Capitalization Standard/Japanese Releases Clarification

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< Capitalization Standard
Revision as of 16:08, 7 October 2011 by Reosarevok (talk | contribs) (Setting this to be reviewed. Hopefully kepstin's proposal passes and we can just remove it.)
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Status: This is not a guideline, it merely explains how the Style Principle should usually be applied to Japanese releases.

In English

For Japanese releases by Japanese artists, Capitalization Standard English is not strongly followed. Japanese releases are more likely to have odd capitalization, so keep an open mind that it may be a deliberate choice by the artist. If you are unsure definitely copy the album cover as closely as possible.

Rationale

This practice arises because of the Style Principles: both Artist Intent and Consistent Original Data take priority over the Capitalization Standards.

For Western artists capitalization is not usually considered part of the title. They often use eccentric capitalization on covers, but revert to standardized capitalization and punctuation in discographies and on re-releases of the songs. In contrast, Japanese artists have a tendency to choose track titles and punctuation for aesthetic reasons, perhaps because native Kanji & Kana don't have case. They also tend to be very consistent about it once a track is titled. These titles will intentionally retain the eccentricities across multiple issues, on all entries on their website (and often label websites), and on compilation issues.

Example: Tommy heavenly⁶'s album Heavy Starry Heavenly.

The Capitalization changes from track to track and word to word, the caps also match the single releases that came before the album. The use of symbols is used on the album itself and originally on the official homepage, but now the homepage simply uses the word "love" instead of a heart.

Soundtracks

A separate issue deals with the Soundtrack Title Style, which states that you should exclude secondary information such as "Original Soundtrack". However, for many popular animé and video game series please take care that you also follow the following exceptions to that rule:

  • it is clearly part of the title of the soundtrack and
  • it is required to distinguish the release from other variations of the soundtrack.

Many anime series will not just have an Original Soundtrack, but also an Original Soundtrack 2, or various image albums. Certain video game series have many soundtracks for a particular game of the series, such as orchestrated or re-arranged versions, piano versions, vocal editions, etc... To distinguish between all these possible variations, it is often better to copy the title verbatim.