Help talk:When to Italicize and Capitalize

Since this is a fairly old policy, I'd like to know if any of these are edition-specific. --Kydo (talk) 03:47, 27 September 2016 (MDT)

I'd like to know, too. Comparing them to the 5E books would be a good exercise. —Sledged (talk) 07:25, 3 October 2016 (MDT)

Capitalizing letters

To my knowledge, this page only states that you can't capitalize the unit indicating the die, such as 1d10, compared to 2D10 for instance. So if I were to use capital letters such as "Death Knight" or "FIRE TORNADO", that would be fine and wouldn't constitute a grammatical error according to the site rules, right? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by JohnSmith82 (talk • contribs) . Please sign your posts.

"Guidelines based on general observations from official WotC D&D products" to me do not sound like "site rules." That said, any contributor who sees a spell named "FIRE TORNADO" would be justified in changing it to "fire tornado." The same is true for a class or creature referred to as "Death Knight" instead of "death knight." - Guy (talk) 00:28, 30 July 2017 (MDT)

But it wouldn't be a requirement? Or technically grammatically incorrect? JohnSmith82 (talk) 02:37, 30 July 2017 (MDT)

I see now you're specifically asking about a 5e class named death knight. To be clear, calling it "Death Knight" is grammatically incorrect. Classes in 5e are not inherently proper nouns. Something like "knight of Germany" could incorporate captialization, but of course that's because Germany itself is a proper noun.

I stand by the affirmation that any contributor that changes a mid-sentence reference of "Death Knight" to "death knight" would be justified in doing so. - Guy (talk) 03:49, 30 July 2017 (MDT)

It says "The following should always follow the same rules for capitalization as if you were writing a term paper for class [(proper nouns)]" ... "Classes (rogue, monk, and barbarian)"

I don't know why you are fixating on the die size rule.

In any event, you've now had four other editors tell you what is correct, and if nothing else, that is concensus. Marasmusine (talk) 05:11, 30 July 2017 (MDT)

Okay, let's for the sake of the argument say that this was going to be the consensus from now on. There was no evidence this was the case prior, so this is essentially a change to the website but, I'll go with it in theory. That means most of the pages on this website are now grammatically incorrect. This is going to break the entire website. Looking at just Marasmusine's pages, almost all of them contain unnecessary capitalizations. For instance Barbed Devil (4e Race) includes a phrase such as "Barbed devils favor the Paladin, Ranger, Barbarian, Warlord or Sorcerer classes." Well then, classes are not proper nouns, so none of these should be capitalized, right? Your page would then be, grammatically incorrect. What about the Horned Devil (4e Race), with the quotes "Adventuring horned devils look like their True cousins", true shouldn't be capitalized, or the classes in "To be a member of a race that favors the Fighter, Warlord and Barbarian classes." I can go on, if you like.

Should I go through and start flagging literally hundreds of pages as being grammatically incorrect because the class names and other words are capitalized? After all, should words like "Hell" or "Erberus" be capitalized after all, If this is the official ruling, it's going to break the entire website. It would be wise not to conclude that you shouldn't capitalize class names or certain words, simply because most people intuitively do so and to start telling them not to would uh, well considering there is no official rule book on what not to capitalize, will get extremely messy. If this is *really* the policy of the website, then I'll have to go back and start flagging hundreds of pages as grammatically incorrect, including most of yours Marasmusine. I'm honestly shocked that you think class names and other words shouldn't be capitalized, but if that's the rule I can go with it.

The reason I'm so opposed to it is if we actually enforce it that way, almost every page on this website will now be considered grammatically incorrect. But, far be it from me to stop you from making that the rule. But hopefully you can see my point on why this is a terrible idea. JohnSmith82 (talk) 03:16, 31 July 2017 (MDT)

Now I would like to discuss the "minor edit". This concept is structured for edits which clarify a point on a page, like your example pages above, but do not carry the weight of a major change. For example, it is better to add a missing parenthesis then flag a page as having wording problems. The death knight, however, has had lots of corrections until this point in time (diff), but the {{wording}} template does not make sense everywhere. Looking at it more broadly, its better to pick your battles. To use the metaphor, if you want to start flagging pages then considering minor and major edits will help to define your campaign. --Green Dragon (talk) 10:09, 31 July 2017 (MDT)

Yes, correct, those capitalizations on the Barbed Devil and Horned Devil pages should be corrected. To be fair, GD added the "Barbed devils favor" sentence :) And yes, please do flag any of my pages where you see grammar errors (or fix them). Marasmusine (talk) 12:02, 31 July 2017 (MDT)

Okay, I cleaned up those two pages. I made these 6 years ago! Marasmusine (talk) 12:28, 31 July 2017 (MDT)

I honestly don't plan on going through and flagging them, my point is that this isn't a written rule anywhere on the site and virtually every single page on the site has capitalized the class names for over 5 years. A sudden change like this seems to be out of nowhere for no real reason, and could have a lot of potential repercussions. But, if that's what you want, far be it from me to stop you. It's just never be an actual issue for over half a decade until just now. JohnSmith82 (talk) 05:42, 3 August 2017 (MDT)

To my recollection, this site has always used American English, which by its nature means you don't capitalize "fighter" or the like. I'll sometimes do it in casual conversation, because it puts emphasis on the word I want pointed out, but yeah... That most people get it wrong, make mistakes, etc. doesn't mean that it's Proper English™ (note that my capitalization of "proper" was to help further a point), but that it should be corrected. Many pages also lack page IDs, proper formatting, etc., but we don't decide it's okay, because it makes pages less functional for the end-user. Inconsistent capitalization of Pages is common, but it can be Confusing and does not contribute Positively to the readability of the Page. It's just Human error.--GamerAim (talk) 07:04, 3 August 2017 (MDT)

Creature Types and Tags

In 5th edition these aren't capitalized, as seen in the Monster Manual page 7/8 and several other places where they're mentioned. However, they are here. Is this a pre-5th edition thing or is there something I am missing? —ConcealedLight (talk) 22:13, 11 June 2018 (MDT)

Yes, you missed the word "older" in the guidelines:

“

Identifiers that occur inside older stat block formats that denote a creature's type and subtypes [Humanoid (Human, Shapechanger)]

”

The change was made was made during edition 3.5. If you compare the stat blocks among the 3.5 monster manuals, you'll note that I, II, and III use a different format than IV and V. One of the differences is capitalization of creature types and subtypes. So "older" in this context is defined as sometime before 2005 or 2006.

I'll note that to the best of my knowledge these guidelines have not been (fully) compared against any other edition. —Sledged (talk) 08:46, 12 June 2018 (MDT)

Wow, I wasn't aware you were still around. Thanks for the response and it's a pleasure meeting you for the first time. —ConcealedLight (talk) 09:37, 12 June 2018 (MDT)

Pleased to meet you, as well. I'm still around, but more of an observer these days. —Sledged (talk) 07:50, 13 June 2018 (MDT)