Capitalization in Titles

Why do half the soundtracks I download either only capitalize the first word or just not bother to capitalize anything?

Oh, and for people that care about capitalization.... you're supposed to capitalize "is" in titles.

Preference.

For example, I never capitalize "is", "a", "the", etc..

What about pronouns? I've always been back and forth on that. You, he, me, she, they, etc?

I capitalise pronouns. Not prepositions or articles, though.

I don't think preference has anything to do with it. According to capitalization rules, you are supposed to capitalize "is".

You do not capitalize articles. That is "a", "an" and "the", I believe.

You do not capitalize "and", "but", "or", "nor", or "so".

You do not capitalize prepositions fewer than five letters.

Originally Posted by Cellius

What about pronouns? I've always been back and forth on that. You, he, me, she, they, etc?

Definitely capitalize pronouns.

Originally Posted by Trench

Why do half the soundtracks I download either only capitalize the first word or just not bother to capitalize anything?

In the case of Japanese soundtracks with English track titles, sometimes that's actually the way they chose to print them.

Yeah, I was about to say my first port of call would be the JPG or other image file grab of the back of the soundtrack itself (presuming it's in English or whatever language you're after).

As for Japanese "Engrish" titles, I can't believe people use them full-stop, let alone make some weird rule about what words to capitalise. You could apply English grammar rules to Japanese titles like "Beat of the Terror" and say "Should the of and the be capitalised?", but in my view that's pretty pointless. I'd call it by the game location and ditch those Jap titles, making the grammar semantics redundant.

- Spike

I capitalize how I want to regardless of how they did it on the tracklist. It bugs me when people put a title in all caps just because that's how it was on the packaging. Oh, and I never capitalize 'is' unless it's at the beginning of the title, rules be damned. I just don't like how that looks.

Other reasons for inconsistent/poor capitalization include (but aren't limited to):

• laziness
• ignorance
• aesthetics

Also, I don't like how you're implying there's only one correct standard for capitalization (although I do use just about every rule you've given). It would be nice if everyone used the same style guidelines, but there are different systems out there (MLA, Chicago, etc.). As long as people are consistent with how they name things, I don't really care, although I'll correct if the capitalization looks really bad to me. And as a few have said, cover capitalization trumps all for me.

CHz pretty much sums up my thoughts. Plus, I think capitalization's the thing edge of the wedge, as I said earlier.

My least favourites are "Track 01.mp3"/etc., track titles that have the album title in them, like "Chrono Trigger OST- 08 - A Strange Happening", and things like that. Basically, anything in a title that renders itself vague or redundant.

- Spike

Originally Posted by WarpStar

In the case of Japanese soundtracks with English track titles, sometimes that's actually the way they chose to print them.

So being grammatically incorrect is then correct. That's genius. It's also the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Not directed to you, WarpStar, I know you're just saying how it is.

Originally Posted by CHz

Also, I don't like how you're implying there's only one correct standard for capitalization (although I do use just about every rule you've given). It would be nice if everyone used the same style guidelines, but there are different systems out there (MLA, Chicago, etc.). As long as people are consistent with how they name things, I don't really care, although I'll correct if the capitalization looks really bad to me. And as a few have said, cover capitalization trumps all for me.

You're right about being consistent. If you don't capitalize "is" the world won't come to an end. A lot of people don't. But when every single word in the title is lowercased, it really gives off a feeling of stupidity for whoever tagged it. I've spent days retagging #gamemp3s files because they're all lowercased / uppercased.

You're supposed to capitalize 'is'? Seriously? It looks really awkward to me.

Originally Posted by Trench

I've spent days retagging #gamemp3s files because they're all lowercased / uppercased.

I tend to retag majority of my music downloads, but I always leave #gamemp3s releases alone. Even with all the lowercase/uppercase titles, it just seems correct to me.

Everything lowercase looks correct? You're somebody that actually retags syuff but incorrect grammar looks correct? That's literally humorous.

....and thus, people prefer bad capitalization. Bad grammar. Laziness is supported. It's really pathetic.

Not like I can dis #gamemp3s. It has the biggest collection of game music out there and they're pretty darn willing to share stuff around here. Most of my music comes from them. I don't know what I'd do without them. I just wish they would actually capitalize. Or lowercase, when necessary. After all, THE AWFUL NIGHT and RADIANT SOULS is as lame as escape from enemy base. Although, you wouldn't even know what the title was there if you hadn't seen it before.

And yes, "is" is a form of "to be". All forms of "to be" are capitalized; "is", "are", "was", etc.

I make it so that I think it looks nice.
To be honest, I can´t remember learning how to capitalize titles in school. But you native speakers should know how to do it right.

I'm in the process of re-ripping all my CDs again since I had switched to Ogg Vorbis for awhile due to its support of gapless track transition, only to recently find out that current versions of LAME now support it, heh...

...I pretty much go with whatever is listed on Game Music Revolution and Chudah's Corner. I just hate how the CDDB and freedb both have half-assed tracklistings submitted for the majority of CDs, and I end up having to manually input everything 9 times out of 10.

Originally Posted by Trench

Everything lowercase looks correct? You're somebody that actually retags stuff but incorrect grammar looks correct? That's literally humorous.

....and thus, people prefer bad capitalization. Bad grammar. Laziness is supported. It's really pathetic.

Yikes, I didn't really make it clear what I meant. While I know that everything uppercase or lowercase is wrong, if it's printed like that on the back of the CD or whatever, then I believe that's what they wanted it to look like. It may look like rubbish, but if that's the way it's printed, then that's the way I'm going to put it as.

Meh, I just think differently, I guess =/

That's what who wanted it to look like? I think I get what you meant. You want to keep the "original" tracklist, grammar and all.

The thing is, it's not really the original tracklist. It's a tracklist that somebody translated. I have a hard time believing that anybody would purposely lowercase every word in the title of their song. I don't care how bad your grammar is, any semi-intelligent individual understands capitalization. And if one of them doesn't, can't another one fix it?

In case you didn't know, there is no capitalization in Japanese. So obviously none of the titles are going to be capitalized NATURALLY after translation.

I know this isn't going anywhere, I thought I would just announce how pathetic the majority of the tagging is. It really shows a lack of intelligence. Maybe some people don't capitalize "is", maybe some people capitalize "with" - minor mistakes. But some of the mistakes I see around here.... are just embarrassing. Go look at #gamemp3s' Tales of Symphonia rip.

I think what he's getting at is that sometimes it's not all translated. Not all tracks have to be translated because they're already in English on the cover. And so, if you don't have to translate them and their capitalization isn't "proper," so to speak, what then?

Check out the tracklisting of Konohana 3 ~On the Other Side of a False Shadow~ Sound Collection+α. Notice how three tracks, 1, 7, and 19, have inconsistent capitalization.

Sorry about the small text size on this cover scan. I couldn't find any better ones.



Here's an abbreviated tracklisting, listing only the tracks with English in the names, as they appear on the cover:

1). off ground
2). Vacation
4). Warm Feelings
5). Heavy Tension
6). Oppression
7). Lonely Heart
11). Weakly Motion
13). Reason
15). Conviction
17). Deliver me −救い− (the Japanese means "help," but that's not important)
19). jesusが見えない (+α 2) ("cannot be seen," again not relevant)

Assuming the translator translates everything on the album perfectly with regards to capitalization, but retains the capitalization of words already in English, you'll end up with three inconsistently capitalized tracks compared with the rest of the album, numbers 1, 17, 19. To someone who just looks at the tracklisting without context (as I tried to have you do in the second paragraph), it'll seem the translator did a sloppy job.

Now, I'm definitely not saying that this is what happened with the Symphonia album, since I couldn't find a tracklisting scan anywhere. But, if I remember correctly, #gamemp3s usually preserves capitalization for English words that appear on covers as I did above, whether or not they would usually be capitalized. I might just be talking out of my ass there, though.

Whether or not you should correct capitalization on covers is another matter. Maybe the composer did make an error because of poor English skills, or maybe it's just stylistic and the composer wants the title to appear as it does with inconsistent capitalization. I've seen that one argued both ways, and there's no really good way to resolve that short of contacting the composer and finding out his/her intentions. :\

I don't know about how Symphonia's tracklist was printed either, but the "All letters in lowercase but the first" style is used frequently on Sakuraba's albums. Go check out the cover scans of Star Ocean: The Second Story's soundtrack, or the Baten Kaitos soundtracks. The titles are actually printed that way, in English.

(Tales of the Abyss has a bunch of titles printed like this as well, if you want an example from the same series.)