How do you capitalize your song titles?

[mstuartm]

I work as a tech journalist for a living, so I'm a nut about things like this. My policy, like a lot of folks here, is to use All Initial Caps on titles at all times. I could live with some other system, I suppose; it just has to be absolutely consistent, which is something that is not true of how CD cover info treats capitalization.

I also use a customized version of Case Checker to batch-check incoming tracks. At this point, I have it tweaked to the point where it works correctly about 99 percent of the time. The few exceptions are impossible to avoid, so I just edit them manually.

It might be neurotic to care so much about style issues, but when I sit down in front of a well-organized, 12,000 track library, I'm one satisfied neurotic

[Guest]

I also use a customized version of Case Checker to batch-check incoming tracks.

It might be neurotic to care so much about style issues, but when I sit down in front of a well-organized, 12,000 track library, I'm one satisfied neurotic

Hey mstuartm, I use the same capitalisation format - any chance you could share your customised Case Checker script?

TIA, from a fellow neurotic
Adrian

[SDJeff]

It Goes On And On

I like the "Title" case myself. I use Bulk Rename Utility which allows you to rename files in that manor as well.
http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php

[mstuartm]

Hey mstuartm, I use the same capitalisation format - any chance you could share your customised Case Checker script?

TIA, from a fellow neurotic
Adrian

I'm not sure my script would work very well for anyone else. Part of my library, for example, includes archived radio shows and podcasts that deal with ufology, conspiracy theory, and paranormal-related topics. So my script forces allcaps for strings like "UFO" and "MK-ULTRA." Great for the tin-foil hat crowd but less useful for everyone else

Having said that, it's VERY easy to customize Case Checker. Go into your MM directory in Program Files, open the Scripts folder, and then look for a file called "Case.vbs." Open the Case.vbs file (AFTER making a backup copy) and look for the "littleWordString" and "forceCapString" section.

(I use a script editor called UltraEdit to do this; among other things, it numbers the lines for easy reference. This section begins at Line 38 in my editor. You can use any bare-bones text editor to do this, however, although it's not a good idea to use a word processing tool that might add invisible formatting characters to the script.)

Since I use All Initial Caps, I completely removed the contents of the "littleWordString" option, which is the part of Case Checker that forces certain words always to use lower-case.

I then added to the contents of "forceCapString" to suit my needs. Don't over-think how you do this; simply make additions EXACTLY as they look in the existing script.

Save the file, close it, and then test it in MediaMonkey. If you screwed up anything, you will probably get an error message. If you can't fix something that went wrong, simply replace the edited file with your saved backup copy and start over. As long as you have that clean backup copy handy, you're free to experiment as much as you want!

[Zeke129]

I capitalize it the way it is capitalized on the back of the album. If they are being dumb and writing in ALL CAPS BACK THERE, I'd do it like "It Goes On and On".

[SouthernGal]

I was an English teacher in a former life, and there actually is a set format for the captialization of all titles. The first and last words are ALWAYS captialized.....as well as all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions such as "although" "because" and "as".

Lowercase all coordinate conjuctions such as "and" "or" "not" and all prepositions regardless of length AND lowercase the "to" in an infinitive.

Therefore none of the choices up for vote are "correct". I would LOVE it if our wonderful existing case checker would reduce the word "on" to lowercase except when appearing at the beginning or end of a title. I think that one bugs me the most.

I will add that if you understood the above, you probably won't be able to program or write scripts. I can't.

[SouthernGal]

Oh Geez. When I wrote the above I had forgotten the name of the song and couldn't visually see it as I typed. I was wrong.....the correct choice is there. It Goes On and On. The first "on" is an adverb in this title instead of it's usual use as a preposition. Sorry 'bout that.

[Lowlander]

I understand nothing of grammar, but I assume that the logic you describe might be hard to program. Basically what you need is to define all rules that go into making the decision if on starts with uppercase or lowercase. This would of course need to be repeated for all words that have similar situations.

[SouthernGal]

9 times out of 10 "on" is only capitalized if it is the first or last word of a title because it's usually used as a preposition, vs. an adverb. Prepositions usually introduce phrases like "on the desk" "on the horizon". Adverbs tell how, when or where. In the case of "goes on", on is interepreted as meaning "where". It's really hard to think of many instances where "on" is a place. LOL If I'm not mistaken it is now always capitalized in the media monkey case checker. If it were changed to only be capitalized only as a beginning or ending word, it would be right more often than it is wrong.

The English language has so many exceptions, I doubt that anyone could ever write a script that would be 100% right all the time. Hats off to the person who tried!

[mstuartm]

I was an English teacher in a former life, and there actually is a set format for the captialization of all titles. The first and last words are ALWAYS captialized.....as well as all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions such as "although" "because" and "as".

Lowercase all coordinate conjuctions such as "and" "or" "not" and all prepositions regardless of length AND lowercase the "to" in an infinitive.

Journalists and writers often find themselves dropped down the rabbit hole when it comes to this sort of thing. Strict AP style, for example, follows most of these rules, but it specifies that ALL words with more than three letters must be capitalized.

New York Times style is mostly based upon strict AP style, yet I have seen NYT heds capitalized different ways at different times. I don't know whether this means NYT style is evolving or simply reflects a lack of skilled copy editors.

Still other publications employ a beast called "modified AP style," which can mean almost anything.

For whatever reason, I always viewed song/track titles more as a sort of "headline" for the songs. And since I spent years editing heds to use All Initial Caps -- there's that "modified AP style" again -- that's how I treat stand-alone song titles now.

No matter how someone handles this, I think consistency is 95 percent of the battle.

You can recognize people who work with words for a living -- they actually think this discussion amounts to something more than mindless pedantry.

[zhuangzi08]

I was an English teacher in a former life, and there actually is a set format for the captialization of all titles. The first and last words are ALWAYS captialized.....as well as all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions such as "although" "because" and "as".

Lowercase all coordinate conjuctions such as "and" "or" "not" and all prepositions regardless of length AND lowercase the "to" in an infinitive.

Therefore none of the choices up for vote are "correct". I would LOVE it if our wonderful existing case checker would reduce the word "on" to lowercase except when appearing at the beginning or end of a title. I think that one bugs me the most.

I will add that if you understood the above, you probably won't be able to program or write scripts. I can't.

This is an excellent example of how inferior the English vocabulary has become.

[Guest]

My preference is to capitalize the first letter of each word, regardless of the type of word. Although it doesn't follow the established rules, I prefer it because it gives my song titles a consistent look.

[sam_schorb]

thank you so much for that bulk rename thing. just did about 4 hours of annoying, anal job in about 30 seconds. best program EVER!!!

[Shiny Rabbit]

It Goes On and On, unless it's meant to be captalised in a certain way, e.g. Whereabouts (TECHNiA Luka RMX), CHASER, SHINY BLUE, unformed and SignaLoid BOX (the last 2 are albums but it's the same thing)

[Weatherman]

Personally I just use the "shift" key or "Caps Lock"...boom boom!