All caps for military operations, ordnance, etc.

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

I'd be happy with that compromise (once in all caps, evermore not).

Any disambiguation could be simply dealt with in context, either by using terms such as "codenamed" or "Operation", etc., or by a brief parenthetical explanation.

This would minimise use of all caps (although I still say it's entirely unnecessary, but let's not start that again ...  ) and add clarity at the same time.

Reality test: look at the Gulf War articles, especially [[Operation DESERT STORM]] (I'm doing the redirect in a moment), and see if Scud remains unambiguous. It occurs to me that short code names, a few real examples being (SA-3) Goa, (MiG-15) Fagot, Flat Face, etc., might tend in that direction. No one, however, should every be confused by Cefly Lancer. I would have been concerned had Cobra Judy been, instead, Cobra Shirley, except that the snake is more pleasant than my Aunt Shirley.

Should bolding be a convention?

To take a British example that always confused me, there is a missile whose name is written Alarm, even though that actually is an abbreviation and legitiamately should be ALARM. I make a point of writing BaE Systems Alarm.

[David H. Barrett]

Bolding would beat all caps hands down for me. (Although whether it should take place throughout an entire article is another story.)

[Larry Sanger]

What about the rest of you?  What do you think about the compromise?

[Hayford Peirce]

I could certainly live with bolding rather than caps.  No matter *what* Howard says, people who are not intimately familiar with military jargon are *always* going to find caps:

1. Jarring

2. Intrusive

3. Weird

4. Unfamiliar

and/or a combination of all of the above.

So if all the caps (except for standard abbreviations such as NATO, USA, USSR, etc. etc.) could be magically converted into bold by The Bolding Fairy, I think that would be a simple, elegant, and definitive solution, that could then, by Editor-in-Chief edict, be made mandatory for *all* workgroups.

PS -- I do realise that there are conventions from group to group (ie, military, civilian), country to country (ie, Brit English, 'Murkin English), and language to language (ie, NATO in English, Otan in French) but this, CZ, is, dare I say it one last time, a general-purpose encyclopedia for English-speaking (or at last English-reading) laypeople....

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

I could certainly live with bolding rather than caps.  No matter *what* Howard says, people who are not intimately familiar with military jargon are *always* going to find caps:

1. Jarring

2. Intrusive

3. Weird

4. Unfamiliar

and/or a combination of all of the above.

So if all the caps (except for standard abbreviations such as NATO, USA, USSR, etc. etc.) could be magically converted into bold by The Bolding Fairy, I think that would be a simple, elegant, and definitive solution, that could then, by Editor-in-Chief edict, be made mandatory for *all* workgroups.

PS -- I do realise that there are conventions from group to group (ie, military, civilian), country to country (ie, Brit English, 'Murkin English), and language to language (ie, NATO in English, Otan in French) but this, CZ, is, dare I say it one last time, a general-purpose encyclopedia for English-speaking (or at last English-reading) laypeople....

Hayford, as a military expert, I'd sometimes look, at The Other Place, for a code name. Is it fair to assume that specialists will never use an encyclopedia? How many nonspecialists, for example, are likely to look for the difference between three kinds of aircraft, all for different kinds of highly technical intelligence, and not be comfortable with COBRA BALL, RIVET JOINT, COMBAT SENT, and COBRA JUDY?  Initial cap only would make me worry if Cobra Judy was an opening for my Aunt Shirley, although Cobra Shirley would insult some very straightforward serpents.

Seriously, have you considered that a specialist finds initial cap only jarring? I have proposed a method that makes both available: all cap in title and first sentence, initial cap thereafter unless there's a fairly clear chance of ambiguity: for example, an engineering student having a summer work-study job, after his Junior year, to work on SENIOR YEAR, which is an intelligence collection payload for the U-2 aircraft?

[David H. Barrett]

*Clicking heels together* There's no place like home! There's no place like home! There's ...

But seriously.

Howard, you inexorable force, you!

What about a footnote? The first time you use a name that, in standard military usage, would be capitalised, a short note to that effect could be added at the end of the article. Or even parenthetically within the article, if you prefer greater proximity.

That way the predilections of military specialists would be acknowledged and the rest of the known universe catered for with attractive and readable text.

 

[David E. Volk]

(1) Italics would be nicer than bold, and would indicate that a special type of name is being indicated.

:Thus Prudence Peacekeeper  is a person, but Operation Prudence Peacekeeper indicates a special type of name, as
:is used for book and journal names.

(2) As for SECRET, people often write something like document X, designated (as) top secret by the U.S. government, was leaked to the New York Times today,  and  it revealed that ...

:This format avoids the all caps but makes the meaning clear.

(3) Additionally,  many fields have similar problems, not just the military workgroup.

:Although I initially started [[Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy]], I believe someone moved it to [[NMR spectroscopy]] because that is how nearly anyone would look it up with a search engine.  I prefer the real name, with the acronym being present in the intro for seach purposes.  Science is of course full of annoying acronyms too that many lay persons will have no idea about. Some familiar ones to many might be MRI, FTIR, and MS, but what about NMR experiments with names like COSY, NOESY, DOSY, ROESY, TOCSY, SEXY, PENIS (yes, it is a real NMR experiment folks), TROSY and on and on.  Sexy sounds like a nickname, and sexy inplies allure, only SEXY indicates the NMR experiment. PENIS is used for ... vs. Penis is used for ... have two different initial thoughts.
I am personally in favor of using the full name for the article titles, and the ALL CAPS version only once in the intro, unless the full name is very unwieldy like

TROSY = transverse relaxation optimized spectroscopy

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

I have to say that I find this obsession with uppercase and acronyms to be a little, well, odd. The French have always obsessed with acronyms, so let them go their merry way. The British have confined uppercase to a few discrete cases, such as TOP SECRET. So where does all this American English military obsession come from?

My guess is that, like the use of caps in internet chatrooms, it is a matter of self-inflation -- the idea that your project looks more important with all uppercase! Am I being too harsh on the American miilitary, Howard? Anyway, my opinion is that there is no harm in referencing their operations once (and once only) in caps, but any more is just tedious and bothersome to the eye. That their referencing system is a little childish is actually a matter of interest, but we should not allow it to bother us too much 

[David H. Barrett]

I feel I need to put in a disclaimer at this point. My interest in the issue of all caps is purely textual, and relates to the US military usage only insofar as articles related to the US military tend to be predominantly where the usage arises within CZ. I am not a fan of all caps in general texts except in circumstances where they are genuinely called for.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, against the use of all caps for reasons of prejudice, genuine or perceived, against the armed forces of the United States of America.

Now I'm off to take my pills. Perhaps the blue ones today, Nurse Culpepper! I'm feeling a little flat!

 

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

I have to say that I find this obsession with uppercase and acronyms to be a little, well, odd. The French have always obsessed with acronyms, so let them go their merry way. The British have confined uppercase to a few discrete cases, such as TOP SECRET. So where does all this American English military obsession come from?

My guess is that, like the use of caps in internet chatrooms, it is a matter of self-inflation -- the idea that your project looks more important with all uppercase! Am I being too harsh on the American miilitary, Howard? Anyway, my opinion is that there is no harm in referencing their operations once (and once only) in caps, but any more is just tedious and bothersome to the eye. That their referencing system is a little childish is actually a matter of interest, but we should not allow it to bother us too much 

There are both historical reasons it is used, and also human factors reasons that it has continued to be used, although I wouldn't disagree that some of it is traditional.

If I might be allowed a bit of personal recollection, at some point, the boxing champion born Cassius Clay decided to change his name to Muhammad Ali. At the time, there was much criticism, but my feeling was that a name is about as personal a thing as one can get, so I respected his choice.  Over the years, it's been widely accepted.

When I refer to any national style of naming in formal writing, I tend to try to stay consistent with that usage. Now, Churchill wrote that he insisted on traditional English names for things, and would send back a memorandum about Istanbul demanding it be written Constantinople.

The U.S. has lost quite a bit of history in renaming, or not naming, military units. George Armstrong Custer did not lead the "Custer regiment" to death; he led 1st Squadron, 7th United States Cavalry Regiment.  In like manner, I refer to foreign units and names as closely as possible, consistent with understandability.  While I might think it odd that people address the Head of Government as "Prime Minister" rather than "Mr. Prime Minister", I accept the national usage. If I am writing formally of a British commander, I will be sure to refer, at least once, to Viscount Montgomery of Alamein before using the ordinary Bernard Montgomery; I can express my distaste for him in either manner. If I know them, I use postnomials when I first introduce a person in writing, such as Wing-Commander Guy Gibson, VC.

This particular issue, in my opinion, has gotten far more complaint, in an encyclopedic context, than I believe is appropriate. I have given  sourced references on how these things should be written. I have accepted a compromise to use initial caps only after the article title and first definition.

Shall I stop using titles of professional status, or national honorifics, because it's not popular usage? Is the head of state of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland properly called Elizabeth Windsor? Am I incorrect to say, in an article in microbiology, Bacillus anthracis rather than "the anthrax germ"? I remember an American correcting me for being "condescending" when I referred to Victoria, British Columbia, as a "provincial capital", rather than giving it due respect by calling it a "state capital"?

I suspect, Martin, I can find examples of what other countries may consider pretentious, but I try to follow their conventions unless it totally interferes with intelligibility. We have, in metadata, English variants, and, if I am writing in an article that is not designated AE, I willl attempt to follow its conventions on capitalisation and word choice.  When I refer to a German operation, I refer to it without all caps, because that was not their convention. I do, however, refer to "Operation Drumbeat" rather than "Aktion Paukenschlag" when writing in English, although I will introduce the German term in an introduction. I do often compromise on special characters, as I have no idea where to find an umlaut in this particular editor, so I might write a name as Goering, oe being an accepted convention to replace o-umlaut.

British "regiments", certainly before the latest reorganization, are the size of "battalions" by NATO usage. I refer to them by customary name. If I referred to the S-75 Dvina, few nonspecialists would know what I meant. Indeed, I compromise by not giving that designation in Cyrillic, but I don't read Russian and don't have a Cyrillic keyboard. The NATO designation SA-2 missile is more common. NATO also uses code names as less ambiguous than numbers, so their usage is SA-2 GUIDELINE.

When writing in a medical article, I will, indeed, refer once to immune-linked immunosorbent assay rather than leaping immediately to ELISA. I quite agree that nuclear magnetic resonance imaging is the correct term, but the "public relations" view was that "nuclear" was frightening.

In other words, why do you continue to belabor this issue? A compromise was proposed, and I agreed to it. I do insist on using the source designation when first using a term. Nevertheless, I am embarrassed when in another country and not able to use its basic customs. Would I have suggested the U.S. military system had I been in a position to create it? No. But I am puzzled why there is so much heat on this particular issue.

Seeing Desert Storm or Blue Spoon looks jarring when I write. Would you prefer that I not write the articles at all?

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

Howard: I am slightly teasing. Of course we want you to write the articles! As far as I can see, the compromise reached will work fine.

By the way, the British Royal Family does not have a surname: the name Windsor was invented recently in order for their children to look more "normal" at university, in roll books, etc. I agree that national idiosyncratic usages should be respected, at least on first mention. This is, in itself, educational.

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

Howard: I am slightly teasing. Of course we want you to write the articles! As far as I can see, the compromise reached will work fine.

By the way, the British Royal Family does not have a surname: the name Windsor was invented recently in order for their children to look more "normal" at university, in roll books, etc. I agree that national idiosyncratic usages should be respected, at least on first mention. This is, in itself, educational.

Not Battenberg?

In military service, the Crown Prince is addressed as "Lieutenant" (or whatever) Wales.

[Aleta Curry]

Actually, it's a little older than that, Martin, 'Windsor' was adopted from 'Windsor Castle' to try to distance the Royal Family from their nasty forrun-sounding name.  Lizzie doesn't have a surname (that's confusing that is) but the *family* surname (even more confusing that is) was supposed to be 'Mountbatten-Windsor'.  Evidently I'm the only one who knows that, since them as tries to use a surname write all sorts of variants.  Britain doesn't call it's crown prince 'Crown Prince', go figure.

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

Ha! Well, the first I ever heard of any of the "proper" Royals using a surname, it was the simple name Windsor. I vaguely recall hearing this name Mountbatten used for their close relatives, but as you say, the Monarch does not have a surname. And why Charles' alleged surname ended up as Wales? - ha!

[David H. Barrett]

And Australians rejected a republic ...