Capitalization Convention

[Barry R. Smith]

I have long had a problem with capitalization conventions in mathematics.  For something like, "The Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic", it seems to me that the F, T, and A should always be capitalized -- it is the proper name of a theorem.  But there are many results with names like, "Stickelberger's theorem", a possessive followed by the word "theorem".  My question is, should the word "theorem" be capitalized in situations like this? 

On the one hand, there is only one theorem called "Stickelberger's theorem", and that is the name everyone uses to refer to it.  So perhaps both words should be capitalized.  On the other hand, maybe one should think of it instead as saying that there are myriad theorems lying around, and this is the one that Stickelberger took.  In this case, since theorem is thought of as generic, perhaps it should not be capitalized.

I don't suppose linguists hang around the math group too much.  Any thoughts though, as this should eventually become something to be standardized?  I guess a common rule of thumb is if there is any ambiguity in capitalization, stick with lower-case.

[Paul Wormer]

For what  it is worth, I would call the article [[Fundamental theorem of algebra]], but I'm hardly an expert.

PS. I should have written  [[Fundamental theorem of arithmetic]] (same capitalization, though).

[Aleta Curry]

Funny you should say that, there was a question about diseases a little while ago.  Sunuvagun's Syndrome, and such.

If I remember correctly Derek Harkness and J. Noel Chiappa were involved, so I'd check in with them.

[Barry R. Smith]

Hmmm, I thought I remember reading that [[Fundamental theorem of algebra]] would be bad as well, because the server forces the first word to be capitalized, but that we should leave it as non-capitalized when the page is created.  Am I remembering correctly?

[Derek Harkness]

Can I direct you guys to the discussion we had almost a year ago on exactly the same issue.
http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,897.0.html

Also see the resulting page in the Maths Workgroup.
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Formatting_mathematics/Theorem_capitalization

[Paul Wormer]

I read Derek's links and stick to [[Fundamental theorem of arithmetic]], with capital F because it is the first word of the title of an article. In a sentence I would write the [[fundamental theorem ...]. But again, this is just my taste, nothing deep here.