Wikipedia:WikiProject Animals/Draft capitalization guidelines
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Purpose of this draft proposal:
- To clarify and confirm existing uncontroversial guidelines and conventions, and present them in a "quick-reference" table format, for inclusion into the guidelines for the capitalization of common names of species in order to:
- a) help prevent multiple page moves of existing articles;
- b) help ensure new articles are properly named when created
- To possibly agree upon new conventions currently unresolved.
Proposed additions/clarifications to guidelines:
- Common names of animal species are written either in title case or sentence case depending upon the taxonomic group (shown below).
- In title case, the first letter of every important word is capitalized (e.g., Grey Currawong, Duke of Burgundy), except for words that follow a hyphen (e.g., Brown-headed Spider Monkey).
- In sentence case, no capital letters are used (e.g., brown bear, ray-finned shark), except for proper names (e.g., North American beaver, Roosevelt's elk).
- Names of higher categories of animals are always written in sentence case (e.g., kangaroo rat, river martin).
- Individual articles should be consistent in using either title or sentence case for common names. If an article on an animal species uses title-case title, all species mentioned in the text should have their name in title case.