[haiku-development] Re: Checking consistency of used strings
- From: Ingo Weinhold <ingo_weinhold@xxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:14:27 +0100
On 2009-12-02 at 18:54:23 [+0100], Jorge G. Mare <koki@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Ingo Weinhold wrote:
> > On 2009-12-02 at 17:13:42 [+0100], Jorge G. Mare <koki@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> The English language already has rules of capitalization. Instead of
> >> trying to come up with some arbitrary guidelines that violate
> >> capitalization from a linguistic POV, following the existing rules is
> >> what should be done. That is the way to go, not to try to find some
> >> arbitrary rule that seems more natural to programmers or foreigners
> >> (myself included).
> >>
> >
> > So you're voting for consistently using sentence case? While unusual in
> > GUIs, I guess one just has to get used to it.
> >
>
> My number one preference would be to use title case on the set of
> specifically-defined GUI elements that equate to titles (i.e., title
> bar, tab titles, group box/frame titles, column headings, etc.) and use
> normal case for the rest. I think this would both be linguistically
> sound and would provide consistency as well.
The problem with title case is that there apparently isn't one title case.
The styles not only vary from country to country -- that could be dealt
with via different rules for the respective locales -- but within a country
it depends on the organization you ask. Quoting Wikipedia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_case#Headings_and_publication_titles):
"This family of typographic conventions is usually informally called title
case, although it has no basis whatsoever in any proper English grammar. Of
these various styles, only the practice of capitalizing nouns, pronouns,
verbs, adverbs and adjectives but not articles, conjunctions or
prepositions (though some styles except long prepositions) is considered
correct in formal American English writing, according to most style guides,
though others are found in less formal settings."
And regarding the UK:
"The convention followed by many British publishers (including scientific
publishers, like Nature, magazines, like The Economist and New Scientist,
and newspapers, like The Guardian and The Times) is the same used in other
languages (e.g., French), namely to use sentence-style capitalization in
titles and headlines, where capitalization follows the same rules that
apply for sentences....
One of the very few British style guides that do actually mention a form of
title case is R.M. Ritter's "Oxford Manual of Style" (2002), which suggests
capitalizing "the first word and all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs and
adverbs, but generally not articles, conjunctions and short prepositions"."
CU, Ingo
Other related posts:
