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Capitalization Checker - Again.

mduval32323

Certified Contributor II
Posts: 965

mduval32323 @ 2019-12-11 04:48:13 UTC

Here's yet another example of why whoever thought making Down and Over lowercase in English titles never really thought it through and now we've become Big Guv and don't listen to reason.

Think It Over One Time by Robert Earl Keen

I just don't get our logic...You want me to make that "over" and that's just wrong, you want "Is" to be spelled "Is", but you want "in" to be spelled "in", you want "am" to be spelled "Am", you want "with" to be spelled "with", but you want "was" to be spelled "Was". It's tough to keep up with it all.

I suggested we have a Capitalization Error checker that worked both ways (right now it only tells you to make stuff lower case) so I can do it all properly, but not one Editor seemed to even give consideration to what I suggested.

I know many of you probably are tired of my observations, but I'm only trying to make the Site more user friendly. Not everything is intuitive.

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Mark

Tar Heel

Member
Posts: 5771

Tar Heel @ 2019-12-11 06:25:37 UTC

I complained about this several times to no avail. I believe the difference is Queen's vs American English norms. Frankly I can live with the going small case for most three letter words when the rules call for it, but the four letter words like "Over" in small case just looks silly.


Ultimately, most of my submissions are done per my personal cap rules (i.e. all first letters capped in song titles) and let the editors convert to SHS rules....

baggish

Editor
Posts: 3805

baggish @ 2019-12-11 13:28:43 UTC

Hi Mark, we have the Capitalistion board for this kind of issue Smile

As I understand it:

-"Think It Over" - I believe this is a phrasal verb and therefore "Over" is capitalised. If it is a preposition (Bridge over Troubled Water) then it is not capitalised.

- logic: "Is", "Am" and "Was" are verbs so are capitalised, "in" and "with" are prepositions with four letters or fewer so are not capitalised.

https://secondhandsongs.com/page/Guidelines/Spelling

- capitalisation checker: personally I don't care for any kind of automated tool. I prefer to take care of things myself.

Other comments:

- it took me at least 15 minutes to find that guideline. Finding where the guidelines are is difficult enough, finding that particular guideline is almost impossible.

- I'm sure that guideline used to have some links to some non-SHS grammar-related pages about phrasal verbs, but those links aren't there any more. There was a linked site that we can ask whether a verb is phrasal or not. Or maybe the links are somewhere else and I've got muddled.

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Really wild, General!

mduval32323

Certified Contributor II
Posts: 965

mduval32323 @ 2019-12-13 00:26:32 UTC

I didn't want this to turn into nitpicking over what should or shouldn't be capitalized. We all have our gripes over this. What I was requesting is if we have an automated checker telling you to lowercase some words that start with a capital letter could we have one that reminded me to make "is" - "Is"... That was all. I was hoping Mathieu could just add that to his dictionary if it was that simple.

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Mark