possible bug with character name case in messages

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I've just run into the (Hearse) bones of a character named "narge"
where the name is all lower case. The character's ghost is also lurking
about. Part of the ensuing message sequence is:

You hit narge's ghost!
Narge's ghost touches you!

Question: Should the ghost's name in the latter sentence be spelled
"Narge" or "narge"?

My sense is that the name "narge" should preserve spelling even when
appearing at the start of a sentence. But I thought I'd take the
newsgroup's pulse before submitting a bug.

--
Bobby Schmidt
 
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Bobby Schmidt wrote:

> You hit narge's ghost!
> Narge's ghost touches you!

> Question: Should the ghost's name in the latter sentence be spelled
> "Narge" or "narge"?

> My sense is that the name "narge" should preserve spelling even when
> appearing at the start of a sentence. But I thought I'd take the
> newsgroup's pulse before submitting a bug.

I don't see anything wrong with it. Rule number one in spelling with
regard to capitalisation is that every sentence should start with a
capital. For example, in *this* sentence, the word "for", which normally
does not have a capital, is capitalised.

On the other hand, another spelling rule is that a *name* should always
be capitalised. Hence, I think that you could argue that "narge" in the
*first* sentence should be capitalised, no matter how the player
initially misspelled it.

--
Boudewijn Waijers (kroisos at home.nl).

The garden of happiness is surrounded by a wall so low only children
can look over it. - "the Orphanage of Hits", former Dutch radio show.
 
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Boudewijn Waijers <kroisos@REMOVETHISWORD.home.nl> wrote:
> Bobby Schmidt wrote:
>
>> You hit narge's ghost!
>> Narge's ghost touches you!
>
>> Question: Should the ghost's name in the latter sentence be spelled
>> "Narge" or "narge"?
>
>> My sense is that the name "narge" should preserve spelling even when
>> appearing at the start of a sentence. But I thought I'd take the
>> newsgroup's pulse before submitting a bug.
>
> I don't see anything wrong with it. Rule number one in spelling with
> regard to capitalisation is that every sentence should start with a
> capital. For example, in *this* sentence, the word "for", which
> normally does not have a capital, is capitalised.
>
> On the other hand, another spelling rule is that a *name* should
> always be capitalised. Hence, I think that you could argue that
> "narge" in the *first* sentence should be capitalised, no matter how
> the player initially misspelled it.

Heh. Bobby's a programmer. The letter case of a name is part of that
name ("MacKay" and "Mackay" are two different names), and letter case in
a name is (almost always) preserved.

It makes sense to me that "narge" is the *correct* spelling of the name
and that "Narge" is not. As such, he has a legitimate point that this
could be considered a spelling error.

In technical documentation, function names are the same way. if you're
writing about 'main()', you do start the sentence 'main() is the first
function called in your program...' with a lowercase letter. FWIW, I
try very hard to not start sentences like that -- I'll reword it if
possible.

OTOH, I don't think it's important enough to worry about here. If the
code is easy enough to do, but I suspect not (it's probably implemented
'build the sentence, upcase the first character'... having it recognize
correctly that the first word is the name and may be lowercase could be
a little difficult, especially if the name is otherwise a normal word).


Keith
--
Keith Davies "Trying to sway him from his current kook-
keith.davies@kjdavies.org rant with facts is like trying to create
keith.davies@gmail.com a vacuum in a room by pushing the air
http://www.kjdavies.org/ out with your hands." -- Matt Frisch
 
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"Boudewijn Waijers" <kroisos@REMOVETHISWORD.home.nl> writes:
> Bobby Schmidt wrote:
>
> > You hit narge's ghost!
> > Narge's ghost touches you!
>
> > Question: Should the ghost's name in the latter sentence be spelled
> > "Narge" or "narge"?
>
> > My sense is that the name "narge" should preserve spelling even when
> > appearing at the start of a sentence. But I thought I'd take the
> > newsgroup's pulse before submitting a bug.
>
> I don't see anything wrong with it. Rule number one in spelling with
> regard to capitalisation is that every sentence should start with a
> capital. For example, in *this* sentence, the word "for", which normally
> does not have a capital, is capitalised.

There are exceptions to this in cases where capitalisation would
actually destroy the sense of the sentence. the() is a function in
NetHack that prepends 'the' to names, while The() is a function that
prepends 'The' to names, and applying capitalisation to this sentence
would confuse the matter utterly.

> On the other hand, another spelling rule is that a *name* should always
> be capitalised. Hence, I think that you could argue that "narge" in the
> *first* sentence should be capitalised, no matter how the player
> initially misspelled it.

I'd be inclined to say that lowercasing a name allows it to be treated
as a common noun rather than a proper noun (that is, it'd still be
capitalised at the start of sentences, as here). The same issue arises
with pet names:

Some mutt bites the kobold lord. The kobold lord misses some mutt.

If the code here were case-preserving, it'd get this wrong; and it has
no way of divining the wish of the original player choosing the name,
so it doesn't seem unreasonable to handle it consistently.

(If a player gives his pets names that can only be distinguished by
case, he deserves what he gets.)

--
: Dylan O'Donnell http://www.spod-central.org/~psmith/ :
: "Zabadak, karakakora kakarakak, / Zabadak, shai shai skagalak." :
: -- Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, "Zabadak" :
 
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Keith Davies wrote:

> Heh. Bobby's a programmer. The letter case of a name is part of that
> name ("MacKay" and "Mackay" are two different names), and letter case in
> a name is (almost always) preserved.

That's part of it, yes: my background in programming C-like languages
where case is significant to identity.

> In technical documentation, function names are the same way. if you're
> writing about 'main()', you do start the sentence 'main() is the first
> function called in your program...' with a lowercase letter. FWIW, I
> try very hard to not start sentences like that -- I'll reword it if
> possible.

In publishing we get around this by using different font families for
use vs mention, so that (e.g.) "main" as a normal English word would be
in a proportional serif font, while "main" as a function name would be
in a non-proportional sans serif font.

But I am also thinking of trademarked names. Which of these is correct:

IPods are selling well.

or

iPods are selling well.

So in reply to Boudewijn's statements:

> I don't see anything wrong with it. Rule number one in spelling with
> regard to capitalisation is that every sentence should start with a
> capital. For example, in *this* sentence, the word "for", which
> normally does not have a capital, is capitalised.
>
> On the other hand, another spelling rule is that a *name* should
> always be capitalised. Hence, I think that you could argue that
> "narge" in the *first* sentence should be capitalised, no matter how
> the player initially misspelled it.

I'd counter that in at least two domains -- software source code and
trademarks -- a name can legtimately start with a lower-case letter,
and that the lower-casing ought to be preserved when mixed into English
sentences.

And I'll add a third domain: URLs.

Closer to NetHack's "reality" are public figures who spell their names
with lower-case letters. The singer k.d. lang comes to mind
immediately: how do we spell her name at the start of a sentence?

So even in the domain of people names, there can be lower-case letters
at the start.

What motivated my original observation: The dungeon level had *3*
different bones piles and ghosts. All ghosts were next to me. I
initially thought two of the ghosts were named "narge" and "Narge"
based on the messages. It took me a bit to sort out.

--
Bobby Schmidt
 
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psmithnews@spod-central.org (Dylan O'Donnell) writes:

> actually destroy the sense of the sentence. the() is a function in
> NetHack that prepends 'the' to names, while The() is a function that
> prepends 'The' to names, and applying capitalisation to this sentence
> would confuse the matter utterly.

Yeah.. and I think it would normally be better to change the structure of
the sentence so that it would begin with something else instead of a
function name.
(There is a function the() in Nethack..)
When a sentence begins with a capitalized function name, the reader can't
always be sure whether the function is really capitalized or the writer
just capitalized it without thinking of it. And when a sentence begins
with a non-capitalized function name, it just doesn't look good.

--
Jukka Lahtinen
 
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Dylan O'Donnell wrote:

> There are exceptions to this in cases where capitalisation would
> actually destroy the sense of the sentence. the() is a function in
> NetHack that prepends 'the' to names, while The() is a function that
> prepends 'The' to names, and applying capitalisation to this sentence
> would confuse the matter utterly.

In Dutch, there is a solution for an alike problem.

Sometimes, a sentence begins with a word that has been shortened by use
of an apostrophe.

In English, this may also appear: "'t was a cold autumn day", where "It"
at the start of the sentence is abbreviated to "'t".

In Dutch, when a sentence starts with a word that is lacking its first
letter, the *next* word is capitalised: "'t Was een koude herfstdag"
would be the Dutch translation of the above English sentence.

This rule goes for words that are missing their starting letter, but I'm
not sure whether this would also be a valid rule (in Dutch) for
trademarks that start with a lower case letter, in which case it would
also be "impossible" to capitalise the first letter.

--
Boudewijn Waijers (kroisos at home.nl).

The garden of happiness is surrounded by a wall so low only children
can look over it. - "the Orphanage of Hits", former Dutch radio show.
 
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chuck wrote:

>> E. E. Cummings was quite happy for his name to be capitalised in the
>> standard fashion; the lowercasing was a marketing wheeze of his
>> editors.
>>
> Was E.E. Cummings the author of Archie and Mahidabel (sp?)?

No, that was Don Marquis, and it's "Mehitabel".

--
Benjamin Lewis

Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
 
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On Mon, 9 May 2005, Boudewijn Waijers wrote:
>
> In Dutch, there is a solution for an alike problem.
>
> Sometimes, a sentence begins with a word that has been shortened by use
> of an apostrophe.
>
> In English, this may also appear: "'t was a cold autumn day", where "It"
> at the start of the sentence is abbreviated to "'t".

Except that in English, the first letter would always be capitalized;
and at least in all the Englishes with which I'm familiar, the words
"'twas", "'tis", "'twere", et cetera, are all single words without a
space. Thus: "'Twas a cold autumn day."
'Cause that's how we do it, that's why. :)

> In Dutch, when a sentence starts with a word that is lacking its first
> letter, the *next* word is capitalised: "'t Was een koude herfstdag"
> would be the Dutch translation of the above English sentence.

Interesting.

> This rule goes for words that are missing their starting letter, but I'm
> not sure whether this would also be a valid rule (in Dutch) for
> trademarks that start with a lower case letter, in which case it would
> also be "impossible" to capitalise the first letter.

The general rule in English is just to avoid starting sentences with
weirdnesses like that. Instead of writing "eBay is a big company," write
"The online auction site eBay is a big company." Or, as copy-editing
blog TheSlot.com has recommended, just write "Ebay," like a normal human
would, and trust your readers to figure it out. ;-)

-Arthur,
insert Nethack content here
 
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In article
<Pine.LNX.4.60-041.0505092008570.11262@unix41.andrew.cmu.edu>,
"Arthur J. O'Dwyer" <ajo@nospam.andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:

> > This rule goes for words that are missing their starting letter, but I'm
> > not sure whether this would also be a valid rule (in Dutch) for
> > trademarks that start with a lower case letter, in which case it would
> > also be "impossible" to capitalise the first letter.
>
> The general rule in English is just to avoid starting sentences with
> weirdnesses like that. Instead of writing "eBay is a big company," write
> "The online auction site eBay is a big company." Or, as copy-editing
> blog TheSlot.com has recommended, just write "Ebay," like a normal human
> would, and trust your readers to figure it out. ;-)

I always approached it from the standpoint that a created-word trademark
isn't really a word. It's a glyph that happens to be representable by a
sequence of familiar letters.

G

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There's nothing quite like the joy of first hearing an Alvin & the Chipmunks
cover of Pink Floyd's "The Final Cut." "Not Now John" is especially sublime.
 
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"Boudewijn Waijers" <kroisos@REMOVETHISWORD.home.nl> wrote:

> Bobby Schmidt wrote:
>
> > You hit narge's ghost!
> > Narge's ghost touches you!
>
> > Question: Should the ghost's name in the latter sentence be spelled
> > "Narge" or "narge"?
>
> > My sense is that the name "narge" should preserve spelling even when
> > appearing at the start of a sentence. But I thought I'd take the
> > newsgroup's pulse before submitting a bug.
>
> I don't see anything wrong with it. Rule number one in spelling with
> regard to capitalisation is that every sentence should start with a
> capital. For example, in *this* sentence, the word "for", which normally
> does not have a capital, is capitalised.
>
> On the other hand, another spelling rule is that a *name* should always
> be capitalised.

Then again, on Usenet the spelling rule is generally that a name should
be spelled and capitalised as its user does it. Similar rules apply in
quite a few other computing areas - login names, for example, are often
case-sensitive.

(I also note that ee cummings would disagree with you, but then again, I
disagree with ee cummings at least on the subjects of his qualities as a
poet and the value of his lower-case gimmick.)
 
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rlb@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl (Richard Bos) writes:
> (I also note that ee cummings would disagree with you, but then again, I
> disagree with ee cummings at least on the subjects of his qualities as a
> poet and the value of his lower-case gimmick.)

E. E. Cummings was quite happy for his name to be capitalised in the
standard fashion; the lowercasing was a marketing wheeze of his
editors.

--
: Dylan O'Donnell http://www.spod-central.org/~psmith/ :
: "Zabadak, karakakora kakarakak, / Zabadak, shai shai skagalak." :
: -- Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, "Zabadak" :
 
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> E. E. Cummings was quite happy for his name to be capitalised in the
> standard fashion; the lowercasing was a marketing wheeze of his
> editors.
>
Was E.E. Cummings the author of Archie and Mahidabel (sp?)?
 
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Gregory Weston <uce@splook.com> wrote:
> In article
> <Pine.LNX.4.60-041.0505092008570.11262@unix41.andrew.cmu.edu>,
> "Arthur J. O'Dwyer" <ajo@nospam.andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
>
>> > This rule goes for words that are missing their starting letter, but I'm
>> > not sure whether this would also be a valid rule (in Dutch) for
>> > trademarks that start with a lower case letter, in which case it would
>> > also be "impossible" to capitalise the first letter.
>>
>> The general rule in English is just to avoid starting sentences with
>> weirdnesses like that. Instead of writing "eBay is a big company," write
>> "The online auction site eBay is a big company." Or, as copy-editing
>> blog TheSlot.com has recommended, just write "Ebay," like a normal human
>> would, and trust your readers to figure it out. ;-)
>
> I always approached it from the standpoint that a created-word trademark
> isn't really a word. It's a glyph that happens to be representable by a
> sequence of familiar letters.
>
> G
>

Which doesn't make .net any easier from a parsing point of view...
 
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In article <428332d8$0$93745$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader01.plus.net>,
Ian Stirling <root@mauve.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> Gregory Weston <uce@splook.com> wrote:
>
> > I always approached it from the standpoint that a created-word trademark
> > isn't really a word. It's a glyph that happens to be representable by a
> > sequence of familiar letters.
>
> Which doesn't make .net any easier from a parsing point of view...

You mean .NET? ;)

--
Goal 2005: Convincing James Hetfield to cover the Strawberry Shortcake
"Are You Berry Berry Happy?" song.
 
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chuck wrote:

>> In publishing we get around this by using different font families for
>> use vs mention, so that (e.g.) "main" as a normal English word would be
>> in a proportional serif font, while "main" as a function name would be
>> in a non-proportional sans serif font.
>
> I always thought that was strange as (virtually) any programmer I've
> known likes code in perportional font (for indentation purposes).

I think you may have this backwards, assuming the programmers you know
aren't completely atypical. Proportional fonts are not fixed width.

--
Benjamin Lewis

Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
 
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Chuck

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> In publishing we get around this by using different font families for
> use vs mention, so that (e.g.) "main" as a normal English word would be
> in a proportional serif font, while "main" as a function name would be
> in a non-proportional sans serif font.

I always thought that was strange as (virtually) any programmer I've known
likes code in perportional font (for indentation purposes).

> I'd counter that in at least two domains -- software source code and
> trademarks -- a name can legtimately start with a lower-case letter,
> and that the lower-casing ought to be preserved when mixed into English
> sentences.
>
> And I'll add a third domain: URLs.
>
> Closer to NetHack's "reality" are public figures who spell their names
> with lower-case letters. The singer k.d. lang comes to mind
> immediately: how do we spell her name at the start of a sentence?

That's a gramatical error that she decides to use for "style" purposes.

> So even in the domain of people names, there can be lower-case letters
> at the start.
 
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Chuck

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Benjamin Lewis <bclewis@cs.sfu.ca> wrote in
news:yy7o1x8292d3.fsf@css.css.sfu.ca:

> chuck wrote:
>
>>> In publishing we get around this by using different font families for
>>> use vs mention, so that (e.g.) "main" as a normal English word would be
>>> in a proportional serif font, while "main" as a function name would be
>>> in a non-proportional sans serif font.
>>
>> I always thought that was strange as (virtually) any programmer I've
>> known likes code in perportional font (for indentation purposes).
>
> I think you may have this backwards, assuming the programmers you know
> aren't completely atypical. Proportional fonts are not fixed width.
>
duh, ok yeah. Little slip on the nomenclature and the reasoning of it
there...
 
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