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APPENDIX

ENGLISH
There is no standard rulebook for English. There is no official institute dictating English usage. And while extensive systems exist (Yale, IBM, NASA), they do not address vernacular English which is very commonly used in music titles. This style sheet is a blend of several systems to be used specifically for Second Hand Songs.

  • Spelling.

    • Be aware of the differences in UK and US spellings. Example: colour (UK)/color (US), capitalise (UK)/capitalize (US). Canadians might use either form(!) Choose the proper release from the artist’s home country, per database practice, and then follow the release. Example: the song is My Coloring Book by Barbra Streisand and other US artists, but My Colouring Book by UK artists and (possibly) others. Follow the release/source.

  • Capitalization.

    • Capitalize the first letter of a title. EXCEPTION: Stylistic quirks.

    • Capitalize proper nouns, i.e. names, placenames, etc. Capitalize each noun of a hyphenated proper noun. Example: Wu-Tang Clan, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Croton-on-Hudson. There may be stylized names that may not capitalize this way - follow the release/source. Initials are capitalized. Examples: P.J. Proby, NWA, The KKK Took My Baby Away. Note that *Jr.is always capitalized. The letter following O or *Mc/Mac' in a Scottish/Irish name is normally capitalized - O'Connell, McDonald, but there are variants.

Capitalize articles (a, an, the) that begin and are part of an artist name like The Beatles. Example: the proper album title is Meet The Beatles. While it seems most group names and venue names in English begin with a capitalized The, you must research and confirm that this is true for a new entry (artist sites, fan sites, myspace listings, label sites, etc.). But note that the band or album is Mott The Hoople, which would appear to be incorrect based on the rule above. Yet it is the correct capitalization according to the Ian Hunter site and several fansites. 'Follow the release' applies here, as perhaps the rule concerning keeping stylistic quirks. BTW, this is currently not how the name is in the database.

You can be fooled by proper nouns made so by their context/being made into a name. Editors are probably aware that The White House is the US presidential residence and is capitalized. It may not be clear for the venue The Knitting Factory, the name of a specific place. Follow the release/source but confirm that what you have is a proper noun or not.

  • Capitalization is also a function of context in the database. For the performer field, the entry is a descriptive phrase rather than a title (proper noun or name). So, in the performer field, the words featuring, with, vs (there may be others) and their abbreviations are not capitalized. Further, general terms like chorus, orchestra that are not part of a name are not capitalized. Examples: David Whitfield and chorus with The Mantovani Orchestra, Rufus featuring Chaka Khan. However, Percy Faith and His Orchestra is capitalized thus as it is a name.

Further, the release by the last artist follows the rules for titles and is Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan - this is the name of the release. For titles, featuring, with, vs and their abbreviations are capitalized.

  • Capitalize the first word of a phrase in parentheses or a phrase following a dash or colon.Examples: Money (That's What I Want), Ashes to Ashes - A Tribute to David Bowie.

  • Capitalize the last word in a title. Example: the song Alone Again Or.

  • Otherwise, do not capitalize the following words:

    • The articles a, an, and the.
      • EXCEPTION: when it is an integral first part of an artist name.See above.
    • The conjunctions and, as, but, if, or, and nor.
    • The prepositions or adverbs that are less than five letters long: at, by, for, from, in, into, of, off, on, onto, out, over, to, up, and with.

  • All other words are capitalized:

    • Prepositions that are five or more letters long: across, after, among, beyond
    • Even seemingly minor words such as is, it, no, me, my and other pronouns.
    • Months and days of the week.
    • Vernacular contractions and stylized terms. Examples: Hang 'Em High, All the Critics Love U in New York.
    • Abbreviations of words that would be capitalized otherwise. Example: Gary McFarland & Co.

  • Non-English phrases that have been adopted into English follow English style for the database when English is the primary language of the song or release. This creates as much of a problem as vernacular English; there really are no rules. Follow the release/source or bring specific cases up for discussion on the Team section of the discussion forum.

CHINESE
Cantonese is the de facto language of Guangdong Province, Hong Kong, Macao and for a majority of Overseas Chinese. Mandarin is used by all others including Taiwan. The characters sets are somewhat different because of a simplification scheme instituted by The People’s Republic of China.

  • Cantonese is romanized using the Yale system. This is the most commonly used romanization system. If you find a romanization alongside the Chinese title, it is probably transliterated this way.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_Romanization#Cantonese

  • Mandarin is romanized using the Hanyu Pinyin (or Pinyin) system. This is the most commonly used romanization system. If you find a romanization alongside the Chinese title, it is probably transliterated this way.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanyu_Pinyin

A useful translation source for both dialects is: http://www.mandarintools.com/chardict.html

FRENCH

  • Punctuation
    • In French there is a thin space before question marks (?) and exclamation marks (!). For reasons of simplification, we replace the thin space by a standard space.

      Example: Adieu, Mignon ! Courage !

GERMAN

GREEK

ITALIAN

JAPANESE

  • Japanese is romanized using the Revised Hepburn system.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepburn_romanization A useful translation resource is: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html

  • Particles are romanized as they are pronounced. Example: は used as a particle is written as wa.

  • Long vowels are written using a macron. Example: ō. Note that Tōkyō is proper romanization, but is rarely used - follow the release/source.%%

  • The phonetic alphabet (kana) used for foreign words is often difficult to convert, especially if the source language is not known. Do your best if a roman-letter transliteration cannot be found.

  • Use no spaces between words written in Japanese characters. Romanized Japanese is spaced between words, including particles.

LATIN

  • Do not capitalize any word except for:
    • the first word of the text (title).
    • the first letter of a sentence. (Usually after separators like . ! ? /)
    • the first letter of proper nouns: names of persons, institutions, cities, nations, gods etc.

PORTUGUESE

ROMANIAN

RUSSIAN

TURKISH

WELSH

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