Honoring artist's use of capitalization?

or lack thereof...

NIN has never capitalized any of their (his) track names or album titles unless those titles are writen in all caps. In fact, only on pretty hate machine where any of the lyrics capitalized - and then, only in the word God (and maybe one other..) It bugs the heck out of me when I have to re-enter all the fields after a CDDB or FreeDB lookup. How do you guys feel about this? I know it is minor, but for some artists, this is something I'd like to respect.

Another thing, it is KMFDM not K.M.F.D.M. and R.E.M. not REM...

Again, this is MINOR, but what do you guys think?

I agree. Some people should be banned from submitting to CDDB.

I'm going through my whole music collection right now adding year and label info... and this is one thing that i'm having to fix all over the place. I didn't realize it until i loaded stuff up on my Rio Reciever, and under the artist listing, i had like 3 different versions of a band, since it didn't differentiate between caps, or names with periods as you stated. I too like to respect the capitalization of all the artists, so fixing it is a PITA. Anal bastards aren't we =].

It is R.E.M. on all of their LPs and material...

I know what you mean on the caps issue, but in song titles I tend to capitalize as I see fit and leave all-lower-case to computer work. I like capitalized titles on the display and I figure the artists will never know that Jim's ID3 tags are dissing them Also, if I really observed true band names, I would have a bunch of "The" all over the place, and I can't hack that.

Man, wish I had a little more R.E.M. last night. (yawn...and it's only 13:40)

I did say it was R.E.M. above... I wrote it in a confusing way though... Hopefully Bitt won't stumble upon this thread!

I list the playlists as "Cure, The" but the tag as "The Cure"....

Trent Reznor was going to school as a computer programmer so maybe that is why he uses all lower case!

Some people should be banned from submitting to CDDB.

I agree. Ihave 3 different spellings of Led Zeppelin on my player right now. One of which is "Led Zeppeling".

Led Zeppelling

In my initial ripping enthusiasm I missed a lot of CDDB/freedb oopsies like this. No more. Turned off that "auto-rip on insert" function in grip.

Zeppellin tangent. One gem I caught last week when we went to see M. Montgomery was his unique "Stairway to Freebird". Priceless.

Oh, my bad re: R.E.M. See, I need more R.E.M. [edit: spell Zeppeling correctly!]

In the same vein, there are many album sleeves which are printed in all-caps or all-lowercase for stylistic reasons. And far too frequently, an album will be printed In All Initial Case Including Words Like The, A, And, Etc.

With a very few exceptions, I prefer to correct the case to proper English standards. Not because I want to dishonor the artist or anything, but simply because it bugs me to see bad grammar on the screen.

Although I will have to reinforce my glass house, since I tend to be awful about getting my capitalization consistent/correct on my own writing. I think most of the FAQ has empeg and emplode capitalized incorrectly.

I list the Cure (and other The artists) the same way. Except "The The" where I omit a comma.

For song names however I have a very special rule:

1. If a title is ALL CAPS in a listing of titles that do not match it, then it is written the same way, ALL CAPS.
2.If ALL song titles are written on the liner IN ALL CAPS, then that is simply a design decision and not representative of the actual song titles. They get written normally on my player. First letter CAP, next letters lower case.
3. If all songs are written in lower case on the liner, then see #2 - it's a sleave artwork issue. They get proper naming.
4. If, also for cover artistic reasons, songs are written in ODD mixed case, they get normal proper naming on my listings.
5. Songs that are named in special ways, NOT FOR cover-related artist layout, get named as they appear.

And then there are some other special cases where it's not only a matter of transposing case, but a matter of how to sort the artist's names.

For instance: 808 State. I don't sort numbers before letters. I take an "8" as "eight" - it gets sorted under "E." Likewise for 54.40 - they went so far as toput notes on some of their releases telling record stores to file under "F"

I had renamed these lists to "Eight-08" and "Fifty Four Forty" - but now with the empeg's ability to track order I can set them to what they should appear as and keep them in their place. You can actually do the same thing for "the" as well as artist's proper names (if you like to sort by last name and read by first name like I do )

Bruno

Oh and above all, you may think your own personal sorting method is all that's important. Well, it's not. Everyone should do as I do and that's the end of it.

Use the soup views to fix them.

Calvin

FYI, the Chicago Manual of Style gives this rule for title capitalization (§7.127):

In regular title capitalization, also known as headline style, the first and last words and all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and subordinating conjunctions (if, because, as, that, etc.) are capitalized.

This means that only prepositions, articles, and coordinating conjunctions should be left uncapitalized. (I'm odded out that they consider articles not to be adjectives, but there you go.) I know I'm always incorrectly wanting to not capitalize small words regardless of their actual use in the sentence.

PS: I wish I could use HTML character entity references on this board, a la `§', so that I didn't have to assume that everyone is using the same character set. It would also be useful for me to be able to spell ``à la'' properly.

Your mastery of the English language is eclipsed only by the lunacy of this thread. I love it.

Bruno

BTW, because Bitt didn't mention it: It should have been artists' in the subject. As in the possessive form of the plural of artist.

Unless you were just asking about one and just F all the rest.

Bruno

Somewhere, e.e. cummings is smiling.

Never would I say F to all of you!

In my defense, I did almost change it to plural possessive in the subject (before submitting, but I was really only refering to nine inch nails as my main example. I know it was wronig, and I was opening myself up to being corrected (which I never mind).

I'm just glad Bitt took it easy on me this time!

[pedant mode]
I would actually argue that either way is correct. The plural possessive is correct for obvious reasons, but I think using the singular possessive could also be construed as correct, if you think of using it in the same way as you would use the word ``each''. Change it to ``Honoring each's use of capitalization'' and you'll see what I mean. But since this falls under the auspices of context, and since context can't really be provided in a title, this argument is a little shaky, but I don't think that the usage is outright wrong.
[/pedant mode]

And far too frequently, an album will be printed In All Initial Case Including Words Like The, A, And, Etc.

I always tag everything in that style (except, in artist names, I use & instead of And). In fact, the tagging program I wrote marks tags as "suspicious" (colours them red) if they're capitalised otherwise.

The more consistent the rule, the less chance I'll accidentally break it.

Peter