I noticed that the article in the link supplied by David uses lower-case letters for the Spoon-billed Sandpiper’s name and I recall this issue being raised before on birding-aus. Has anyone found out why the BBC takes this approach? I have asked them myself but not very hopeful of a response.
Mark Stanley
Message: 3 Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2012 07:47:44 +1000 From: david taylor
This is worth waching
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/16215541
cheers
David Taylor ===============================
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I haven’t followed this thread, but I agree with David and would like to point out a consequence. Some bird journals have had a policy of not only using capitalisation for bird names, but also printing the names out in bold! Irrespective of how many sacred principles that might violate, you can be sure it made it MUCH easier to skim through a paper and find the things of interest! The idea is to communicate, and if that is aided through capitalisation and bolding, then it can only be good!
Cheers, Chris.
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Historically, English names, common names, vernacular names, of animals and plants have been considered to be common.nouns. This is apparent in any dictionary. However, it is entirely inconsistent that geographical locality names, corporation names and people names are accorded the respect of Proper Nouns and species names are not. …”but surely the common names of orgnaisms are not propper nouns” only due to historical snobbery. David James, in Jakarta burunglaut07@yahoo.com ==============================
________________________________ Cc: birding-aus@vicnet.net.au; Mark Stanley Sent: Wednesday, 4 January 2012 10:04 AM
Sorry if I open a can of worms, but surely the common names of organisms are not proper nouns, and so should not be capitalised. In cases where using the common name could cause confusion (ie. with a little penguin), I would have thought the grammatically correct response would be to put inverted commas around the name. “There was a ‘little penguin’ in the water” seems pretty clear to me.
Jeremy
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Well, I suppose that not using capitals would keep the ink budget down. Many a little makes a mickle.
Cheers,
Carl Clifford
The Australian Journal of Zoology, and I think most scientific journals has this to say in its note to authors;
“Do not use initial capitals for vernacular names of species except where the name is based on a proper name (e.g. regent honeyeater, but Port Lincoln parrot; sugar glider, but Leadbeater´s possum).”
http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/93/aid/392.htm#6
Grammatically this seems correct, and I presume explains why the BBC and Australian Geographic follow the same convention.
It might be a specific convention amongst birding organisations to capitalise common names, but I think it’s not a normal convention more generally, and I suspect most publishers of more general biology than just birds would not follow this convention. The Oxdord dictionary definition of “proper noun” seems to support not capitalising common names.
Jeremy
On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 12:46 PM, Tony Keene wrote: ===============================
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“Grammatically this seems correct”…
Sorry to keep banging on about this topic but grammar has nothing to do with capitalisation or not.
Grammar is a property of the relations between the words of a sentence, not of their written representation. It would be quite possible to have a written representation of a grammatical sentence that had no puncutation or capitalisation at all.
Oh, and I am in favour of capitalising species’ names.
John Leonard
The Australian Journal of Zoology, and I think most scientific journals has this to say in its note to authors;
“Do not use initial capitals for vernacular names of species except where the name is based on a proper name (e.g. regent honeyeater, but Port Lincoln parrot; sugar glider, but Leadbeater´s possum).”
http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/93/aid/392.htm#6
Grammatically this seems correct, and I presume explains why the BBC and Australian Geographic follow the same convention.
It might be a specific convention amongst birding organisations to capitalise common names, but I think it’s not a normal convention more generally, and I suspect most publishers of more general biology than just birds would not follow this convention. The Oxdord dictionary definition of “proper noun” seems to support not capitalising common names.
Jeremy
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Ah, the tyranny of house styles. A certain institute I used to work at had a house style almost incompatible with the sciences and a publishing group that really should know better in the chemical sciences produces styles that border on the illiterate. As for a response from the BBC, good luck. As Ian Hislop once said “the BBC goes from breathtaking arrogance to grovelling apology wih nothing inbetween.” One thing sometimes overlooked is that while a species is treated as a proper noun, the family is not (so Wonga Pigeon, but a flock of pigeons). Cheers,
Tony
If you put inverted commas around a word it means it isn’t really a whatever. So saying “a ‘little penguin’ was swimming in the water” prompts the question, “what was it then?”
John Leonard
Sorry if I open a can of worms, but surely the common names of organisms are not proper nouns, and so should not be capitalised. In cases where using the common name could cause confusion (ie. with a little penguin), I would have thought the grammatically correct response would be to put inverted commas around the name. “There was a ‘little penguin’ in the water” seems pretty clear to me.
Jeremy
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Sean,
Lack of capitalisation is a pet bugbear of mine as well and it can certainly lead to some interesting reading at times. I have never forgotten an example of what non-capitalisation can lead to that was drummed into me by my English Master, “I had to help my Uncle Jack off a horse”. Removing the capitals does give a somewhat different meaning to the sentence.
Cheers,
Carl Clifford
Hi Mark,
This is a pet peeve of mine, (and one that has been discussed before on this forum so I won’t go into the debate about why we should capitalise bird names). While I don’t specifically know why the BBC have gone down the lower-case path, I do know that they are not Robinson Crusoe in this, and that this is the standard in the publishing world.
I had to make a strong representation to my publisher to maintain capitalisation of bird names in my books The Big Twitch and Anoraks to Zitting Cisticola. I have never been successful when writing for other publications such as The Age. Even Australian Geographic, which prides itself on accuracy when it comes to the natural world refuse point blank to stray from the standard lower-case approach. More than one editor I have dealt with has privately admitted they would prefer to use capitalisation but are bound by the house style. And thus readers will never know that when they read the line “A little penguin popped its head out of the water next to the boat” whether the bird in question was the species Eudyptula minor or whether it was a small penguin of indeterminate species.
Sean Dooley
Hi Mark,
This is a pet peeve of mine, (and one that has been discussed before on this forum so I won’t go into the debate about why we should capitalise bird names). While I don’t specifically know why the BBC have gone down the lower-case path, I do know that they are not Robinson Crusoe in this, and that this is the standard in the publishing world.
I had to make a strong representation to my publisher to maintain capitalisation of bird names in my books The Big Twitch and Anoraks to Zitting Cisticola. I have never been successful when writing for other publications such as The Age. Even Australian Geographic, which prides itself on accuracy when it comes to the natural world refuse point blank to stray from the standard lower-case approach. More than one editor I have dealt with has privately admitted they would prefer to use capitalisation but are bound by the house style. And thus readers will never know that when they read the line “A little penguin popped its head out of the water next to the boat” whether the bird in question was the species Eudyptula minor or whether it was a small penguin of indeterminate species.
Sean Dooley