Richard,
I dimly remember from my stone age school days that nouns which
describe an specific person, place or thing, such as a "Pied
Butcherbird" is always capitalised, whereas common names is used for
general items, such as bird, cheese, plate etc. Unfortunately there
is a creeping Malaise in the English Language which is causing a
serious breakdown of the rules of grammar which has resulted in the
demise of Capitalization of Proper Nouns along with other grammatical
elements, such as Colons, Semi-colons and to an extent, Commas. This
breakdown probably has originated in the media as a cost saving
exercise, as it saves on ink and in the electronic media, electricity.
Carl Clifford
On 31/12/2007, at 3:10 PM, Dr Richard Nowotny wrote:
I'm currently reading Mark Obmascik's The Big Year [Free Press, 2004] (a
very enjoyable read, recommended to me by Jill Dening, which adds
considerably to one's understanding and enjoyment of the phenomenon
of the
big year [in this case in the US] - as recently recorded so
entertainingly
in this country by Sean Dooley). As I was reading of evening
grosbeaks, bald
eagles, short-eared owls, black-and-white warblers, etc it reminded
me of an
old question to which I realized I still don't know the answer: Why
do we
birders write 'Pied Butcherbird' (including in our field-guides and our
intra-disciplinary literature) while in main-stream books the
convention is
to write 'pied butcherbird' - without capitals? [And similarly for
singing
honeyeater, red kangaroo, hump-backed whale, etc.]
From first principles one might think the following should apply:
A butcherbird is a type of bird of which there are a number of distinct
species.
A pied butcherbird (descriptive) is a butcherbird which has black and
white
colouring (which applies to a greater or lesser extent to 3 of our 4
butcherbirds).
A Pied Butcherbird is the distinct species Cracticus nigrogularis.
Writing 'I saw a pied butcherbird' seems to lack the same precision
that is
conveyed by 'I saw a Pied Butcherbird.' This becomes even more
obvious (and
potentially confusing) when one writes 'I saw a common tern.' Or 'I
heard a
singing honeyeater.'
Having hopefully established the issue to readers' satisfaction, my
question
to you all is:
Why is there a general publishing convention that common names of
birds (and
other animals) are not capitalized (with its associated loss of
precision)
and how did it come to be?
Richard NOWOTNY
Port Melbourne, Victoria
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