Forum:Revisiting MoS: Capitalization

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Forums: Index → Community discussions → Revisiting MoS: Capitalization | Post
Issue is resolved
The guidelines have been added to the Manual of Style

I'm revisiting Forum:Consistency with capitalization for the sake to enforce this matter once and for all. I want to make the matter simple and clear to understand, which is to make capitalization usage consistent. I'm not proposing a policy, but rather a guideline to be put under a new section in TSW:MOS. I've made a draft which can be down here.

Last time we had a dispute over one or two things that made the proposal freeze altogether. This time, I'd like to propose to implement this guideline to use as a general rule while we resolve any matters found separately. If we keep fighting over a single matter that holds the entire proposal then nothing will ever change, so that's why I want to resolve any matters found separately.

Last time, the issues we found was 1) Nancy the Paper Girl, and 2) Sim and WooHoo as unique terms. I have researched a bit more and according to Wikipedia MOS for capitalization, "Nancy the Paper Girl" counts as a person's title, similar to how the rule applies to "President Nixon," "Chief of Staff John Doe," and "King of France," and so does "Vacation Director Kana." For the second issue, it remains to be discussed.

Capitalization

It is advisable that all editors follow these guidelines to avoid inconsistency and unnecessary capitalization. Wikipedia Manual of Style in regards to capitalization can generally be used in most cases, we would like to simplify the guidelines for the most common uses in the wiki.

Common uses in the article format include the following:

  1. All capitals are not to be used for emphasis. Use italics instead.
  2. Article titles, headings, and captions must use sentence case.
  3. Only initial letter in sentences and list items is capitalized.
  4. Words that follow hyphen should not be capitalized.

Certain words and terms must be capitalized in articles. The words include the following:

  1. Proper nouns and proper names:[n 1][n 2]
  2. Names that refer to specific instances, such as opportunity and moodlet names
  3. Game titles and their short derivation
  4. Titles and positions of people (Vacation Director Kana, Nancy the Paper Girl)

Common terms, even if they're capitalized in-game, should not be capitalized in articles:

  • Motives (Hygiene becomes hygiene)
  • 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 (Economy becomes economy)
  • Emotions (Energized becomes energized)
  • NPC titles (Witch Doctor becomes witch doctor)
  • 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)

Descriptions that are found in the game strings should be kept as they appear in-game. Terms that remain questionable and are deemed exceptional should be brought up to discussion in the respective talk page or communnity discussion forum.

Notes

  1. ↑ Wikipedia article of proper noun
  2. ↑ http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/Proper-Name.htm

Please share your thoughts. Nikel Talk – Vote! 07:53, May 14, 2016 (UTC)

Discussion[edit source]

Regarding the question of "Sim vs sim", I think while there is no reason necessarily to capitalize Sim, the fact that it is common practice to do so means that we should continue to do it and to add that into our guidelines. Along that line, I think it would also make sense to capitalize names which are derived from Sim, such as SimBot. But I don't have a strong preference one way or another on that point.

On the guideline as a whole, I think it's very good and I support adopting it. -- LiR talk • blog • contribs 16:36, May 23, 2016 (UTC)

I agree. Also I just saw that the game itself capitalizes "Sims" as seen here. So we might want to adopt this form of writing, but overall I have no strong preference. - KaruKaterchen (talk/ fanon) 08:26, June 13, 2016 (UTC)
I think that is a good idea as it will make normal users such as myself, think about Capitalizing before imputing and could diminish accidental non-capitalization of that. Darytyg123123 (talk) 11:57, July 16, 2016 (UTC)
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