Semantic discussion on the phrase "Title Case"

[DiapDealer]

While you're definitely grammatically correct. "Titlecase" is what this particular feature is called in various automated routines ... such as regex. The function capitalizes the first letter of every word with zero regard for filtering words that wouldn't typically be capitalized. In the world of grepping and regexping, "Titlecase" is the familiar terminology for the function being provided. I personally think "Capitalize" would probably confuse more people than it would help.

[AlanHK]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I personally think "Capitalize" would probably confuse more people than it would help.

Really? Who could not understand "Capitalise"?

This is not about grepping and regexping, it's about chapter titles in a book.
What coders call a routine isn't really relevant to book editors -- the people who invented the term.

Though the coders who created this site: https://saijogeorge.com/title-case-converter did know he difference.

Anyway, it does what it does, but don't mislabel it. It is NOT title case.
It's a good start, but I'd have to finish the job manually.

For instance, it makes:
CHAPTER XI—FINDS PRINT OF MAN’S FOOT ON THE SAND
to
Chapter Xi—Finds Print Of Man’S Foot On The Sand

[DiapDealer]

Don't yell at me. I'm just saying what I know. Start a thread in the Sigil forum about how to go about "titlecasing" text and see for yourself, if you won't take my word for it. I promise you, you'll get a lot of regular expressions before you get any grammar/typography lessons. But it's not my plugin afterall, so I don't really care.

[AlanHK]

I'm not trying to change how anyone uses the term, except when it really is referring to book titles.

Also, I'm NOT SHOUTING at anyone (yet).

I know what regular expressions are, but the usage in that technical sphere is irrelevant to the usage in the book editor's sphere.

This is a tool used by book editors to edit text that is presented to the reader. Not to prettify code. The result has to follow the rules of book editors, not coders. If a book editor says title case, he does not mean "Finds Print Of Man’S Foot On The Sand".

[BetterRed]

I don't know what calibre uses for case shifting (home grown or open source library) but it offers both, pretty sure they do as AlanHK would have them do.



But why not call it Capital case

FWIW : In a ToC I would shift "CHAPTER XI—FINDS PRINT OF MAN’S FOOT ON THE SAND" to "Chapter XI—Finds print of man’s foot on the sand" - i.e. Sentence case.

BR

[DiapDealer]

I realize this thread begins very awkwardly, but we're not going to clutter up @slowsmile's plugin thread with a semantic debate. So I'm splitting the last few posts there out into their own thread. I really have nothing further to say on the subject, but others can continue if they like. I would point out to AlanHK, however, that not all users of Sigil are "Book Editors" (in the capitalized sense). There's quite a large contingent of users who are merely tweaking, correcting, or otherwise making sure their personal purchases comply with their own sense of "correctness." Because they can.

[Tex2002ans]

Title Casing... this is a pretty serious issue I waste a lot of time on manually correcting. :P

There are multiple different types of Title Casing too (Chicago, APA, MLA, [...]).

As AlanHK said, most of the automated tools out there cause mistakes. Another problem a lot of these tools do is they only do a SINGLE pass, and they don't take properly take into account punctuation (especially em dashes and colons). They also don't play nice with Roman Numerals or words that need to stay ALL CAPS like "FBI".

And some of the rules get hard (especially when dealing with lowercase conjunctions). Some words can be conjunctions or not depending on usage (which requires a human).

I found this site is pretty decent:

https://capitalizemytitle.com/

But the problem with many of these sites is you have to copy/paste the input one-at-a-time.

[BetterRed]

as with most things you have to finish the job with a bit of spit and polish.

I think AlanHK's main issue was naming it 'Title case' rather than what it did.

Semantically speaking 'Capital case', or better yet 'Proper case', would preferable

Capitalise is what businesses do to raise funds, re-capitalise what governments do for TBTF businesses - like busted banks, insolvent insurers and ludicrous lenders.

BR

[Turtle91]

[aside]

What I wouldn't give to have a proper "Title Case" regex function in Sigil - with maybe a user generated ini file with a list of all the words that should NOT be capitalized (properly spelled with a "z" )....sigh

[/aside]

[AlanHK]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I think AlanHK's main issue was naming it 'Title case' rather than what it did.

Semantically speaking 'Capital case', or better yet 'Proper case', would preferable

Capitalise is what businesses do to raise funds.

"Proper case" means nothing to me. And I don't think the business meaning of capitalise has any potential for confusion. "Capital" has several distinct meanings.

"Title case" however only refers to titles in text, and the plugin in question, and Sigil itself, don't do that and should not claim to.

[BetterRed]

Proper Case and is how I case Proper Names.

[Toxaris]

For me Capitalize would mean that only the first word in a sentence would have an uppercase letter and the rest not. Titlecase would capitalize each word.

[AlanHK]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

For me Capitalize would mean that only the first word in a sentence would have an uppercase letter and the rest not. Titlecase would capitalize each word.

Now there's a couple of Humpty Dumptyisms.

[AlanHK]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Proper Case and is how I case Proper Names.

There isn't any other choice with those, except all caps.

[Notjohn]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

FWIW : In a ToC I would shift "CHAPTER XI—FINDS PRINT OF MAN’S FOOT ON THE SAND" to "Chapter XI—Finds print of man’s foot on the sand" - i.e. Sentence case.

The TOC follows standard title-capitalization rules, i.e.:

Finds Print of Man's Foot on the Sand

See Fig. 1.9 in the Chicago Manual of Style.