[ No need to CC me, since I read -policy ] On Sat, 2002-03-30 at 17:34, Chris Waters wrote:
> I am uncomfortable with this view. A title (or subtitle) is > capitalized the way it is because it is, more or less, a proper > name. A name may be descriptive, or it may be merely evocative or > suggestive, or none of the above. We want descriptive, not merely > evocative or suggestive, and certainly not none of the above. I'm thinking of subtitles for technical works, not works of fiction. Taking one example from my bookshelf: Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought That's what I think of as a good, explanatory subtitle (and a creative title) for a nonfiction work. > "Doctor Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the > Bomb": "Gentlemen, there is no fighting in the War Room!" > here the subtitle is definitely evocative, but not very > descriptive. Right; Doctor Strangelove is a fictional work...we think ;) > A package might have an official upstream subtitle > (something like, "Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister"), Well, in this case I don't think of that as a subtitle at all, but just the expansion of the acronym, which for a lot of acronyms isn't very enlightening at all. > and that's > probably not what we want. We want a short description. Really we > do. So, I think that's what we should ask for. I think we're talking about the same thing, really. A subtitle for a technical work should fit your (short) description of a short description¹. > More practically, as Branden points out, it's easier to add > capitalization in a display program than it is to take it away. To > add capitalization, you merely need to filter a handful of small words > that don't get capitalized. To take away capitalization, you need to > know every proper name and every acronym that might be used in a > description (because these shouldn't get de-capitalized). Well, I guess it looks like we've come to a rough consensus on the matter of the period, but not on the capitalization. I guess this is to be expected, looking at the statistics from the Packages file. Maybe we should just defer this question until someone can come up with a new argument. Personally, if it was clear that there was a > 50% majority either way, I would just go with the majority. > Thinking about this has inspired me to come up with an official > subtitle for WMRack (which I'm currently upstream for): "The > Wonderful, Magical Rack of Sound Bytes". I think it's a fine > subtitle, but I do not think it would be an appropriate short > description. I hope you all agree. I agree that it would not be an appropriate short description, but I don't think it fulfills the explanatory role of a subtitle very well. Actually, you aren't too far from making it the expansion of WMRack as an acronym; e.g. Wonderful, Magical, Real Accoustic CD Kit. ¹ :) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
