I know this topic has received attention on Birding-Aus previously but my interest was re-awakened by reading in an ornithological book of “little owls” and being reminded of the futility of trying to determine whether the author is referring to smaller owls in general, a particular group of small owls, or Little Owls Athene noctua. I continue to be baffled by the widespread publishing convention (used by most newspapers and books) not to capitilise the common names of bird species (and all other biological species for that matter).
Is anyone with publishing experience/knowledge able to explain why this convention has been adopted and perpetuated, in spite of its obvious failings in regard to clarity of meaning, particularly when the name includes words in everyday use such as little, common, long-toed, singing, etc?
Richard NOWOTNY
Port Melbourne, Victoria
M: 0438 224 456
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Yet I find it interesting that capitals are usually used in common names of extinct and extant species or subspecies of the genus Homo, e.g. Cro-magnon Man, Neanderthal Man, Human Being (or just Man).
Stephen Ambrose Ryde, NSW
Even thinking about dogs, although dog generically is not capitalized, specific breeds are, such as my two Australian Shepherds.
Eric Jeffrey Falls Church, VA USA
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“It reflects the historical thinking of a species that collectively doesn’t give a Rat’s for other species.” Yep, I think that’s right.
John Leonard
ps Thinking about proper nouns and whether classes of things can be proper nouns, what about the case of the Nimitz Class Aircraft Carriers, not the nimitz class aircraft carriers (though I suppose Nimitz would have a capital anyway).
pps Which leads me to another thought, apologies if anyone has already pointed this out, if only “real” proper nouns have capitals, do we have Lewin’s rail v buff-banded rail, Albert’s lyrebird v superb lyrebird?
I think the issue is more historical than style manuals. Historically, species common names in English have not been considered to be proper nouns. This is evident in any dictionary, and dictionaries (originally) provided definitions based on the way words have been used throughout history. It is not a problem understanding a species concept. Everyone can tell the difference between a ‘dog’ and a ‘cat’, including the scholars who prepared the dictionaries. It is a lack of respect for species as important things or ‘Proper nouns’. Many people argue that species names are not proper nouns, and leave it there, as though that is a self-evident argument. A proper noun is a name that represents a unique entity. It seems to me entirely inconsistent that species names are not considered to be proper nouns by dictionaries and style manuals and so forth, but the following entities are: geographical localities, planets, corporations, institutions, roads, buildings, bridges, people, languages, cultures, food dishes, days of the week, months, holidays, festivals, wars, weather-events (e.g. cyclones), musical bands, diseases, books, documents, paintings, sculptures, religions, product brands, TV shows, web-pages……. You don’t have a pet Dog called spot, you have a pet dog called Spot. Rather anthropomorphic, but not entirely. It reflects the historical thinking of a species that collectively doesn’t give a Rat’s for other species. Birders should know better. BTW, the RAOU (now called ‘birdlife australia’?) published a set of rules and list of ‘Recommended English Names’ for Australian birds in the Emu vol. 77 Supplement in 1977 that predates Parkes 1978 and sets the basis for the names in common use in Australia today.
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________________________________ Cc: Sean Dooley
Sent: Wednesday, 11 April 2012 9:21 AMI believe Carl is correct in nominating style manuals as the source of the problem. There was a time when newspapers, publishing houses, government departments etc.each had their own “style guide” (note, “guide” not “manual”) to assist internal authors with their publications. Increasingly however, guides have given way to manuals, and the dominant one is the Federal Government endorsed (propably too weak a description) publication “Style manual: for authors, editors, and publishers” 6th edition (2002), which appears to have influence in Australian publishing way beyond the Commonwealth Government’s many agencies.This manual was (to quote from the Australian Government website) “revised for the Australian Government by a consortium of communication and publishing professionals” and “provides guidance and recommendations for anyone faced with the task of preparing material for publication in either print or electronic format”. A quick glance at the members of this consortium reveals that they indeed are involved in the publishing industry, but of more interest to me was that only one (of at least 10) appeared to come from an academic linguistics background. None of this answers the question posed by previous correspondents as to why previously capitalized bird species names are no longer capitalized, but the decision appears to be part of a broad momentum to make published works more accessible to all readers, regardless of intended audiences and well-established and logical linguistic conventions. It is, in effect, yet another example of “dumbing-down” and the oxymoronic statement of “one size fits all”. I would be interested to hear what Sean Dooley, as editor of the old Wingspan and new Australian Birdlife, thinks of the reach of style manuals, and what guides him in publishing the magazine. (Interestingly I note in the first edition of the magazine that the front cover uses non-capitalized “birdlife”, but the editorial refers to the magazine as ” Australian Birdlife”)
Russ Lamb, Maleny,SEQ
A set of guidelines for the creation of English names for birds was published in The Auk in 1978. “Parkes K.C. 1978. A guide to forming and capitalizing compound names of birds in English. The Auk 95: 324-326″
These are the rules.
http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v095n02/p0324-p0326.pdf
But
kindest regards
Ian May St Helens Tasmania
Tim Hosking wrote:
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I have just now (1:30 pm, 11 April 2012) received a copy of the new book “Mr J W Lewin, Painter & Naturalist” by Richard Neville. The book was published in 2012 by NewSouth Publishing, University of New South Wales Press Ltd.
Considering the current discussion on capitalising common names of birds (and my personal preference for that to be so) I was immensely relieved to find that the common names of the birds referred to in the book have been capitalised. That has been done not only in the quotes from Lewin’s own descriptions but also in the words of the author. So, it looks like there are publishers who can be influenced to do the “right” thing.
Incidentally, it is not only “style guides” produced by representatives of the publishing world which maintain that common names of fauna and flora should not be capitalised but even the odd eminent linguistics professor is of that opinion, unfortunately. Pam Peters, in her “The Cambridge Australian English STYLE GUIDE” (my constant companion whenever I am writing seriously) advocates not capitalising common names of fauna and flora. It would seem that even language professors get it wrong now and then.
The book?
Even though this is a ‘paperback’ (220 wide by 260 high), the artwork from a number of artists as well as J W Lewin is wonderful; I can see I will have a very enjoyable time with this book. The story might even be interesting as well.
Bob Inglis Sandstone Point Qld ===============================
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Style guides and so forth are all very well, but there comes a point when you have to know (if you’re a good editor) when to disagree with them.
The classic example of where you need capitals, as someone has already pointed out, is when a sentence reads “These islands host nesting colonies of little penguins…”
John Leonard
I believe Carl is correct in nominating style manuals as the source of the problem. There was a time when newspapers, publishing houses, government departments etc.each had their own “style guide” (note, “guide” not “manual”) to assist internal authors with their publications. Increasingly however, guides have given way to manuals, and the dominant one is the Federal Government endorsed (propably too weak a description) publication “Style manual: for authors, editors, and publishers” 6th edition (2002), which appears to have influence in Australian publishing way beyond the Commonwealth Government’s many agencies.This manual was (to quote from the Australian Government website) “revised for the Australian Government by a consortium of communication and publishing professionals” and “provides guidance and recommendations for anyone faced with the task of preparing material for publication in either print or electronic format”. A quick glance at the members of this consortium reveals that they indeed are involved in the publishing industry, but of more interest to me was that only one (of at least 10) appeared to come from an academic linguistics background. None of this answers the question posed by previous correspondents as to why previously capitalized bird species names are no longer capitalized, but the decision appears to be part of a broad momentum to make published works more accessible to all readers, regardless of intended audiences and well-established and logical linguistic conventions. It is, in effect, yet another example of “dumbing-down” and the oxymoronic statement of “one size fits all”. I would be interested to hear what Sean Dooley, as editor of the old Wingspan and new Australian Birdlife, thinks of the reach of style manuals, and what guides him in publishing the magazine. (Interestingly I note in the first edition of the magazine that the front cover uses non-capitalized “birdlife”, but the editorial refers to the magazine as ” Australian Birdlife”)
Russ Lamb, Maleny,SEQ
Greg is right – I’ve asked the same question of our NSW OEH publishing people. Species are not considered to be proper nouns (they are viewed as common nouns), therefore not ‘deserving’ of capitalisation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_noun
This policy is apparently consistent with some key scientific journals (J. Ecology, I think?), so blaming publishing people for it may be a tad misplaced.
Cheers Tim
Tim Hosking | Dubbo NSW | Mob: 0438 600 837 | tim.hosking@environment.nsw.gov.au
Dear B-A,
Unfortunately, journalists, publishers and government department employees are prisoners of in-house “style manuals”. These style manuals are generally the products of committees, and often the size of ‘phone books. The contents of these tomes would undoubtedly have Messrs Strunk and White spinning in their graves
Cheers,
Carl Clifford
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Hi Richard,
My apologies for assuming you were making a point. I understand your response about it being a genuine enquiry and fair enough too. I wonder whether you will get a sensible answer. I hope you do, but I doubt it. I would be interested too. I’m pretty sure the answer is laziness and stupidity, or at the very least ignorance or non-concern that it causes confusion and that there is a species concept (as John mentions, although to really understand that is rather more complex, as his bit about the car-struck eagle a few weeks ago and the discussion about identifying albatross from sub species to species shows). Another issue is why is this apparently only an issue with birds. For example some books on mammals capitalise the first word of each use of a species name but not the second word (like “Mountain gorilla”). That is just as silly.
Things like “The NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service (part of the Office of Environment and Heritage) uses all lower case names (except where it would otherwise be an upper case such as Lewin’s, Gould’s etc.)” result in text that is so ugly to read. It can be hard to pick when they are describing a species or a generality. So you get awful things like is a “ground parrot” a “Ground Parrot”, is a “singing honeyeater” a “Singing Honeyeater” especially as they don’t do that much, Australian raven gets a capital & little raven does not. etc. Like your start point that “little owl” is not “Little Owl”. One thing I am not sure about though: Is a silly person a Galah or a galah or would the answer be different if Galah was not definitely one species?
I believe it is laziness and stupidity in exactly the same way that misuse (or non use) of an apostrophe is. Some people just say I don’t know how to use it so I will ignore it entirely. Then others remember it exists and because of ignorance cause because others don’t use it, put it in the wrong place. Many publishers make the whole range of these mistakes. Many publishers have no idea of the issue that a species name is different from a descriptive word, in the way that a Mr Baker is different from a man who is a baker, so they use a “convention” of laziness and stupidity to ignore it and don’t care about the confusion. Many publishers now ignore capital letters on people’s names too.
On top of it all is the truth that language evolves anyway.
Philip
This is much the same as the misuse of “should have” becoming should’ve which is ok, but now the expanded version many people are using is “should of” which is only spelling out how “should’ve” sound I suppose it also stands the same for could and would.
I agree on the capitilisation issue but aren’t birds the only group that this is the case (at least as far as publishing goes), botany etc seem to use lower case.
As far as hyphenation goes I was told that where the word indicates a “true” grouping then it’s capitalised, if not then it’s not. Two that spring to mind are Red-tailed Black-Cockatoo and Painted Button-quail. Please someone correct me if that rule is wrong.
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The NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service (part of the Office of Environment and Heritage) uses all lower case names (except where it would otherwise be an upper case such as Lewin’s, Gould’s etc.) for plants and animals in its publications, management plans etc.. The argument, as I understand it, is that common names of plants and animals are not proper nouns, except as described earlier and therefore it would be like capitalising human for Homo sapiens which isn’t correct but each human’s name, such as Bill and Mary are proper nouns and therefore start with a capital letter. Despite this I believe to avoid confusion as stated in Richard’s earlier post we should make an exception for the common names of plants and animals and use capitals at the beginning of each word.
Regards
Greg Greg. P. Clancy Ecologist Coutts Crossing NSW
In dealing with publishers John have you ever asked how they distinguish between “little lorikeet” and “Little Lorikeet” if caps are not allowed? Perhaps in the first case you could use “small” but there are many cases when there is no easy way to tell what is meant without capitals!
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My experience with publishers is that they seem to know almost nothing. To accept and understand the capitalisation covention for species names you have to have a concept of a species, and most people simply don’t have that, especially not publishers.
John Leonard
http://penelopedia.blogspot.com.au/2010/12/bird-names-to-capitalize-or-not.htmlprovides an interesting analysis
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Philip, the text message abbreviations I can understand. It is not necessarily laziness but, in my case anyway, a way of shortening the message to keep under the 160 character limit for the message. Anything longer than that gets sent as two, three or four messages and subsequently costs 2-4 times more than just one.
As for names of organisms (let’s go the whole hog!), as proper nouns they should be capitalised as with names – philip veerman just doesn’t have the same ring-to-it!
Long live the capital-isers and splitters for that matter!!
Interestingly Phillip I wasn’t actually trying to make a point. I’m genuinely interested in the origins of what is indeed an accepted/required “convention” in much of the publishing world, decided by people who presumably are neither lazy nor stupid, and presumably for a reason (or reasons) which they consider to be sound – and which presumably they consider outweigh the fairly obvious downsides of using this non-capitilising convention. But what are these reasons? R.
I agree entirely on your point. However I think it overly generous of you to refer to this trend of ignoring the intelligence behind capitalisation as a “convention”. It is hardly deserving of that title. Unless you care to call laziness and stupidity a “convention”. Is it anything other than laziness and stupidity?
Philip Veerman
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I also cannot fathom this policy of all lower-case names in publishing. It looks clumsy and as you say can be confusing. For HANZAB, we capitalised all actual names, such as Australian Raven. They are proper nouns and as such should have initial capitalisation. I won’t mention hyphenated names, that’s a different and more contentious issue. If we were referring to ravens in general, then lower case. That is simple and easy to understand, and takes away the potential confusion of any overseas corvid simply called Raven. I don’t know where or when this convention began, but it’s a right pain in the neck! My theory is it has been deemed appropriate by person or persons unknown with little scientific background.