[WikiEN-l] RE: A plea for sanity in capitalisation from the coalface

Sat Apr 26 10:20:03 UTC 2003

sannse wrote:
>I'm in agreement [with Tannin] here.  One of my own 
>areas of interest, dog breeds, has a similar issue.  
>So far the capitalised versions have (mostly) held 
>here, but it would be nice to clarify the issue and be 
>sure of a consensus.
>
>In the case of dog breeds, all my books on the subject 
>(five) capitalise, as do the various kennel clubs.  I've been 
>careful to check in each case - it's "Airedale Terrier" but 
>"Maltese terrier" for example.  I would like to move 
>"Chesapeake Bay retriever" back to "Chesapeake Bay 
>Retriever" to follow this principle.

Dog breeds seem, as a rule, to be a special case. All the research I've done 
has indicated that most dog breeds are /almost always/ capitalized whenever 
they are written. 

The only exceptions seem to be with the really well-known breeds. In fact I 
spent an hour "fixing" the capitalization of the [[List of dog breeds]] page 
only to find this out - it was darn difficult to find many sources that did 
not capitalize the breeds. So I reverted myself.

But when you think about it the reason becomes fairly obvious ; dog breeds are 
an invention of selective breeding with well-known pedigrees and historys 
(almost like a family history). This is similar to the names scientists have 
given to certain "breeds" of mice that have been selected for a specific 
purpose. 

That type of specificity turns what looks at first blush to be a common noun 
into something that looks a lot like a proper noun.

Thus the capitalization.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)