Style/Language/Vietnamese

Status: this is a controversial proposal born out of http://musicbrainz.org/show/edit/?editid=9920518, do not use it until the discussion has settled!

This page outlines the capitalization rules for the Vietnamese language. It forms part of the MusicBrainz CapitalizationStandard.

Bằng tiếng Việt

Xin bạn viết bài này bằng tiếng Việt.

In English

These rules apply to album and track titles:

• Do not capitalize any word except for:
  • the first letter of the text
  • the first letter of a sentence after . ! ? / :
  • the first letter of proper and geographical names (persons, cities, nations, etc.)

Punctuation (no space)

Like English, Vietnamese does not use any space before punctuation, including but not limited to ? ! ; : . , ...

Punctuation (with space)

In Vietnamese there is a no-break space (" " U+00A0) — preferably narrow no-break space (" " U+202F) — before the following punctuation:

• The exclamation mark ("!" U+0021)
• The colon (":" U+003A)
• The semicolon (";" U+003B)
• The question mark ("?" U+003F)

In Musicbrainz, as there are few chances to have word-warp problems with song and album titles, the narrow no-break space as well as the no-break space could seem overkill. Thus the use of the standard space character.

There is, however, no space before:

• The comma ("," U+002C)
• The dot ("." U+002E)
• The ellipsis ("…" U+2026 or 3×dot "..." 3×U+002E)

Examples (no space)

• Em còn nhớ hay em đã quên?
• Nhớ về Hà Nội
• Hà Nội café ơi!
• Liên khúc: Đêm cuối / Giận hờn

Examples (with space)

• Em còn nhớ hay em đã quên ?
• Nhớ về Hà Nội
• Hà Nội café ơi !
• Liên khúc : Đêm cuối / Giận hờn