Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization)
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Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization)
Convention: Unless the term you wish to create a page for is a proper noun, do not capitalize second and subsequent words.
When you create a link with the first letter of the link uncapitalized, like this, the first letter of the target page is automatically capitalized by the software. So like this points to the page titled "Like this". For multiword page titles, one should leave the second and subsequent words in lowercase unless the title phrase is a proper noun that would always occur capitalized, even in the middle of a sentence.
See also the manually-edited list of pages with capital first letters that should be lowercase.
Organisms
The capitalization on the common names of species has been hotly debated in the past and has remained unresolved. As a matter of truce both capitalized and non-capitalized (except for proper names) are acceptable, but a redirect should be created from the alternative form.
See: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life#Article_titles_and_common_names
See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna)
zh:Wikipedia:命名常规 (大写)
See: Capitalization
Case sensitivity and searching
Links to articles are always case-sensitive. Article lookups performed through the Search box may be either case-sensitive or case-insensitive, depending on the capitalisation of the article's title and whether "Go" or "Search" is used. When entering a string and pressing "Search" the lookup is always case-insensitive. When entering a string and pressing "Go" the software works as follows.
- If the article's title is all initial caps (for example, “Abraham Lincoln”) then the match is case-insensitive. So, entering “abraham lincoln”, “Abraham Lincoln”, “AbrAHam LincolN”, or any other variation, will successfully bring up the article.
- If, after the first word, the article title is all initial lower case (for example, “Rochester railway station”), then the match is again case-insensitive.
- If, after the first word, the article title includes some words with initial caps and some words with initial lower case (for example, “Isle of Wight”), then an exact case match is required. This behaviour is often undesirable. To work around the problem, create the main article with the correct title capitalisation (e.g. “Isle of Wight”). Then create a second article with a case-insensitive title style (e.g. “Isle of wight”), and have this redirect to the main article (using the #REDIRECT directive). Any non-case-matching entries (e.g. “isle of wight”) will then locate the article titled “Isle of wight”, and the user will be automatically redirected to the desired “Isle of Wight” article.
Because credibility is a primary objective in the creation of any reference work, and because the Wikipedia strives to become a leading (if not the) leading reference work in its genre, formality and an adherence to conventions widely used in the genre are critically important to credibility. Therefore, although the Wikipedia search engine does not lend itself to the style of capitalization recommended for use in titles by authoritative manuals of style (e.g., Chicago Manual of Style, Fowler's Modern English Usage (Third edition), and Oxford Manual of Style), the "work around" described in the last bulleted item in the second paragraph of this subsection ("Case sensitivity and searching") can be implemented if one wants the capitalization of that article to conform to conventional standards.
Examples
- Multiword articles: Practical joke, Particle physics, Russian constitutional crisis of 1993
- Proper names: North America, William Shakespeare, International Phonetic Association
- Proper names within article titles: History of the Soviet Union (1985-1991), Politics of the United States
- Titles of books and other works: A New Kind of Science, Ghost in the Shell, Oliver Twist