Will do, thanks a lot. I also updated my post above with further proof!

Need help on this - D'helle Phat Wirt im Entrant from Grabesmond - Xenoglossie. 1) What dialect is it? 2) Should the nouns be capitalized? I've found out that it's a line from Oswald von Wolkenstein's "Wer ist, die da durchleuchtet". Here's the link, for some reason nouns in texts are not capitalized. Btw what is the translation of the song title?

Some literary form of what's retroactively called Early New High German (though apparently closer to Middle High German than more modern forms). I'm not completely sure, but a clumsy attempt at a translation would be "he is parted/removed from the path to hell". (guess the connotation is more benign than that sounds, as in "he is led (back) to the righteous path/saved from hell"?) Better check with someone with a background in German studies.

Modern German capitalisation does not apply, I suppose it's fair to go with the default approach to only capitalise the first word and proper nouns.

Danke schön for making it clear!

Need some Dutch help with this. I coped with the original version (check it also please), but the re-release is too complicated.

Well it is old dutch not modern dutch and i frankly do not know if the rules have changed for dutch regarding capitalisation.

I'll ask a co-worker of mine, a Dutch language teacher. Will need a couple of days, though.

ONTO something else, which is not about caps, yet typos... primarily aesthetic.
There's been a handful of fake labels to which we affixed (fake) so as to dissociate them from what's legit. I realize we need to keep things simple, but they look pretty bad on the "other version" list. Would it be out of the question to consider replacing (fake) with a piracy symbol like this: ☠.
Black Mark Productions (fake) -> Black Mark Productions ☠
etc.

I see no need to replace it with something ambiguous.

Quoting... "There were hardly any rules that governed capitalization in titles. Word one and proper nouns always started with an uppercase letter. Other than that, it was a random choice based on the writer's will. Accuracy meant copying the original source verbatim, caps included."

Aww( I got that..though all in caps looks totally awful..and what about all those articles and prepositions?

Definitely. I'll edit it later today. Using modern Dutch rules wouldn't be inaccurate after all.

EDIT: Done.

These links are no longer working.

Concerning status
Band: Active / On hold / Unknown
Label: active / on hold / unknown
Why the inconsistency?

Any Breton-speaking wanting to take care of this?

Should "than" and "till" be capitalized? I'm a little confused with this.

Is Québec acceptable? I mean is it just less preferable or simply wrong?
If so, could HB run a script or something?
http://www.metal-archives.com/search/ad ... ame=#bands

The standard international name is "Quebec", sans acute diacritic. All the ones with it should proooobably be removed, but it's not super important.



No, they are prepositions with <5 letters.

I remember derigin citing some official documents that it's "Québec" for the city and "Quebec" for the province in English.

We go by the English standards for locations (ex. Germany not Deutschland, Finland not Suomi, etc.). If there is no difference, or no official English equivalent, we go by whatever is local/native.

Quebec is an odd case:

Within the province, you call it Québec with its capital being Québec. This is the official word of the provincial government which favors native French-speakers. Outside of the province, but still within Canada, the federal government has a two-tier approach depending upon - essentially - who the audience might be. For French-speakers and documentation in French the province is Québec with the capital as Québec. For English-speakers and documentation in English the province is Quebec with the capital as Québec. If you're an English-speaker outside of Canada and/or if you're looking at non-government documents, you will occasionally see the capital referred to as Quebec City, without the accent. This is how Wikipedia has it, for example. Oddly enough, though very likely for tourism reasons, the website of the capital goes by all three variations: Québec, Quebec City, and the more formal Ville de Québec (and more rarely, too, City of Québec and Québec City). Covering all their bases, I guess. Wikipedia tends to favor universal English standards, or at least standards as they might conceive them (and argue over and hold grand debates in order to break down what's appropriate). We prefer not having to create elaborate standards that take away from our primary purpose here, so we tend to favor the English standards as appropriate for the "official word" of whatever state (i.e. country) the location is within.

In a way it's a little ironic. Both the webmasters here, and a staff member, are native French-speakers from Quebec and in many ways this whole mess seems silly to them (and to me, a Canadian native English-speaker, too). However, we try to apply these standards, to some degree, fairly and consistently and to do that we sometimes need to accept that the rules of languages can get ridiculous at times.

Got it.

Am I actually right capitalizing prepositions when a part of a verb, like "Hold On Tight" or "When the Twilight Set In Again"? Might not look good and many sources omit that, but imho grammar is preferable...?

I'm pretty sure prepositions in phrasal verbs are capitalized, yes.

Correct.

I have been instructed to read MA's capitalisation rules, and I was given a link to this thread.

However, an important element of the rules in this thread is ambiguous and open-ended:



The above isn't even provided as a rule; it's merely a suggestion for debate.

What about "'em" - should it always be capitalized despite what the cover says?

These lyrics in German need correcting capitalization and umlauts:
http://www.metal-archives.com/albums/Da ... Pain/34640
http://www.metal-archives.com/albums/Da ... ning/34639
http://www.metal-archives.com/albums/So ... ance/26551

It seems difficult to find something concrete on this, let alone some codified standard. Apparently The Chicago Manual of Style doesn't even mention it. (see links below)

Some discussions I found googling:
https://rateyourmusic.com/board_message ... is_1776031 (check Post1780964 in particular)
http://english.stackexchange.com/questi ... r-em-or-em
Wikipedia is inconsistent (or maybe they do observe the case choice in the source material for this): https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?se ... arch&go=Go
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?se ... arch&go=Go


Point taken, but that is a rather old post and since then official policy has de facto cristallised into enforcing a site-wide capitalisation standard. It has become a rule. I suppose the opening post should be made more clear.

Well I think it's never too late to make a reform. Rules on French capitalization are rather unclear unlike other languages. I would personally like to know what French-speaking mods or admins think of how MusicBrainz gives it.

One more question - how should compound words separated with a hyphen (sorry, not sure how it's called grammatically) better be represented? e.g. Show-White or Snow-white, Ice-Veiled or Ice-veiled, Hard-On for War or Hard-on for War? I think it's fine with nouns to keep both parts capiltalized like War-Path etc. so it's mostly about adjectives I'm curious. Not that important of course, I just feel confused whether to correct it or nor when I see some like Snow-white. Though I'm personally fine with such cases (only the first letter).

Gotta love all these tedious minutiae...

Wikipedia's style guide says:

This album Antisémite / L'odeur des déportés, the second part, should it be "L'Odeur" instead of "L'odeur"?

Yes, SL.

http://www.metal-archives.com/albums/Dr ... nas/196180

I don't remember the nuances of Spanish from junior high, but something tells me this demo is not following the rules of the language.

Does now.

Is this German title Ok? - Märe aus Wäldernen Hallen. I'm not sure what "Wäldernen" means, probably some "forest" adjective, so shouldn't it be "wäldernen"? It's capitalized both on the same page on their website. → Shop tab (bottom) → Musik-CD.

Yes, an adjective and a pretty obscure/archaic one at that.

Good to find out:) I'll correct it in the lyrics also.

Hi,

on the genre the word "influences" must be capitalized?
I was searching for bands with Middle Eastern influences and i found it wrote on both ways, "Influences" and "influences".

Pirania Progressive Metal with Middle Eastern influences
Sarasvati Progressive Metal with Middle Eastern Folk Influences

and a last thing i suppose that is Middle Eastern and not Middle-Eastern?

Eclipse of the Sun Middle-Eastern Folk/Gothic/Doom Metal

I think generally lowecase i would be correct as it isn't a name or a title, but i know MA uses some capitalization that I don't think is standard, such as capitalizing "Metal" in the genres (which Wikipedia for example doesn't do).

For what concerns albums and songs ending with full stops, is it acceptable?

http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/For ... 3540413065

http://forgottensoulblackmetal.bandcamp ... ves-demo-1

On their BandCamp, Forgotten Soul have put some full stops (and the capitalization is of course completely wrong, but I tried to put some order) but is this good on the site?