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Subject:Re: Capitalization - current trends? From:Christine -dot- Anameier -at- seagate -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 5 Mar 2001 12:12:08 -0600
Interesting to see that the marketing people at Stephen Anders' company
have gone after capitals that way. I dislike title case intensely, but
always thought I was in the minority on that. Title case just "sounds"
different to me, and not in a good way--It Makes Everything Sound Like a
Book Title, Which to My Mind Undermines Communication and Makes Longer
Phrases Look Like the Titles of Quaint 18th-Century Novels.
In my brief stint in advertising I waged a futile one-person war on it. It
just killed me to be working at an ad agency that thought it was Okay for
Ad Headlines to Sound Like This. To me, it's the difference between saying
something to someone, and having some windbag orator declaim it grandly to
some faceless audience. (I admit my reaction is extreme.)
I would try to interpret their rule "Never use capitals on any work except
at the beginning of sentences and
headings, unless it is a proper noun" to include cross-references. In other
words, if the heading is "Displaying sorted widgets," the cross-reference
is "For more information, see Displaying sorted widgets" (and I would
highlight the phrase in some way: bold, italics, different color, depending
on the document, the medium, and the style guide). I think an initial
capital at the start of a heading and its corresponding cross-references is
reasonable. If their guidelines explicitly forbid that, I would try to get
the guidelines changed.
IPCC 01, the IEEE International Professional Communication Conference,
October 24-27, 2001 at historic La Fonda in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.
CALL FOR PAPERS OPEN UNTIL MARCH 15. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
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