Re: capitalization; dates

Al Gilman (asgilman@access.digex.net)
Tue, 12 Nov 1996 13:54:14 -0500 (EST)

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From: woodgold@seismo.nrcan.gc.ca (Catherine woodgold)

Putting in my 2 cents: May I suggest that an official guideline
be adopted, one of the following:

(1) words after hyphens in the headers are never capitalized.
(2) words after hyphens in the headers are always capitalized.

(I don't care which).

How about a vote?

I don't like either. I value the mnemonic quality of headers as
plain text too much to take away that expressive degree of
freedom. I believe that headers rules should allow for embedded
all-uppercase fragments c.f. Message-ID.

I could see a higher-level guideline, possibly. The level of
rule I could see as sensible is some style borrowed from titling
practice. In this case, I would nominate "the lowest case
compatible with recognition of proper nouns (given initial cap)
and symbols (given all cap)." This has a simple explanation: the
guideline is that the preferred capitalization practice is what
you would use beginning a sentence, i.e. only force (initial)
caps on first word, permit caps for special purposes later. The
document declaring the header field governs the preferred casing
of the field name.

Al Gilman

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