birding-aus

Publishing conventions re bird-names.

To: Dr Richard Nowotny <>
Subject: Publishing conventions re bird-names.
From: Carl Clifford <>
Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:03:31 +1100
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



===============================
www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com

To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to: 
===============================

===============================
www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com

To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to: 
===============================

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the birding-aus mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU