Talk:Style/Language/French

Discussion about French capitalization standard

CapitalizationStandardFrench > French capitalization standard Discussion

Purpose

This page should hold all discussion about current issues with guidelines concerning French capitalization standard.

Please try to be constructive and only keep objective arguments here ;-).

Related documents that should be read

• A discussion during summer 2006 titled Is french silly? :p (French capitalization rules)
• Related pages on Wikipedia.fr: De l'usage des majuscules
• A page in English written by an English speaker who describes the rules she learnt at school: http://french.about.com/library/writing/bl-capitalizationoftitles.htm

Current issues

Current guidelines are not widely accepted, and in particular the exception A.

In result CapitalizationStandardFrench is not fully applied and French data are not uniform: the capitalization may change from an artist (or a release) to another one.

Moreover the GuessCase tool behaviour does not match guidelines.

Also, the sheer fact some editors don't follow the current capitalization guide somewhat question their ability to follow any (updated) capitalization guide (but their own idea about things of course)...

• Shame indeed. Name 'em ! And name those who settled an agreement with them to use sentence case until the the present discussion comes to an end. MLL

Solutions

The current solutions are described below.

Option 0: Keep things as they are

This corresponds to system I Standard capitalization, without rule D of this document.

Rationale (= pros)

• These are the rules which are the most widely used.
• This is our current official styleguide

Refusal (= cons)

• Are they really the most widely used? This guideline is not that much common practice with books.
• Exception A need understanding French to be applied correctly.

• Some other languages are in the same case and French is not easy to learn. @SIG

• Exception A leads to irregular capitalization.

• This is why option 2 may be better than current guidelines. -- murdos 16:21, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Option 1: Simplify current guidelines, use sentence capitalization everywhere

Always use the sentence case and throw the exception. Note: this solution is already used in practice by some editors.

This corresponds to system III Sentence capitalization of this document.

Rationale (= pros)

• The current guidelines are too complex and are difficult to understand, and code in the case guessing application.
• They may even be ambiguous (see difficulty to set clear examples below).
• We need rules that people not fluent in french can apply.

• Do we really need this? Moreover even this option you need some french culture in order to identify proper noun. @SIG

Refusal (= cons)

• Rules are not so complex, this is the CapitalizationStandardFrench page that is really confusing and need some clean-up.

Option 2: Keep & extend current guidelines

Keep the current guidelines and add additional rules such as one for symmetry (in order to fix non aesthetic situation like Le Rouge et le noir or Le Cerf, le druide et le loup).

This corresponds to system I Standard capitalization, with rule D of this document.

Rationale (= pros)

• The current guidelines match common practice with books, libraries and Wikipedia.
• Additional rules are needed to fix non aesthetic case.

Refusal (= cons)

• It's precisely the Capital letter applied to common nouns which is humbly considered not aesthetic by detractors of the rules. Adding more Capitals would push the ugliness even further. Option 2 would be worse than current guideline from that angle.
• This guideline is not that much common practice with books.
• This option seems ambiguous (see difficulty to set clear examples below).

Option 3: Use Important noun capitalization

This is a sort of mix between Option 1 & Option 2: the first word of any "important" nouns are capitalized.

This corresponds to system II Important noun capitalization of this document.

Rationale (= pros)

• A sort of compromise

Refusal (= cons)

• Estimate if a noun is "important" is highly subjective and debatable, and depends of the context in which it is used.

Examples

This section should provide interesting examples and the result with both options.

Using current guidelines	Using option 1	Using option 2	Using option 3	Description/comment
Le Rouge et le noir	Le rouge et le noir	Le Rouge et le Noir	Le Rouge et le Noir (?)
Le Cerf, le druide et le loup	Le cerf, le druide et le loup	Le Cerf, le Druide et le Loup
Le Petit Chaperon rouge	Le petit chaperon rouge	Le Petit Chaperon rouge	Le petit Chaperon rouge (?)
Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry	Les très riches heures du duc de Berry	Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry	Les très riches heures du Duc de Berry

• @ murdos: I'm a bit confused by some of the examples. * Example #2, option 2: this is an "extended" version of the symetrical rule, right? ;)
  • Yes, I think we should consider enumerations the same way as schema with et or ou. But I need to describe more this rule, unless you want to do it ;-) -- murdos 16:21, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

  * Example #3: why would people who want sentence case (Option 1) use "Chaperon" (capped C)? It's not a first name... Also, why would option 2 imply a capped "Rouge"? 
  

  • I agree it is debatable, I feel Chaperon Rouge is a kind of proper noun. Maybe I should put "Petit chaperon rouge" or "Petit chaperon rouge"... I'm starting we should use ALLCAPS :-D Maybe we should remove this tricky example. -- davitof 2007-03-29
    • In fact what you call "a kind of proper noun" is also called "important noun". I've added option 3 which corresponds to that, all other options don't use this concept. -- murdos 16:21, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

  * Example #4: same question for option 2? 
  

  • Different answer here: my mistake. --davitof 2007-03-29
  -- dmppanda 14:00, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

In parallel: Improve the current CapitalizationStandardFrench page

• Remove duplicated sections (examples & references): it is not useful to have them twice, in French & in English
• Remove statement "(Don't use the former rules which cited Wikipedia as reference but use the exception as general rule)" :
  1. this statement is confusing (general rule for what?)
  2. according to your interpretation this statement could appear as wrong: the exception should currently always be applied in case of non verbal phrase with definitive articles
  3. we are not doing archaeology: old reference should be removed after some times and it is actually more confusing than useful for new user

• Simplify rules: there's no need for a summary + detailed rules
  • rules need no be simple and straightforward: no rationale, no long comment (maybe in a different section or in references), no typographic jargon (that is the distinction between Majuscule and Capitale should be ignored)
  • compare with simplicity of other languages: CapitalizationStandard

• In references section: "A page in English written by an English speaker who describes the rules he learnt at school: http://french.about.com/library/writing/bl-capitalizationoftitles.htm". HE should be SHE (Laura). jesus2099

Other discussions

• Kudos to murdos - couldn't help ;) - to at last taking the bull by the horns (is that english?). MLL J2: you added this to the "pro" for "simplify": "The current guidelines produce inaesthetic titles with capital letters applied on common nouns (noms communs). It even makes it difficult for non-french to distinguish common nouns from proper nouns (noms propres). Proper nouns are the only words —besides first title word— that deserve a capital letter." --- To me, this just look like an "unargumented subjective opinion". I could as well say that "Sentence case sucks! The sentence case proposed guidelines produce inaesthetic titles. It even makes it difficult for everybody to distinguish the sorted version of the title. Proper capitalization is the only serious way to have this problem solved: sentence case is for illiterate people" - that, as well, is a personal unargumented opinion, and that doesn't help in any way! We are not here to exchange personal unargumented feelings about unjustified tastes, and have the most convincing person win the day. We are here to produce resonnable arguments that would lead to a better styleguide, based on something more than "this sucks!" or questionnable interpretations. If we want to get through this, we need to produce arguments. I hope that explains why I'm removing your statement. Cheers! -- dmppanda 12:03, 29 March 2007 (UTC)