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::Fortunately, "specialist style" is also "populist style", as "Halley's Comet" is nearly always capitalized by laymen. [[User:LtPowers|Powers]] <sup><small><small>[[User talk:LtPowers|T]]</small></small></sup> 15:50, 4 September 2011 (UTC) |
::Fortunately, "specialist style" is also "populist style", as "Halley's Comet" is nearly always capitalized by laymen. [[User:LtPowers|Powers]] <sup><small><small>[[User talk:LtPowers|T]]</small></small></sup> 15:50, 4 September 2011 (UTC) |
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:::Evidence seems to contradict you. [[User:Dicklyon|Dicklyon]] ([[User talk:Dicklyon|talk]]) 17:24, 4 September 2011 (UTC) |
:::Evidence seems to contradict you. [[User:Dicklyon|Dicklyon]] ([[User talk:Dicklyon|talk]]) 17:24, 4 September 2011 (UTC) |
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::::I haven't seen any such evidence yet. Laymen overwhelmingly treat this as a proper noun, and for good reason. [[User:LtPowers|Powers]] <sup><small><small>[[User talk:LtPowers|T]]</small></small></sup> 21:36, 4 September 2011 (UTC) |
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*'''Prefer''' ''[[Comet Halley]]'' ; yes, I know it was discussed in 2008 and rejected, still it's my preference. It also renders the current discussion moot as to it being "Halley's comet" or "Halley's Comet"; the other choice is ''[[1P/Halley]]'', but [[MOS:SLASH]] prefers some other title due to technical details of URL formation. [[Special:Contributions/70.24.246.151|70.24.246.151]] ([[User talk:70.24.246.151|talk]]) 07:32, 4 September 2011 (UTC) |
*'''Prefer''' ''[[Comet Halley]]'' ; yes, I know it was discussed in 2008 and rejected, still it's my preference. It also renders the current discussion moot as to it being "Halley's comet" or "Halley's Comet"; the other choice is ''[[1P/Halley]]'', but [[MOS:SLASH]] prefers some other title due to technical details of URL formation. [[Special:Contributions/70.24.246.151|70.24.246.151]] ([[User talk:70.24.246.151|talk]]) 07:32, 4 September 2011 (UTC) |
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How long will it last?
Surely there has to have been significant reduction in the total mass of the comet during the past 2,000 years. Has anyone made any guesses about how long it will physically last? I didn't notice anything about that in the article. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:09, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
- Comets are estimated to last for about 10,000 perihelion passes. But since orbits are always perturbed by gravitational, non-gravitational forces, and random thermal events like splitting, putting a number on it would be a wild guess at best. Some day Halley's orbit will be much more or much less than 76 years. -- Kheider (talk) 16:19, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
- Of course we don't know when the first of those potential 10,000 passes was. It's possible that it's still young, cosmologically speaking, and 2,000 years is just a blip. But eventually it will fizzle - break apart, crash into Jupiter, or the sun, or who knows what. Thanks for the insight. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:03, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
- I also wonder if comets get "renewed" to some extent when they're at aphelion, maybe picking up some extra particles from the ort cloud or whatever? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:04, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
- Halley's comet is suspected of being "cosmologically young" in the sense that it has not been in its current orbit that long. Comets may go dormant, but there is no known renewal process. Objects in the Oort cloud are spaced apart even more so than the asteroid belt. -- Kheider (talk) 00:44, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- Could start here http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1985MNRAS.213..103H At the time, Davd Hughes was criticized for overestimating the diameter if the nucleus, but in fact it was even bigger then he thought. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.210.25.73 (talk) 19:17, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
Naming
According to WP:NCASTRO -
- For extremely famous comets which have no issues with disambiguation, these should be titled "Comet <name>", e.g. Comet Halley.
So why is this article named "Halley's Comet"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.77.151.230 (talk) 21:36, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
- See talk archive 1. Uniquely among comets, Halley's most common name is different from standard, simply because it is so widely known. Wikipedia title guidelines demand that articles be named after the most commonly used variant. Serendipodous 06:38, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
links to dated apparitions
considered these to be of use to astrologers, whether or not a person considers their activities to be un-scientific Furkhaocean (talk) 16:38, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
- I would like to see the links thought out more: 240 BC would need to link to 240 BC, 466 BC to 466 BC, periodic to List of periodic comets, and Jewish astronomers is a red link. I believe Wikipedia policy is to avoid needlessly linking dates in articles. -- Kheider (talk) 16:52, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
1986 closest approach to earth
In the 1986 appearance Halley's closest approach to Earth was 0.42 AU.[1] Is how close Halley approached Earth in it's most recent visit worth putting in the article somewhere? Does someone want to put it in? -- Jozsefs (talk) 21:28, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
Section for asteroid showers?
I found it rather surprising the article does not mention the Aquarids at all. Even once, or supply a link to the (admittedly poor) article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eta_Aquariids 184.166.240.249 (talk) 13:13, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
- Because its orbit comes close to Earth's in two places, Halley's Comet is the parent body of two meteor showers: the Eta Aquariids in early May, and the Orionids in late October.[32] Serendipodous 13:43, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
Requested move
Halley's Comet → Halley's comet – Since this comet, like most, is widely referred to with lower-case "comet" (even in the form "comet Halley"), it should be lower-case here, per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters). Dicklyon (talk) 04:34, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
Note that book n-grams indicate that the capitalized form becomes more popular in years when the comet is in the news, but the lower-case form is traditionally more common. And if you click through to some of the examples of hits on "Halley's Comet", it becomes clear that many are in titles and headings, and that the same pages have "Halley's comet" in sentences. Dicklyon (talk) 06:59, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- oppose. This debate was decided over at Solar System years ago. According to the IAU, the full title of any astronomical object must be capitalised. There's some debate over asteroid belt, Kuiper belt and Oort cloud, but not over this. Serendipodous 05:03, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- I was wondering if there was some kind of a project-specific style understanding going on. Can you point me at that? Dicklyon (talk) 06:48, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- Talk:Solar System/Archive 2#Move to Solar System. The link referred to has been moved. It is now here. Serendipodous 07:01, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- Wow, that IAU document is really rather weak. Nothing on comets, but it has "Minor Planets" capitalized; it does show "Andromeda galaxy", the other example that I was trying to downcase the generic part of and that Trovatore reverted. All I see is that the move of Solar System to capitalized form was approved. Neither the nearly-equal RM discussion nor the IAU document that it relied on seems to have much bearing in the present case. Ah, I see it links a PDF with a bit more. Still not very clear, but they do suggest capitalizing everything about their specific meetings and offices and objects, like many organizations do for their own stuff. In writing for the general public, that's not generally done. Dicklyon (talk) 07:18, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- Your statement is very misleading. The page says that this is a formal recommendation for the names of astronomic objects in general, and then links the PDF. the linked PDF says to capitalize the names of "individual astronomic objects" in all IAU publications. That includes the IAU circulars that are sent to observatories worldwide, where the decisions on official names are reported (hint: the official names are all capitalized and are all proper nouns. The official name is not "Halley" but "Comet Halley" with capital "C"). The examples in the actual naming guidelines all use capital letters. See also the difference between "a random page in IAU's website" and "the HTML version of an official IAU document".
- Wow, that IAU document is really rather weak. Nothing on comets, but it has "Minor Planets" capitalized; it does show "Andromeda galaxy", the other example that I was trying to downcase the generic part of and that Trovatore reverted. All I see is that the move of Solar System to capitalized form was approved. Neither the nearly-equal RM discussion nor the IAU document that it relied on seems to have much bearing in the present case. Ah, I see it links a PDF with a bit more. Still not very clear, but they do suggest capitalizing everything about their specific meetings and offices and objects, like many organizations do for their own stuff. In writing for the general public, that's not generally done. Dicklyon (talk) 07:18, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- Talk:Solar System/Archive 2#Move to Solar System. The link referred to has been moved. It is now here. Serendipodous 07:01, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- I was wondering if there was some kind of a project-specific style understanding going on. Can you point me at that? Dicklyon (talk) 06:48, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- I think that the Solar System RM is relevant. It shows that the names of astronomical objects are capitalized proper nouns. Your proposed move would make the name a uncapitalized descriptive sentence, which it is not. The closer said that the IAU's guidelines had a strong influence in the decision. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:10, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
- really bad form, Dicklyon. Dicklyon made this edit one minute before coming here, and then claiming that this should be done per the MoS. I have no strong preference for which capitalization to use, but that's just disingenuous. --Trovatore (talk) 05:14, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- Sorry about the "form". I was trying to attract some discussion about the issue at the bottom of Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(capital_letters)#When_is_something_a_proper_noun.3F, where I linked a change to a guideline (Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Proper_names#Compounds_with_proper_names) in which I used "Halley's comet" as an example. Getting no response there, I figured I could see what people really think here. The use of "Halley's comet" is so common in sources, like in the Mark Twain quote that had been erroneously capitalized much later, that I figured people might be happy to see this article at least follow both sources and WP style more closely. What the guideline Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Proper_names#Compounds_with_proper_names says is still applicable, whether I fix the Halley's comet example or not. Dicklyon (talk) 06:44, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- The evidence seems to indicate the opposite. If it were a proper noun, it would be capitalized at least a great majority of the time, and it's not. Dicklyon (talk) 14:40, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- Britannica treats it as a proper noun. So did Mark Twain. And so do most of the books in a search on Google Books. Powers T 17:16, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- The evidence seems to indicate the opposite. If it were a proper noun, it would be capitalized at least a great majority of the time, and it's not. Dicklyon (talk) 14:40, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- No, your evidence if flawed. Twain didn't write it down, but the contemporary reports on what he said all used lower case, as I already pointed out above. As for most books, wrong again; you're mostly looking at titles and headings, which is what the Google snippets prefer to show you. I linked the actual n-gram counts above; if you discount the titles and headings, lower case wins by a landslide; it still has a good majority if you don't discount titles and headings. Dicklyon (talk) 18:08, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- Well, your typing is flawed but I don't feel the need to bold it when I point it out. I will concede the Twain, but to me, the ngram you linked shows quite clearly the opposite of what you think it does. You can see clear spikes during the year in which the Comet made its appearance -- in 1835, the lowercase was most common; in 1910, the uppercase edged it out, and in 1986, the uppercase had a ridiculous majority. It's clear to me from the ngram chart that since 1980 or so usage has preferred the uppercase version -- which meshes perfectly with what I said above: in popular usage, it's a proper noun. Powers T 01:53, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
- No, your evidence if flawed. Twain didn't write it down, but the contemporary reports on what he said all used lower case, as I already pointed out above. As for most books, wrong again; you're mostly looking at titles and headings, which is what the Google snippets prefer to show you. I linked the actual n-gram counts above; if you discount the titles and headings, lower case wins by a landslide; it still has a good majority if you don't discount titles and headings. Dicklyon (talk) 18:08, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- Comment A decision years ago doesn't much matter. We change our minds sometimes.
- Astronomical sources published since 2000, in their order of appearance at GBooks:
- lc: Vogt Comets, North Astronomy in depth, Newcomb Astronomy for Everybody, Starry Night Discovering the Universe, Wakefield Halley's quest, Brandt & Chapman Introduction to comets, Leverington Babylon to Voyager and beyond
- uc: Rauchfuss Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life, Pasachoff & Filippenko The cosmos, Zeilik Astronomy
- It would seem that common use favors l.c. — kwami (talk) 15:30, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- So we should redo every incidence of Solar System as well then? Serendipodous 17:17, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- That would seem to be more objectively precise: the system of Sol. Dbl caps is more like 'Our Home'. Either way works, though I'd favor the more objective variant. — kwami (talk) 18:10, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- Over-capitalization is indeed a widespread issue in WP, in spite of the clear guideline at WP:Manual of Style (capital letters): "Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization." But we don't need to try to fix it all at once. If we can start to move toward consistency, based on a combination of WP guidelines and actual data from looking at real sources, that will be worthwhile. I don't know the right answer for Solar System because I haven't looked at the evidence, but at least for well-known comets it's pretty clear that WP style is consistent with common usage, so there shouldn't really be a problem. So far, I don't understand why people are so willing to push back with neither data nor policy on their side. Dicklyon (talk) 18:15, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- Please don't cut the quote short. It's "Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization. Most capitalization is for proper names, (...)". This happens to be a proper name. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:29, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
- So we should redo every incidence of Solar System as well then? Serendipodous 17:17, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- Kwami, I tried to reproduce your search [2] (using quotes doesn't change significantly the result [3]), and, contrary to the experience that you reported, I found a majority of astronomical sources that use only the capitalized form [4] [5] [6] [7]. You also misleadingly cite Discover! Exploring the Universe as supporting your argument when it's actually using both forms. And you are listing Chemical evolution and the origin of life as an astronomical source, when it's actually about astrobiology. The books that don't support your position appear in my search among the ones that you cited, and I highly doubt that they didn't appear in your search. This means that your search had to have a majority of astronomical sources using the capitalized form. Both only in the first page, and in the first two pages put together. Your voyager book[8] appears in my search in the fourth page, to reach that book by order you had to skip over 4 astronomical sources, none of them supporting your position [9][10][11][12]. It is beyond belief that none of them appeared in your search or that you failed to notice any of them. Your comment implies that the books you listed were the first astronomical sources in your search, when evidence shows that they were really the first ones that supported your opinion. Hand-picking and misrepresenting sources to sway an argument in your favor is not the way to make an argument in wikipedia. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:10, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
- = Halley's Comet
- = Hallet's comet
- = discarded
- = uses both
First page
- Halley's Comet: Stirling Engine mirror of wikipedia
- Halley's Comet: An Evening Discourse to the British Association (1910), 1910, published way sooner than 2000, available in archive.org[13].
- Halley's Comet, this is a mirror of wikipedia [14]
- Discover! Exploring the Universe, Lorenz Educational Press, 2000
- Computer algebra recipes: an introductory guide to the mathematical models of science Birkhäuser, 2006, not an astronomical source
- Patrick Moore's Data Book of Astronomy, Cambridge University Press, 2011
- The Starry Room: Naked Eye Astronomy in the Intimate Universe, Dover Publications, 2002
- Astronomy in depth Springer, 2003
- Comets, Capstone Press, 2006
- The Teachers Calendar, School Year 2010-2011, McGraw-Hill Professional, 2010 not an astronomical source
Second page
- The Greatest Comets of History, Springer 1979
- Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life, Springer, 2008. not an astronomical source, it's astrobiology. Kwami presents it as a lowercase example, when it's actually uppercase.
- Secrets of the Holy Bible, AuthorHouse, 2011, astrology, self-published
- Chaos: from simple models to complex systems, World Scientific, 2010, not an astronomical source
- The World of Comets, Cambridge University Press, 1877 (re-edited 2010 preserving the capitalization). Way older than 2000. This one uses lowercase even in proper names like Great Comet of 1861, the IAU didn't start issuing official names until many years later at 1919 [15].
- Defining Gravity the Sully Way, Wheatmark, 2004, self-publish in pay-to-publish publish
- 100 secrets of the Carolina coast, Thomas Nelson Inc, 2000, not an astronomical source
- Raising the Next Generation: Stories from the Past, Applied to the Present, Shape the Future, iUniverse, 2002, not an astronomical source, self-published
- Look Homeward, Demon: A 1986 Prediction of Sars and Other Events., AuthorHouse, 2009. Astrology, self-published
- Swallowing the Soap: New and Selected Poems, U of Nebraska Press, 2010, not an astronomical source
Third page
- The cosmos: astronomy in the new millennium Cengage Learning, 2007
- Darwin in Galápagos: footsteps to a new world, Princeton University Press, 2009, not an astronomical source
- The Prophesies Of Nostradamus, Sterling Publishers, 2002, astrology, French language
- The Stars in Their Courses 1931, Kessinger Publishing, 1931 (reprinted 2004)
- We Have Roots Too!, April Press, 2005, not an astronomical source
- Why Hebrew Goes from Right to Left: 201 Things You Never Knew about Judaism, KTAV Publishing House, 2008 not an astronomical source
- The personal history of a Bukharan intellectual: the diary of Muḥammad Sharīf-i Ṣadr-i Z̮iya, BRILL, 2004, not an astronomical source
- Other Times Than Peace, Baen Books, 2006, science fiction
- The Phone Poem Book: Simple Gifts, AuthorHouse, 2010, not an astronomical source, self-published
- Halley's quest: a selfless genius and his troubled Paramore, National Academies Press, 2005
Fourth page
- Astronomy: the evolving universe, Cambridge University Press, 2002
- Babylon to Voyager and beyond: a history of planetary astronomy, Cambridge University Press, 2003
- Matter & interactions, John Wiley and Sons, 2011, not an astronomical source
- By these hands: a documentary history of African American humanism, NYU Press, 2001, not an astronomical source
- Knack Night Sky: Decoding the Solar System, from Constellations to Black Holes, Globe Pequot, 2010
- New cosmic horizons: space astronomy from the V2 to the Hubble Space Telescope, Cambridge University Press, 2000
- Introduction to Physical Science, Cengage Learning, 2009, not an astronomical source
- Comet science: the study of remnants from the birth of the solar system, Cambridge University Press, 2000
- Celestial treasury: from the music of the spheres to the conquest of space, Cambridge University Press, 2001
- Atlas of Astronomical Discoveries, Springer, 2011
Also, kwami appears to mistake three of his sources:
- Introduction to comets, Cambridge University Press, 2004, actually uses Comet. This one is understandable because the google preview lands you in a scan of a newspaper where the other form is used
- Newcomb Astronomy for Everybody is a reprint of a 1902 book
- Starry Night Discovering the Universe, W H Freeman, 2008, uses both Halley's Comet (page 60) and Comet Halley (page 266), I checked in Amazon the 8th edition[16] and the 9th edition[17]
That's 8 books in uppercase, 5 in lowercase and 3 that uses both (updated per Noetica's comment, and updated after reviewing again every book). --Enric Naval (talk) 23:34, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
- Thank you very much, Enric. I really appreciate your effort in putting this report together, especially since it's not definite support of your position. [I also liked that you chose symbols that expressed your point of view.] This is very helpful. Jojalozzo 02:03, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
- Hummm, you are right. I was using the images listed at Template:Tick, but there are more neutral symbols in Category:Image_insertion_templates. Changed, and lesson learned for the next time. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:45, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
- Enric, those were the books that came up on the first couple pages. I probably threw in a discriminator like "astronomy" or st, I don't remember. I didn't link because it wasn't a systematic search and I didn't think it worth linking. You can assume bad faith if you like. As for the Discover! book, correct, but only barely. It does use both: 5 tokens l.c., including the bold header entry, and one token in u.c. I hadn't noticed at the very end. As for a book being about astrobiology, so what? I suppose I could have eliminated it per you objection and gotten even more lopsided support for l.c. – gee, why didn't I think of that when I was combing through pages and pages of hits to get the result I wanted? Nonetheless, I find your 'proper name' argument fairly persuasive, which is why I haven't caste a vote. — kwami (talk) 15:52, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
oppose As already pointed out by Powers, the capitalized form has become predominant in the last three decades [18]. Common usage uses it as a proper noun. Contrary to claims above, a google books search of astronomical sources published after 2000 shows a predominance of the capitalized form (see analysis above). --Enric Naval (talk) 13:44, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
- Maybe I'm not reading it right but the ngram appears show neither form predominating except in the 80's when Halley's was visible in the sky and we could expect non-scientific, unreliable sources to prevail. As you say, your analysis of the astronomical books search above is more trustworthy, but I find the presentation of it difficult to interpret. Jojalozzo 17:39, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
- There are 3 rises in publication numbers, roughly coinciding with observations of the comet in modern times, after 1835, around 1910 and around 1986. In the first peak the non-capitalized name predominates, in the second peak they have equal numbers, in the third peak, when the IAU has already been created and has assigned proper names to comets, it is the capitalized name that predominates. For me, this means that the most common name has changed over time. If the differences between the names were due to more unreliable sources being published during the peaks, then the same unreliable name would predominate in all 3 sources, I think. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:34, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
Supporting comment. As Joja points out, Enric's interpretation of his ngram is shaky indeed. Unfortunately, his very industrious Google search study is misleading and ill focused also. I'm not sure that we could replicate it, since the method is underdefined. In at least these cases the hits have been classified wrongly:
- New cosmic horizons: space astronomy from the V2 to the Hubble Space Telescope, Cambridge University Press, 2000
- Celestial treasury: from the music of the spheres to the conquest of space, Cambridge University Press, 2001
In these two sources, both forms are used (as a quick inspection will confirm). If we are interested in reliable sources, surely we will discount those that are inconsistent, including these two.
I did a Googlebooks search on {"halley's comet" intitle:astronomy} – the phrase "halley's comet" regardless of capitalisation, for books with "astronomy" in the title – with the restrictions "Books›Jan 1, 1990–Aug 28, 2011›Search English pages›Preview and full view". There were 107 genuine hits (you need to check the last page to arrive at this figure). I analysed the hits for occurrences of the two forms on Google's result pages:
Halley's Comet: 56 (65 – at least 9 that had title case in citations, etc.)
Halley's comet: 58
That's one way to do it more accurately, using the most relevant current literature that can be checked. In the absence of more focused guidelines for astronomical bodies, by current guidelines a move to "Halley's comet" is justified, and the evidence from usage in reliable sources has not been shown to count against it.
NoeticaTea? 00:15, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
- Argh, I mistook those two books. Fixed.
- That's not "the most relevant current literature". You didn't notice a Mormon book of dubious astronomical value in page 8, which makes only one passing mention of the comet [19].
- Looking at pages 3 and 5, I found three reprints. A 1861 reprint in page 3 [20], a 1832 reprint in page 4 Outlines of Astronomy, and a 1885 reprint in page 4[21].
- And you don't mention any book that used both forms, but there are four of them only in page 3 (I haven't looked at other pages) A to Z of scientists in space and astronomy, Unveiling the universe: an introduction to astronomy, History of oriental astronomy: proceedings of the joint discussion-17 at the 23rd General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union, Introduction to Astronomy and Cosmology. The last one uses lowercase in the section title but uppercase in the text. Under which form did you put them?
- Trying to cover superficially so many results only results in more errors, and in making your work more difficult to check by other editors. --Enric Naval (talk) 01:45, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
- Enric, just briefly (I have many things calling on my attention at the moment): I did not claim to have analysed beyond a text search of the Google result pages, and I did not claim to examine the merits of every source (including its consistency), or its original date. But I did present replicable results that were open to scrutiny. You have indeed been able to scrutinise them; but I wonder whether you do so in an unbiased way, setting aside any sort of selection according to bias. I said "that's one way to do it more accurately"; I did not say it was final, definitive, or exhaustive. Sure, three books turned out to be reprints, as you observe (only three, by the way?). Of those three, one was counted as using "Halley's Comet", one as using "Halley's comet", and one did not feature in my counts because Google showed only upper case throughout its citation ("HALLEY'S COMET"). Net effect on my counts: practically zero. What sort of different count do you offer from my search, based on your further unbiased investigation?
- NoeticaTea? 02:25, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
- Four reprints, actually. There is a 1885 reprint in page 2 A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century. And the search more books of dubious or non-existant quality: in page 5 I found a self-published crackpot astrology book[22]. In page 6 I see a book written by a hobbyist astronomer, in a pay-to-publish publisher that sends the manuscript to one reviewer before publishing itAstronomy: Selected Topics, in page 6 another self-published book Astronomy for Beginners. OK, I am stopping at page 6. Your search is littered with flaws and inaccuracies, despite your claims. And in your post you presented it as "evidence from usage in reliable sources" in order to support a move. And your counting is obviously inaccurate, since either you didn't notice those books that use both capitalizations, or you grouped them incorrectly as using only one of the forms. Please try again and present accurate data (like I attempted to do above) and then we can talk. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:48, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
- From your comment "one did not feature in my counts because Google showed only upper case throughout its citation ("HALLEY'S COMET")." I gather that for some books you didn't even bother to open the individual book, you just used the summary in the result page. No wonder that you missed all the books that use both forms. You said "I analysed the hits for occurrences of the two forms", but you obviously didn't do such a thing at all. You present a less accurate and more superficial research, littered with false positives and miscountings, while chastising me for making inaccurate research.
- Not that my own research is flawless, I just found one self-published book on it. But it's way better researched than yours and way easier to verify, and I have updated it to fix the flaws that other editors found. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:16, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
- Enric, you simply haven't grasped the method, though I outlined it for you to read. It's no secret that I only analysed the Google result pages, and the text that Google shows there. I said all that. And it's not relevant that some of those are not reliable sources, or that 4 of the 107 hits are reprints. What I presented was a well-defined, well-focused, enriched but unbiased sample. That's one good use of Google. Anyone who wants to can, as I have made clear, replicate precisely what I did and analyse further than I did. Never mind what scattered individual finds you make among those hits: I asked, directly, what your count was from the data retrieved in my search, not what statistically irrelevant nits you can pick. There is a difference between a systematic scan of the whole set and a selection that ignores the method used to generate it. Did you even use exactly the same search, as I linked it above? Your mention of so many pages leaves me in doubt. Try again. NoeticaTea? 18:00, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
- Of course I used exactly the same search.... Fine, here you go:
- capitalized 46 49%
- uncapitalized 35 37%
- both 13 14%
- total 94 100%
- discarded 13
- There are 63% of books that use the capitalized form at least once (more than 6 of every 10 books). If the name was only a descriptive sentence, the capitalized form would appear only in a few sources. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:16, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
- Odd. My count, along roughly the same lines:
- capitalised 46 (47.4%)
- uncapitalised 49 (50.5%)
- both 2 (2.1%)
- total 97 (100.0%)
- discarded 10 (in 6 nothing was found; 4 were reprints)
- My hits with both: Introduction to Astronomy and Cosmology; New cosmic horizons: space astronomy from the V2 to the Hubble. Which were yours? I suspect they are the ones I found that appeared to have only lower case in running text, but upper case in headings or citations. I did not discard the Joseph Smith piece, nor one that you call "crackpot" because of mention of astrology. If I did, the percentages would remain practically the same, since one capitalises and one does not.
- What I wrote above still holds: "In the absence of more focused guidelines for astronomical bodies, by current guidelines a move to 'Halley's comet' is justified, and the evidence from usage in reliable sources has not been shown to count against it."
- NoeticaTea? 13:41, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
- Odd. My count, along roughly the same lines:
- These are the two you missed [23][24]. And your numbers are still off because you missed 9 additional books. I didn't note them down, and I don't really want to open 94 books one by one again. Noetica, if a book had uppercase in the titles, and the other titles had uppercased words, and the actual text used lowercase, then I counted the book as having lowercase. And, I am under the impression that you counted again as valid hits the astrology book, the Mormon book, and the self-published books. This would only be showed by re-doing all the work I made above, a pretty detailed list. But I already did that research, and I spent hours. Heck, I already spent hours doing these simple numbers. Noetica, I am not going to spend hours just you can't be damned to search books correctly. If you find my research unconvincing, then so be it. I think that other editors can read this discussion themselves and decide by themselves whose numbers are more likely to be correct. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:13, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
Enric, I don't know what you mean by "the two I missed". The two what that I missed? For the rest, I have already explained that the inclusion of "crackpot" or taintedly Mormon books makes no difference to the percentages. (By the way, do you also reject Presbyterian and Jewish books? We could also reject non-scholarly or beginner's books, and improve the percentage for "c".) And then, I can report the books I found in each category, having kept careful records in an annotated Word file of 16 pages; if you cannot, why do you think your numbers are more likely to be thought correct? I don't want to put you to more work, but I do advise you to use time (yours and mine) more productively. Good research is reproducible, and can be backed up if it is queried. I may have made one or two slips, as you did earlier; but at least I could find where those slips are without going back to square one. NoeticaTea? 21:48, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
- Struggling with an inadequate connexion here, away from my usual place. I've checked the two that you mention as "missed", Enric. As far as I can see the first has "Halley's comet" dominant in the text, but has poorly edited captions. One of the two captions on p. 83 has "c", but the other has "C"; the caption on p. 87 has "C". There is also "Halley's Comet" in the text on p. 91, when the topic has changed to meteors. The second one you mention appears to have "C" predominantly in the text, but "c" in the index. These two were especially hard to track down, among the 107 examined. Re-assigning both of them to the category "both" very slightly favours the percentage for "c", as against "C" (and note my corrected positioning of those percentages above). For the rest, I don't know which ones you mean, so I can't comment further. NoeticaTea? 23:27, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
- No wonder that your numbers seemed off. If you count hits that way, you can twist any search to say whatever you want it to say. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:41, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
- My numbers "seemed off"? Nice try ☺! My research can be interrogated because I kept a record. Yours cannot, because you did not. What "way" are you talking about, in any case? Here's another presentation of the evidence, updated to include the two re-assignments I have just made:
- capitalised 45 (48.4%)
- uncapitalised 48 (51.6%)
- total of all seemingly consistent sources 93 (100.0%)
- discarded 14 (4 were inconsistent; in 6 nothing was found; 4 were reprints)
- If on further investigation some are to be moved from "capitalised" and "uncapitalised" to "discarded" (because of their inconsistency), the figures might change a little. Which way would they change? We don't know. Same for moves from "nothing was found" to another category or subcategory.
- NoeticaTea? 01:06, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
- Noetica, your classification rules are dubious, you are counting neutral sources as 100% supportive of the result that you want to demonstrate. As a result, your results are highly biased towards supporting your position. --Enric Naval (talk) 09:21, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
- Still with the unsupported slurs and pejorative assertions, eh Enric? What is this "100% supportive" that you attribute to me? How could the results I report be biased? Show where they are, and how. In good faith I show results from a well-delimited Google search (unlike the usual rough work we see in these RM discussions). You have no claim of substance against the replicable research that I present without obfuscation or evasion; so you resort to my classification rules being "dubious", just as my numbers earlier "seemed off"? You'd need to do better than that. You might start by retracting such errors as "we have almost two books that capitalize it as a proper name for each book that doesn't" (see below). Do you really think you can get away with such a claim? NoeticaTea? 16:24, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
- Noetica, your classification rules are dubious, you are counting neutral sources as 100% supportive of the result that you want to demonstrate. As a result, your results are highly biased towards supporting your position. --Enric Naval (talk) 09:21, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
- My numbers "seemed off"? Nice try ☺! My research can be interrogated because I kept a record. Yours cannot, because you did not. What "way" are you talking about, in any case? Here's another presentation of the evidence, updated to include the two re-assignments I have just made:
- Oppose - It's a proper noun. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:20, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
- Support per Noetica. Reliable sources and WP policy outweigh popular, layperson usage. Jojalozzo 02:03, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
- The article's own sources often (though not always) say "Halley's Comet". Unless you think those sources are merely "popular, layperson usage". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:41, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
- Given that the sources are inconclusive (as you say) then we look to general naming policy which does not support capitalization. Jojalozzo 15:38, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
- WP:LOWERCASE says to capitalize proper nouns. And I think it's common sense that articles should use proper nouns in preference to descriptive sentences that are exactly identical word by word. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:16, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
- The style guidelines also supported the current name, until Dickylon changed. Once he had replaced the long-standing examples with ones that supported a move, he opened this move request. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:30, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
- I am referring to the style guidelines that promote names with minimal capitalization. Jojalozzo 20:51, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
- The very first sentence of that guideline says "unless the title is a proper noun". --Enric Naval (talk) 00:08, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
- In case you didn't read my comment above: Proper nouns are determined by usage in reliable sources. Since there is no definitive dominant usage in the sources (as you and others have shown after significant effort - thank you), I propose we use the style guidelines. Jojalozzo 00:38, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
- We have almost two books that capitalize it as a proper name for each book that doesn't. And almost all seem to treat it as a proper name even if they don't capitalize (i.e. the comet called "Halley's comet") and wikipedia capitalizes proper nouns. --Enric Naval (talk) 01:38, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
- From my perspective, "almost all seem to treat it as a proper name" is a bizarre stretch. By my reading "Halley's comet" is being used simply as a way to identify an object, like "Joja's car" or "Enric's user page". Jojalozzo 02:06, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
- Hummm, check this book that uses both formsUnveiling the universe. I don't see any difference of construction between the two forms. --Enric Naval (talk) 09:21, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
- I see "Halley's comet" many times in the text and once in the caption of a photo. One diagram caption has "Halley's Comet" which is probably a typo. I don't understand what point you are making. Jojalozzo 22:13, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
- Please click in "next" and scroll the pages instead of just looking at one page and then dismissing it. The capitalized form appears in a caption in page 83, in both text and caption in page 87, and only in text in page 91. How do you know that it's not the uncapitalized form that is a typo? As far as I know, in pages 82-86 it's using the descriptive sentence "Halley's comet" because it's talking about "Halley's discovery and the comet discovered by Halley", and in the following sections it talks about something else so it switches to the proper name "Halley's Comet". --Enric Naval (talk) 23:36, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
- I don't see any difference in the construction either. This book uses both capitalization forms to identify particular comets. Perhaps the comet section, the ort cloud section, and captions for various figures were authored at different times or edited by different people or typeset by different people. In any case it reinforces my contention that the sources are inconsistent and emphasizes the role of MOS capitalization in this decision. Jojalozzo 01:18, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
- Most sources use consistently only the capitalized form, that was the point of all these discussions about searching books.... --Enric Naval (talk) 10:50, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
- I don't see any difference in the construction either. This book uses both capitalization forms to identify particular comets. Perhaps the comet section, the ort cloud section, and captions for various figures were authored at different times or edited by different people or typeset by different people. In any case it reinforces my contention that the sources are inconsistent and emphasizes the role of MOS capitalization in this decision. Jojalozzo 01:18, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
- Please click in "next" and scroll the pages instead of just looking at one page and then dismissing it. The capitalized form appears in a caption in page 83, in both text and caption in page 87, and only in text in page 91. How do you know that it's not the uncapitalized form that is a typo? As far as I know, in pages 82-86 it's using the descriptive sentence "Halley's comet" because it's talking about "Halley's discovery and the comet discovered by Halley", and in the following sections it talks about something else so it switches to the proper name "Halley's Comet". --Enric Naval (talk) 23:36, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
- I see "Halley's comet" many times in the text and once in the caption of a photo. One diagram caption has "Halley's Comet" which is probably a typo. I don't understand what point you are making. Jojalozzo 22:13, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
- Hummm, check this book that uses both formsUnveiling the universe. I don't see any difference of construction between the two forms. --Enric Naval (talk) 09:21, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
- From my perspective, "almost all seem to treat it as a proper name" is a bizarre stretch. By my reading "Halley's comet" is being used simply as a way to identify an object, like "Joja's car" or "Enric's user page". Jojalozzo 02:06, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
- We have almost two books that capitalize it as a proper name for each book that doesn't. And almost all seem to treat it as a proper name even if they don't capitalize (i.e. the comet called "Halley's comet") and wikipedia capitalizes proper nouns. --Enric Naval (talk) 01:38, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
- In case you didn't read my comment above: Proper nouns are determined by usage in reliable sources. Since there is no definitive dominant usage in the sources (as you and others have shown after significant effort - thank you), I propose we use the style guidelines. Jojalozzo 00:38, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
- The very first sentence of that guideline says "unless the title is a proper noun". --Enric Naval (talk) 00:08, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
- I am referring to the style guidelines that promote names with minimal capitalization. Jojalozzo 20:51, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
- Given that the sources are inconclusive (as you say) then we look to general naming policy which does not support capitalization. Jojalozzo 15:38, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
- The article's own sources often (though not always) say "Halley's Comet". Unless you think those sources are merely "popular, layperson usage". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:41, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
- Comment - There is a problem with Google searches and similar methods. Like other words "comet" can be used as a part of a proper name or as a common noun. Thus, it would be quite consistent to write "Halley first established the periodicity of this comet in 1706. Halley's comet [i.e. the comet associated with Halley] was at first unnamed. It later received the official designation P1/Halley [proper name = official designation] but is normally known as Halley's Comet [alternative proper name]. In many cases, only the author can say whether he intended a word as a proper or common noun, and he can indicate his intentions by capitalizing or not. However, it would seem normal to use the proper name as the article title. If the common noun were used, it would be more like a descriptive title. Publishing houses probably need to take account of the fact that the text may be copy-edited and set by someone other than the author, so they may adopt simplified rules or apply the rules without much thought (possibily to avoid the appearance of inconsistency). Similar considerations would apply to phrases like "the president of the European Union". --Boson (talk) 10:14, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
- Support — FoxCE (talk | contribs) 12:41, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. Halley's Comet is a proper noun and should be capitalised.
The original example of 'Andromeda galaxy' and some others are misleading. The galaxy is named Andromeda, thus 'galaxy' is not part of its name(struck - the word 'galaxy' is part of the name of the Andromeda Galaxy, in order to distinguish it from the Andromeda constellation, known simply as Andromeda). The comet is named Halley's Comet, or Comet Halley, and thus 'comet' is part of its name and should be capitalised per standard English language rules. Wikipedia's guidelines are not an exception to this standard, they support proper name capitalisation. As Boson pointed out above, a simple Google search without analysis will not help you distinguish between 'Halley's comet' meaning 'the comet Halley discovered', and 'Halley's Comet' meaning the proper name for the comet. Consider the sentence 'my dog is named Dog' in a similar light. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 23:49, 29 August 2011 (UTC)- I was like minded until I saw a good number of astronomical papers containing "Halley's comet" (as Enric and Noetica have shown). I think it's very unlikely that there are significant instances where "Halley's comet" is being used to for anything other than the name of the comet. Jojalozzo 21:01, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
- Comment: See the results of a search for halley's comet at OnlineStylebooks.com.
- —Wavelength (talk) 01:22, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks Wavelength. Those results support "Halley's comet", as does this from CMOS16 (current edition of Chicago Manual of Style; not that I always agree with it!):
8.137 Celestial bodies The names of galaxies, constellations, stars, planets, and such are capitalized. For earth, sun, and moon, see 8.139, 8.140.
Aldebaran
Alpha Centauri or α Centauri
the Big Dipper or Ursa Major or the Great Bear
Cassiopeia’s Chair
the Crab Nebula
the Magellanic Clouds
the Milky Way
the North Star or Polaris, polestar
85 Pegasi
Saturn
but
Halley’s comet
the solar system- On the other side of the linguistic pond, the New Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors agrees.
- NoeticaTea? 01:57, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
- Noetica, why not cite the precedent paragraph:
- 8.136 Astronomical terms—additional resources
- The following paragraphs offer only the most general guidelines. Writers or editors working in astronomy or astrophysics should consult Scientific Style and Format (bibliog. 1.1) and the website of the International Astronomical Union.[emphasis added]
- About checking the New Oxford Dictionary, I already told you that it's outdated because it cites a nomenclature that the IAU doesn't use since 1995. This means that it's using the outdated text from the 1991 edition. Yet you keep citing it. --Enric Naval (talk) 07:34, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
- Enric, it is not the "New Oxford Dictionary". It is the New Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors, and as the title suggests it is a premier resource, published in 2009, for exactly the kind of article we are dealing with here. You keep saying it is "outdated" because it doesn't agree with a more specialised and highly technical resource that you think Wikipedia ought to follow, regardless of the context or the purpose of the article. When you keep doing that, I will keep making this reply.
- As for CMOS 8.136, good that you took the trouble to look it up. I did not cite it because that is not where CMOS specifically calls for "Halley's comet" with "c". And we are not "writers or editors working in astronomy or astrophysics"; we are writers and editors working on a general encyclopedia that includes scientic articles, using general principles of punctuation and capitalisation of which those specialised "authorities" are usually unaware, for a readership that they are not concerned to communicate with.
- NoeticaTea? 16:24, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
- Comment: See The IAU Style Manual (1989) of the International Astronomical Union at http://www.iau.org/static/publications/stylemanual1989.pdf, page S30, section 6.13 ("Initial capitals"): "The initial letter of a word should be typed or printed as a capital in the following cases: … individual astronomical objects (such as Earth, the Solar System, Orion, the Crab Nebula, Galactic Centre); …".
- —Wavelength (talk) 16:08, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
- Yes, Wavelength. The IAU itself links various forms of its own rules, including simple scanned PDFs (no OCR); but as far as I can tell the IAU says here, after linking to the provision that you have just cited: "It is emphasized, however, that language conventions are the responsibility of individual nations or groups of nations. While the IAU is willing to help to achieve a minimum degree of orthographic consistency as regards astronomical terms, it cannot undertake to do so for all languages, nor is it in the power of the IAU to enforce the application of any such conventions." Before the text that you cite come these words (underlining added): "The use of capitals for the initial letters of words is much more common in English (and German) than in French. It is recommended that the following rules be adopted in both languages in IAU publications. [The initial letter of a word ...]." Wikipedia is not an IAU publication, and Wikipedia is by no means constrained to follow IAU guidelines for IAU publications, just as ODSWE does not follow IAU guidelines. NoeticaTea? 23:37, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
- Noetica, thank you for your reply. I consulted the IAU guide to see what it said, and not to find support for a position. I had it in mind even before another editor posted a message alluding to it. I am willing to accept Halley's comet. (List of eponyms and Category:Lists of eponyms show variation in capitalization.) Still, we need to know what constitutes consensus.
- —Wavelength (talk) 02:56, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
- Comment - This debate is 4 days old now. Time wasted. No benefit whatsoever to the readers of wikipedia. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:17, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
- Comment: From my Google search for halley's comet site:http://www.iau.org/, I found (only!) seven results, including http://www.iau.org/static/resolutions/IAU1985_French.pdf, which uses Halley's Comet.
- —Wavelength (talk) 21:06, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
- Comment: For more information, editors might wish to consult Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects and Wikipedia:List of online reference desks/Science#Astronomy (520–529).
- —Wavelength (talk) 21:10, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
- Comment - no real opinion yet on what capitalisation should be used (the names of other comets are more interesting, including the comets labelled 'Great' - see the article and list at Great Comet). But from what I've seen, writers shift seamlessly between capitalised and non-capitalised. They shouldn't, and some style guides do tackle the issue, but this does suggest that the results of Google searches and n-grams should be largely discarded. Best to summarise what the authoritative sources are doing and to not be afraid of concluding that those sources don't come down firmly on one side or the other (there doesn't always have to be a clear 'winner', but ultimately a decision should be taken and then people should move on after that, for a period of time at least). FWIW, I'd have no problems with Wikipedia following IAU conventions in this area - I would prefer to follow the conventions of a scientific organisation for science articles, rather than general style guides. Carcharoth (talk) 13:23, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose I’ve been an amateur astronomer for 40 years. Indeed, there is mixed use of “Halley's Comet” and “Halley's comet.” But when it comes to deciding what is most-proper, encyclopedic practices, one must look towards the quality of the sources. Best practices within this discipline has been to follow the lead of the International Astronomical Union. At the bottom if the IAU’s Web site, here, is a link to this list of deep-sky objects. It doesn’t have Halley’s Comet (it isn’t a deep-sky object) but it has Andromeda Galaxy, Barnard's Loop, and Antlia Dwarf. Moreover, this IAU search result for “Halley's Comet” returns this document XIXth General Assembly where discussion is made to “Halley’s Comet.” Please note also that I subscribe to the print edition of Sky & Telescope. It is a preeminent English-language astronomy magazine. They’ve always called it “Halley’s Comet” (as clearly carried forward to their Web practices too as evidenced by this example and this example). Given the extraordinarily clear convention in deep-sky objects to treat all parts of the name as a proper noun, and with a tip of the hat to what Sky & Telescope has long and consistently practiced, I think it is clear that this “Halley’s Comet” is the most-proper practice.
FWIW, this shouldn’t be about volunteer wikipedians trying to “save the English language from illiterate scientists.” The purpose of any encyclopedia is to educate its readership on a given subject and properly prepare them for their continuing studies elsewhere on that subject. We do our readers no service by having them run off and type up a college paper using a capitalization rule that is at odds with text books and what the college professor considers correct. We’re not out to Change The World©™®; we’re here to help ensure readers don’t run off and unknowingly flout conventions widely observed by the knowledgeable experts in the field—even if those experts are *wrong*. Greg L (talk) 03:57, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
- Actually, Greg, you can find plenty of examples of "Halley's comet" in Sky & Telescope if you look back far enough. It sounds to me like you are more on the "change the world" side, adopting the IAU's official position to try to get usage changed. From sources, it looks like they're getting limited traction, gradually. I guess if I was to advise someone writing a term paper, I'd let them know that if it's for an astronomy class they should capitalize it, and if for an English or history class, then lower case. It remains an open questin whether WP style should defer to specialist styles of organizations like the IAU. Maybe so, but I don't see a consensus for it yet. Even if we had that, it remains unclear whether they have an opinion on "Halley's comet"; they do use lower-case "comet Halley" on their timeline of "Near Earth Asteroids". I do see that NASA has been more consistent about using upper case, and I have nothing but respect for those scientists (disclaimer: I used to work for JPL on outer-planet probes); but their usage is not what WP style is about, I think. Dicklyon (talk) 06:27, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
- How far is "back far enough"? Sky&Telescope already used "Halley's Comet" in 1984[25][26]. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:39, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
- Well, I didn't actually find "plenty", but the few that are in Google books, 1963 and 1980, are lower (except in an image label and their new "Halley's Comet Day". Dicklyon (talk) 17:24, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
- Well, the image label should be using a proper noun and it's capitalized. As far as we know, the text is using a descriptive sentence "the comet discovered by Halley". --Enric Naval (talk) 18:32, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
- WTF? The one is in the image is in "title case" as is pretty common; that doesn't imply it's a proper name. The one in the sentence is "Halley's comet" referring to the comet, yet, the one that was named for Halley (not that he discovered!). That's the point. How do you manage to spin it backwards? Dicklyon (talk) 18:42, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
- Well, the image label should be using a proper noun and it's capitalized. As far as we know, the text is using a descriptive sentence "the comet discovered by Halley". --Enric Naval (talk) 18:32, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
- Well, I didn't actually find "plenty", but the few that are in Google books, 1963 and 1980, are lower (except in an image label and their new "Halley's Comet Day". Dicklyon (talk) 17:24, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
- How far is "back far enough"? Sky&Telescope already used "Halley's Comet" in 1984[25][26]. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:39, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
- Prefer Comet Halley ; yes, I know it was discussed in 2008 and rejected, still it's my preference. It also renders the current discussion moot as to it being "Halley's comet" or "Halley's Comet"; the other choice is 1P/Halley, but MOS:SLASH prefers some other title due to technical details of URL formation. 70.24.246.151 (talk) 07:32, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
- Further comment - maybe the focus of the discussion should be on generalities on how to handle comet names of the form "<Name>'s Comet"? Or any name that includes the possessive apostrophe. There are others, such as Donati's Comet (currently at Comet Donati) and Barnard's Loop. I tried searching through Wikipedia titles for ones that include <'s>, but it seems difficult to do that cleanly. On the other hand, there are only 276 pages with "comet" in the title, so it is easy to find all the comets at these titles. The others are: Lexell's Comet, Biela's Comet and Caesar's Comet. Unrelated is Goldbach's comet. Carcharoth (talk) 15:37, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
- The Barnard loop nebula is a more complicated case, since sometimes nebula and sometimes loop nebula is treated as a generic. The forms with capitalized Loop are a large majority (maybe 80–90%), and nebula is about 50-50. But I agree that we should try to work it out for the comets. If you check in google ngrams, you'll find that all of Donati's, Lexell's, Biela's, and Caesar's are much more common with lower-case comet. So yes, they provide good support for what we were trying to do here, avoiding unnecessary capitalization of words that are generic. Dicklyon (talk) 17:37, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
- Hum, just Halley's Comet, ngrams shows a change of tendency in Donati's Comet, Biela's Comet and Lexell's Comet, with the capitalized form getting progressively more common. Caesar's Comet does show predominance of uncapitalized form but most books mentioning it are history books and not astronomy books[27]. Barnald's Loop shows predominance of capitalized and it does appear mostly in astronomical books[28]. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:32, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
- I'm not so sure ngrams help here. You need to know the context in which each phrase is being used. Carcharoth (talk) 18:42, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
- Hum, just Halley's Comet, ngrams shows a change of tendency in Donati's Comet, Biela's Comet and Lexell's Comet, with the capitalized form getting progressively more common. Caesar's Comet does show predominance of uncapitalized form but most books mentioning it are history books and not astronomy books[27]. Barnald's Loop shows predominance of capitalized and it does appear mostly in astronomical books[28]. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:32, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
- The Barnard loop nebula is a more complicated case, since sometimes nebula and sometimes loop nebula is treated as a generic. The forms with capitalized Loop are a large majority (maybe 80–90%), and nebula is about 50-50. But I agree that we should try to work it out for the comets. If you check in google ngrams, you'll find that all of Donati's, Lexell's, Biela's, and Caesar's are much more common with lower-case comet. So yes, they provide good support for what we were trying to do here, avoiding unnecessary capitalization of words that are generic. Dicklyon (talk) 17:37, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) Sure, comet can be used in the generic sense, but here it is being used as a name. Surely that makes a difference? These are specific comets, single identifiable objects, that have been named. This is in contrast to 'names' such as the common name of a species, which should be lowercased (though some areas of Wikipedia use uppercase, such as birds) as there are many that have that name. It is the difference between individual comets and groupings like the Kreutz Sungrazers (that should be lower-cased) and are more like the Capped Herons. There are many individuals that can be called 'Capped Heron', and there are many comets that can be called Kreutz sungrazers, but there is only one Halley's Comet. In passing, I see that some animals are now lower-case again, such as Brown rat. It seems these things go in cycles. But do you agree that names for taxonomic/type groupings should be lowercased, while names should be uppercased? Another classic example is Space Shuttle. That capitalises the grouping of named objects. Ditto for Apollo Lunar Module and things like that. Each LM had a name, but the group name is also capitalised. You can have a lunar module, the Lunar Modules, and the Apollo 16 LM Orion. The capitalisation depends on the context in which you are writing. Carcharoth (talk) 18:40, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
- guideline for fauna]: "Insofar as there is any consensus among Wikipedia editors about capitalisation of common names of species, it is that each WikiProject can decide on its own rules for capitalisation.". The naming guideline for flora says "There is currently no consensus regarding capitalization of common names in articles.". The chemistry naming guideline follows IUPAC's convention of not capitalizing any name or compound. Looks like each subject-specific guideline is free to enable its own rules.
- Which brings us full circle to the starting point: the astronomical objects naming guideline says that celestial bodies have proper nouns and gave "Halley's Comet" as an example, and Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(capitalization) says to capitalize proper nouns. The proposer of this move changed "Halley's Comet" to "Halley's comet" in a related guideline without any discussion one minute before he opened this request [29]. A couple hours before he had inserted "Halley's comet" in the naming guideline for astronomical objects, replacing a capitalized proper noun[30], which means that he knew where people had to look to find the current consensus for comet names. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:40, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
- Many things are named without being capitalized. The question is what is a "proper name". The guideline for determining which is which is what's at issue. I liked DGG's "consistently capitalized in high-quality sources" or something like that. If we don't do that, we'll follow each specialist area capitalizing stuff in their area, even though general-audience sources don't. The Apollo lunar module is a good example, as it's majority lowercase in sources; if you discount the caps due to title case in titles, headings, and such, it's even more clear; just like Halley's comet. Dicklyon (talk) 18:51, 4 September 2011 (UTC)