Can anyone explain the capitals in this title? I'm guessing they are correct. But they look erratic / strange / stupid from this pov. Not my native language, so where can I read up on how you'd decide whether to hit shift or not - hoping that it isn't arbitrary.
I think I know what may look strange about the capitalization of this title. First, here is a good guide (there are many others if you search for "title case"):
So, "a" and "the" are not capitalized because they are articles. But what about "on"? That's a preposition, isn't it? And according to this (and most) style guides you don't capitalize prepositions.
But in this title, "on" is not being used as a preposition. It's part of a compound verb, "catching on". Verbs are capitalized, so both those words are capitalized. Another good clue here is that "on" is the last word in the title, so it's not likely to be a preposition ("pre-position").
There is a subtlety here: "catch on" or "catching on" is often a compound verb meaning "becoming popular", but in a different context, it may be a simple verb and preposition. Consider these two headlines:
Sticky Notes are Catching On (becoming popular, "catching on" is a compound verb so both words capitalized)
Sticky Notes are Catching on Tables (getting stuck to tables, "catching" is a simple verb and "on" is a preposition, so "on" is not capitalized)
> Can anyone explain the capitals in this title? I'm guessing they are correct.
There's no "correct" outcome for an all-caps title, it's a stylistic choice. Neither right nor wrong. Another example of a stylistic choice is The Register's oft-exercised habit of emphasizing! a! title! like! this!.
> where can I read up on how you'd decide whether to hit shift or not - hoping that it isn't arbitrary.
Sorry, you can't read a rule on this practice, Because It Is Entirely Arbitrary.
>Sorry, you can't read a rule on this practice, Because It Is Entirely Arbitrary.
Don't say that.
Since most newspapers and magazines are struggling to survive, maybe they don't do it any more, but for decades they made all their publications conform to style guides which were often as lengthy as books. Other organizations and communities of writers also used style guides. Three famous style guides:
Also the New York Times maintained their own style guide, which I seem to recall was also sold to the general public. The whole point of these guides was to make written English more consistent.
As to the specific question of capitalization style, there is one very dominant style: namely, articles ("the", "a" and "an"), prepositions and conjunctions ("and", "or", "but" and maybe one more I cannot remember right now) are not capitalized, but everything else is.
> for decades they made all their publications conform to style guides ...
Of course I know that, in fact my AP Style Guide is within arm's reach, and I regularly use Strunk & White as a source for a particular style position, but (apart from "make every word count") these references don't apply to online text, the present topic. Online style isn't print style -- the former isn't formalized to the degree that print style is.
I will know when there's a formal online style, widely accepted, because the first principle will be "no more gray text on a gray background!" I won't hold my breath.
I thought El Reg did that only for Yahoo! or other silly exclamation-mark-including brands...?
Not that I read it much, of late -- could never stand Orlowski, and recently the site has been defined as "the Daily Mail of Tech", so it's not like I have much of an incentive...
> I thought El Reg did that only for Yahoo! or other silly exclamation-mark-including brands
I confess I never noticed the contexts, only that they existed. They're common enough that I suspect there's a macro at the ready in the El Reg editing apps: text =~ s/(\w+)/$1!/g
> Not that I read it much, of late ...
Same here -- the stylistic memes begin to wear on one.
Thanks a lot. For me these are stumble blocks (trained to pay attention to caps for too long) and carry meaning, so .. I tried to find a pattern. And failed.
Now _that's_ helpful (although it boils down to 'yeah, do whatever you like' as well, just like the other commenters pointed out already, albeit with a little more background information)
I generally don't capitalize words such as "a", "the", "of", etc. This isn't short words, but mostly words that are articles or conjunctions. However, as another commenter said, it's a stylistic choice.
The two examples at the end of my earlier comment inadvertently illustrated a point several others have made: there is no one single standard for how to capitalize a title.
Specifically, I didn't capitalize "are", but the page I linked to says you should capitalize "Are". So using their style (which is probably what I'd use too if I'd been paying more attention), my examples would be:
Sticky Notes Are Catching On
Sticky Notes Are Catching on Tables
Either way would be correct under one style guide or another. Wikipedia has a chart comparing various title case styles:
Can anyone explain the capitals in this title? I'm guessing they are correct. But they look erratic / strange / stupid from this pov. Not my native language, so where can I read up on how you'd decide whether to hit shift or not - hoping that it isn't arbitrary.