Hello everyone,
A recent discussion here about common names brought up the controversial issue of capitalization. I think this flag is in some way connected to that discussion: https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/211075
I have not seen a post by Nutcracker yet, but I think there were enough posts about it on the previous discussion already to warrant a separate thread.
INaturalist’s current capitalization policy is described here: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide#names
As far as I can tell, this was arbitrarily determined based on the perceived consensus in the field guides for different groups of organisms.
I think common names should be capitalized on iNaturalist for three reasons.
They should be capitalized in general because:
1. Species names should be considered proper nouns, not common nouns. A Red Deer is different from other deer or mammals in general in a similar way to a Samsung Galaxy being different from cell phones in general or the Great Lakes being different from lakes in general. A species is a distinct, specific entity.
2. 2. Capitalization also provides clarity. Saying that you saw a greenish warbler is very little help to anybody, because many warblers in both Europe and North America come with green on them. But if you say that you saw a Greenish Warbler, it is fairly clear that you saw a bird from the distinct species Phylloscopus trochiloidesI.
Here are some articles which I think argue more convincingly than I did (in increasing length):
http://www.worldbirdnames.org/english-names/spelling-rules/capitalization/
http://www.thebirdist.com/2013/07/a-word-on-capitalization-of-bird-names.html
https://mostlybirds.wordpress.com/2015/12/09/should-common-names-of-species-be-capitalized/
3. 3. Specifically in iNaturalist, I think species names should be capitalized because in most instances in which they appear (as far as I can tell), they can be interpreted as titles. In titles, all the important words are capitalized.
Here, “Eastern poison ivy” is the title of the species page for this taxon.
Here, “clovers” is the ‘title’ of the observation. “white clover” is a suggestion for the title to be improved.
Having all the lowercase titles gives an impression more like a casual chatroom than a sleek professional website, in my opinion. Have lowercase species names may be fine in the middle of a paragraph, but in isolation like this they feel wrong.
However, I’m interested in reading other opinions!
Here are a few past threads about capitalization I was able to find:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/inaturalist/Z1vOjU8U5zo
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/inaturalist/sK6-2cfot3E
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/inaturalist/yyt6Y9R6Ot4
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/inaturalist/l0Xn4JKgfjM
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Instead of forcing capitalism on all the plant names, let people turn it on and off Unless it's a huge pain
Simply applying a blanket rule wont work across all languages.
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I generally disagree with this. Reason being, common names are used because they are in English, and used in presentations/advertising/etc. for non-biologists. So by being English, they are, by definition, already serving their purpose as common names.
Hello everyone,
A recent discussion here about common names brought up the controversial issue of capitalization. I think this flag is in some way connected to that discussion: https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/211075
I have not seen a post by Nutcracker yet, but I think there were enough posts about it on the previous discussion already to warrant a separate thread.
INaturalist’s current capitalization policy is described here: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide#names
As far as I can tell, this was arbitrarily determined based on the perceived consensus in the field guides for different groups of organisms.
I think common names should be capitalized on iNaturalist for three reasons.
They should be capitalized in general because:
1. Species names should be considered proper nouns, not common nouns. A Red Deer is different from other deer or mammals in general in a similar way to a Samsung Galaxy being different from cell phones in general or the Great Lakes being different from lakes in general. A species is a distinct, specific entity.
2. 2. Capitalization also provides clarity. Saying that you saw a greenish warbler is very little help to anybody, because many warblers in both Europe and North America come with green on them. But if you say that you saw a Greenish Warbler, it is fairly clear that you saw a bird from the distinct species Phylloscopus trochiloidesI.
Here are some articles which I think argue more convincingly than I did (in increasing length):
http://www.worldbirdnames.org/english-names/spelling-rules/capitalization/
http://www.thebirdist.com/2013/07/a-word-on-capitalization-of-bird-names.html
https://mostlybirds.wordpress.com/2015/12/09/should-common-names-of-species-be-capitalized/
3. 3. Specifically in iNaturalist, I think species names should be capitalized because in most instances in which they appear (as far as I can tell), they can be interpreted as titles. In titles, all the important words are capitalized.
Here, “Eastern poison ivy” is the title of the species page for this taxon.
Here, “clovers” is the ‘title’ of the observation. “white clover” is a suggestion for the title to be improved.
Having all the lowercase titles gives an impression more like a casual chatroom than a sleek professional website, in my opinion. Have lowercase species names may be fine in the middle of a paragraph, but in isolation like this they feel wrong.
However, I’m interested in reading other opinions!
Here are a few past threads about capitalization I was able to find:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/inaturalist/Z1vOjU8U5zo
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/inaturalist/sK6-2cfot3E
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/inaturalist/yyt6Y9R6Ot4
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/inaturalist/l0Xn4JKgfjM
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I do feel inclined to share that my zoology professor personally prefers not to capitalize because organisms are not individualistic, so she feels that capitalizing them as if surnames or titles is inappropriate. There isn't just one Lion - there are many lions.
- Bobby
> Imagine if we all said that we owned a Bed in our house.
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