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

Modification proposals on CapitalizationStandardFrench

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). And she did not learn this at school. At least I did not find mention of that in the page. jesus2099

Current issues

Current guidelines are not widely accepted, and in particular the exception 1.1 (or A.1 in the English translation).

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.

Trends

The current trends are described below.

Option 1: Simplify current guidelines

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

Rationale (= pros)

• The current guidelines are too complex and are difficult to understand.

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).

Rationale (= pros)

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

Examples

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

Option 1	Option 2	Description/comment
Le rouge et le noir	Le Rouge et le Noir

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 archeology: 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

Discussion

The following chitchat comes from the CapitalizationStandardFrench page. It's kept here until every involved participant has time enough to read and contribute. Once done, it can probably be removed, given its lack (?) of relevance.

• Not exactly official, read what's on top of http://musicbrainz.org/doc/CapitalizationStandardFrench. And why having removed the discussion in this, well, discussion section? MLL 2007-03-22
  • Look at the top of *any* page (like http://musicbrainz.org/doc/MultipleTitleStyle) - read the nice *same* statement. Unless you want to consider that no StyleGuide exists and that we should all do what we want the way we want... I removed this "discussion" because it doesn't add any value and is redundant to what has been said numerous times, including in the thread we now link to. It also contained some (admitedly funny and enjoying) chitchat which don't belong here, and in the end this boils down to "this is not the place for chitchat and not the place for UsersMailingList questions". I did so following davitof suggestion, and I did so after having marked it with a "DeleteWhenCooked" tag, to which nobody reacted negatively. This DeleteWhenCooked now applies to this as well, and I'll remove this (renewed) (irrelevant to the content of this SG) chitchat when I'll be sure you had time to read and answer it (around one week). -- -- dmppanda 12:35, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Not *any* page, examples: http://musicbrainz.org/doc/ClassicalStyleGuide, http://musicbrainz.org/doc/OfficialStyleGuideline. More info at http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/WikiDocs. ACK on the rest. MLL
      • Interestingly, the second one (http://musicbrainz.org/doc/OfficialStyleGuideline) which "defines" the other OfficialStyleGuide also bear this "this is unofficial" text blurb. So, what exactly is your point? If it is to prove that our documentation is slackin' and needs cleanup, then yes, agreed. If you really think this is an argument to disregard entirely the french cap styleguide, then I'm afraid you'll have to disregard a good part of our documentation as well. Now, if it was just some random pike to throw discredit on it, let me state it that way: the fact you don't like this SG is well known, you don't have to prove it anymore - especially not by invoking entirely moot (IMHO) arguments. I don't like it either (as I also stated many times), and I even proposed you to help you write a RFC some time ago, which you declined to do. Now, let's stop fuckin' flies: either you take the burden to rewrite it and reach an agreement with the other french editors, or either stop suggesting we shouldn't follow it, especially to n00bs. This attitude IMHO is just irresponsible: we have SGs, good and bad - they are the reason we have some consistency in this database and that this whole project can work - because we all (?) accepted to play by the rules. About the DeleteWhenCooked, feel free to delete this chitchat when you deem it appropriate. Regards. -- dmppanda 13:49, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
        • Well, the second link was an error, sorry. My point is, "this is an official style guide" is not accurate, period. And OK for many beers, and then you'll be drunk before me, and then I'll make you sign a 3-line CapitalizationStandardFrench with your alcoholised blood. MLL
          • Hey :) An error? A quite enlightening one, actually. So, if your point is that it's not an official style guide, then neither are CapitalizationStandardEnglish, MultipleTitleStyle, etc... Which, I'm sorry to say, just looks like you didn't wait for us to start drinking :-). Anyhow, nuff time spent on this. -- dmppanda 16:52, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
    In fact the statement on top of some mb.org/doc/ pages is only there because the corresponding wiki page has not been "transcluded" (that is there no specific revision of the page chosed for the mb.org/doc/ version). It has nothing to do with official guidelines, and so with this discussion. But I think you should know that MLL, you are TransclusionEditor, aren't you? ;-) Incidentally you should really transclude this page with revison 17, I don't think all this discussion should appear on http://musicbrainz.org/doc/CapitalizationStandardFrench... -- murdos 15:01, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Maybe it would be agood idea to create a CapitalizationStandardFrenchDiscussion -- davitof 2007-03-28
      • I'm working on this... :) -- murdos 17:04, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Come on boys, play nice! -- Bogdanb

• Don't worry, Bogdan, that's only frogs croaking, nothing to worry about :-) Look: I'm going to trigger another bout of "flame": @dmppanda: You could have created a CSFDiscussion to record the dramatic history of this page. @MLL: Do you really believe our sterile discussion (I said "our", which includes me) should be kept for the posterity? @both: when de we have a beer together? -- davitof I Don'T Like This funny Capitalization At all. Please someone organize a vote or something to see how much people really value ComPlexiTy and how much people care about simplicity (First letter CAP + Proper nouns only). Also there are too many ways to communicate here, and I can not write into the ML so maybe I don't count. (even I don't understand everything I write, sorry – We all french speaking english to eachother funny :) ) ♡j2-
  • I suppose I could try to organize something. Last try was 6 months ago, so I suppose I could do it again. But since you are the one suggesting it, that my prefered means of communication is the ML and that you haven't managed to use the ML, I suggest that either you try to start a discussion on the forum (I hope someone will put a warining either here or on the ML) or we end up allowing you to use the ML. About using english to discuss a french issue: I feel it has it's advantages: english is the most widely understood language and the capitalization rules will have to be used even by non-french users. OTOH, some french editors with perfectly valid positions about this issue may have problems discussing it in english... So I suggest that we try to stick to english (I suppose all the MB users know enough english to read it), and if someone really can't use english (for example because he would not be clear enough), he may write in english, those among us who know enough english will translate it back english ASAP for the benefit of other users. BTW, jesus, I think you should do something about your signature! -- davitof 2007-03-22 jesus: actually, you don't like any kind of Capitalization rule, do you? :P About your idea to organize a vote to see "how many people" like this or that: I strongly disagree, and IMHO this is *not* the way to go. I'm sorry, but how would you feel if I state that a vote should be weighted by the number of edits an editor has performed? You would certainly feel it's totally unfair. Exactly my feeling about a simple raw vote "let's see how many people prefer this". Evolution of this styleguide should be based on ideas, and sound arguments, not the expression of unargumented personal preference. That being said, I'm definitely subscribing to reopening this discussion and have this issue sorted out (once and for all?). About the language to use for this discussion, I really feel that english should be used: non-french-native editors sure have a word to say about all this. I'm sure we can all be patient with each other imperfect english. About the MailingList, AFAIK, it's still the prefered medium for style RFCs, and a lot of people interested in style issues actually monitor it (while they don't "monitor" the forums). Please try to use it, it's really not that hard: if you need help, privately mail one of us. But roughly, you subscribe to it, you post... that's it ;). Regards. -- dmppanda 12:34, 24 March 2007 (UTC)