Commentary on Western Civilization
It’s the morning after the Iowa caucuses, the first “official” step toward choosing the next leader of the free world.
The #3 most popular news story on CNN this morning, according to their “Most Popular” sidebar, is a story on the caucus titled Obama, Huckabee win in Iowa. When did we stop capitalizing titles? But I digress…
The #2 most popular story on the same site? An analysis of the election titled Huckabee up, Clinton down.
And the #1 most popular story on CNN the morning after the Iowa caucuses? The story that the most people are reading? Britney Spears taken to hospital.
It’s all about priorities.
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Headlines are different than book titles. “Sentence case” for headlines is common practice.
Yay for my high school Newspaper 1 class, where I had to memorize the style manual.
Oh my gosh! Is she okay?!
Joanna,
Wikipedia? Come on… There’s obviously some “sentence case” gang out there making edits and defacing the article. I mean, look at their arguments: “Title case can cause confusion with case-sensitive scientific notation”? Yeah, that’s an issue with headlines a lot.
The OWL at Purdue recommends capitalization for:
“The major words in the titles of books, articles, and songs (but not short prepositions or the articles ‘the,’ ‘a,’ or ‘an,’ if they are not the first word of the title).”
OK, so you’ve got your source, I’ve got mine. We’ll call it even. Either way, I think we can agree that the issue of capitalization is much more important than the actual content of one of those headlines…
What bothers me more than capitalization these days is the incessant need for a cute/catchy headline – especially in the sports world. Headlines like “Pistons Burn Heat” or “Pats Grounf the Eagles” make me not even want to read the article.
But I’m about over Brittany headlines. I wish a judge would just find her in contempt and lock her up for long enough to make her go away – or at least learn how to behave so that she stays out of the headlines.