Upper/Lower case in titles

I often experience a similair problem, particularily with French titles. The problem is that people who don't speak French often write the titles wrong. An example is Art Zoyd's Musique pour l'Odyssée. People often write "L'odyssée" instead, which is wrong because Odyssée is the noun and the " l' " is the same as a "la" or "le", which in turn is the same as a "the", and therefore should be written with lower case letters. The same principle applies to " d' ", which is the same as "de", meaning "of" or "from".


Edited by Philéas - January 21 2007 at 08:12

Quite agree .... as far as I am concerned all words in titles should be capitalised .... but, I am not familiar with the conventions of languages other than English which may differ .... eg in French should it be "L'Homme" or "l'Homme"?

Done ... thanks

PS - there are many cases of this where people have added titles with lower case initials - generally, as I make my way around the DB I change them if I spot them

Edit: just noticed your post above 


Edited by Joolz - January 21 2007 at 08:28

I think that people are copying and pasting the foreign language titles from another source because they are uncomnfortable with the language or form and forgetting to recapitalize.
I think that they should take more care..or not do it at all.

Fassbinder wrote: PFM 2006 -- Stati di immaginazione.   It should be written as Immaginazione, with the initial upper case letter, since it is a noun.

Sorry, but as a native speaker of Italian I disagree. The title is NOT in English, so it shouldn't submit to the rules of the English language. When I write titles in English in an Italian context (something that happens quite often), I always use upper case initials for nouns, adjectives and verbs - please, let's not Anglicise all languages, as much as I love English!

Ghost Rider wrote: Fassbinder wrote: PFM 2006 -- Stati di immaginazione.   It should be written as Immaginazione, with the initial upper case letter, since it is a noun. Sorry, but as a native speaker of Italian I disagree. The title is NOT in English, so it shouldn't submit to the rules of the English language. When I write titles in English in an Italian context (something that happens quite often), I always use upper case initials for nouns, adjectives and verbs - please, let's not Anglicise all languages, as much as I love English!

Ghost Rider wrote: Only the initial word of the title - e.g. "Stati di immaginazione", "Io sono nato libero", "Per un amico", etc. Italian has very strict rules concerning the use of upper case initials - they are mostly used for proper nouns. Names of languages, for instance, all have lower case initials.

Edited by Fassbinder - January 21 2007 at 08:53

When I growed up, there was very right proverb in the USSR -- "Initiative is punishable"...

I want to bring my apologies for the mess caused by my posts and for the uncomfortable feelings of everybody who was hurted by them. 

With all due respect this is an English language site so surely presentation of titles etc should follow the English style...?

Tony R wrote: With all due respect this is an English language site so surely presentation of titles etc should follow the English style...?

No, Tony, languages should follow their own rules even when quoted in a foreign language context. This is a basic rule of linguistics. Of course, when talking about languages not written in the Roman script, translitteration is essential to afford comprehension. This is not the case with European languages, though.