Bbc. Vat. 1St January. 2Nd. Cap - Ab Title Bars

Gromit | 07:52 Fri 28th Jun 2013 | Editor's Blog

23 Answers

I typed above

BBC. VAT. 1st january. 2nd. CAP - AB title bars

We have had to accept the strange way the AB title bar works (or don't). We have been told it is a technical issue and there are no intentions to change it.

If we are stuck with it, could you possibly give us a brief explanation of what it helps you to do, that a normal capitalising writing space can't.

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factor-fiction

I assume it's just a case of being easier to start every word in the title with a capital than to programme the (what I feel are odd) conventions of having most words in a title starting with capitals and certain short words in the middle of the sentence starting in lower case

AB Editor

"Could you possibly give us a brief explanation of what it helps you to do, that a normal capitalising writing space can't."

Sure.

Historically it was to counter a few things:

1. ALL CAPS POSTS (SHOUTING!)
2. PosTs WHeRe tHE TiTle iS eNTerEd LikE This To Be ObnoXious

It also gives us a consistency for normal questions, mostly. So we don't get all lower case, all title case or all other-kind-of-title-case.

It's harder to defend that we've not had a problem with the nasty, loud, brash trolls we've had in the past.

We could change it (given time and reason to) - but would you really want the free text entry? Or a version of what we have, but with exceptions?

Gromit

Question Author

Ab Editor,

Like there is a filter for swearing, could you have a filter for common acronyms like BBC, VAT, UKiP etc that are exceptions to the lowercase rule.

I realise this is not a great issue, but some recent titles on News came out very odd, the CAP cap one for instance.

AB Editor

Yep, I wonder how clever we can be with it. I'll find out.

If it's something I can do (rather than use the tech team's valuable time) I'll give it a bash