"Grammatically this seems correct"...
Sorry to keep banging on about this topic but grammar has nothing to do
with capitalisation or not.
Grammar is a property of the relations between the words of a sentence, not
of their written representation. It would be quite possible to have a
written representation of a grammatical sentence that had no puncutation or
capitalisation at all.
Oh, and I am in favour of capitalising species' names.
John Leonard
On 4 January 2012 13:42, Jeremy O'Wheel <> wrote:
> The Australian Journal of Zoology, and I think most scientific
> journals has this to say in its note to authors;
>
> "Do not use initial capitals for vernacular names of species except
> where the name is based on a proper name (e.g. regent honeyeater, but
> Port Lincoln parrot; sugar glider, but Leadbeater´s possum)."
>
> http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/93/aid/392.htm#6
>
> Grammatically this seems correct, and I presume explains why the BBC
> and Australian Geographic follow the same convention.
>
> It might be a specific convention amongst birding organisations to
> capitalise common names, but I think it's not a normal convention more
> generally, and I suspect most publishers of more general biology than
> just birds would not follow this convention. The Oxdord dictionary
> definition of "proper noun" seems to support not capitalising common
> names.
>
> Jeremy
>
> On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 12:46 PM, Tony Keene <> wrote:
> > Ah, the tyranny of house styles. A certain institute I used to work at
> had a house style almost incompatible with the sciences and a publishing
> group that really should know better in the chemical sciences produces
> styles that border on the illiterate. As for a response from the BBC, good
> luck. As Ian Hislop once said "the BBC goes from breathtaking arrogance to
> grovelling apology wih nothing inbetween."
> > One thing sometimes overlooked is that while a species is treated as a
> proper noun, the family is not (so Wonga Pigeon, but a flock of pigeons).
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Tony
> >
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