that participants here support that TSW adopts a standard for capitalization, but only argues about specific points (TS1 NPC names, "Sim"). I'd like to hold off these questionable points for now and focus on the rest. I'm afraid some editors are reluctant to participate because they don't know what argument to say even though they agree / disagree. Should we start a voting system rather than consensus?

Should we implement the standards to TSW:MOS? Nikel _{Talk – Vote!} 08:48, August 20, 2015 (UTC)

Polling is not a substitute for discussion. And TS1 NPCs are a bit... weird, since the tooltip that appears when you move your cursor over a Sim was only introduced in Hot Date and later, and excluded the last name of the Sim. This was the case for TS2 as well, although last names were added in a later EP, though I don't remember which one. TS1 NPC names are generally the Sim's name plus something that describes who they are, and TS1 is, AFAIK, the only game that ever did this. For instance, "Nancy the Paper Girl". It's anyone's guess as to why EAxis decided "Paper" and "Girl" had to be capitalized, though.

This is just me making an educated guess, but I believe the "Great" in "Alexander the Great" is to put emphasis on the word "Great". "I am Great." Much like the "Trouble with a capital T" came about, or how God is capitalized. So perhaps "Paper Girl" is to put emphasis that Nancy was a newspaper delivery girl and not some random townie? --I am k6ka ^{Talk to me!} _{See what I have done} 02:36, August 30, 2015 (UTC)

Reviving

It appears as though a consensus did form here in favor of some standard. However, what is less clear is whether that standard should be towards "capitalized by default" or "lowercase by default." On top of that, there are specific circumstances under which it would make sense to deviate from the default. So first, I think we should decide whether we want to capitalize by default, or not.

My own viewpoint is that we should use lowercase by default. There would be exceptions to this, but I think the majority of examples should not be capitalized. -- LiR ^{talk • blog • contribs} 02:53, January 15, 2016 (UTC)

Closure

As mentioned above, there is agreement that a change is needed, but no firm agreement in which direction the change should occur. Therefore, there is insufficient support to act at this time. Users should continue to follow the current Manual of Style, and interpret these questions in their own way and in following other practices on the wiki. Over time, a more concrete style may evolve naturally, or else this matter can be brought up for discussion again in another thread. -- LiR ^{talk • blog • contribs} 15:16, March 11, 2016 (UTC)