3 ms·

The weird capitalization made me think the company name was "Start Woven."

by ojbyrne 16y ago

bmelton 16y ago
It's a headline, so generally, everything except articles 'on', 'to', 'the', 'an', etc, are capitalized. Here are the basic rules: http://www.newsletterfillers.com/archives/grammar/capitalization_headline.htm http://www.newsletterfillers.com/archives/grammar/capitaliza...
- aepstein 16y ago
  Think it's the lowercase "go" that made it confusing...
- klochner 16y ago
  "On To" is a subordinating conjunction, so it should be capitalized. side note: grammatical rules aren't set in stone, they're guidelines to help you achieve clarity -- if the title looks wrong, it probably is.
  - Cushman 16y ago
    Really? I'd say "on" is pretty clearly a preposition— here meaning "onward". Since "on" isn't often used in that sense except in the case of compounds like "go on", "move on", "drive on" etc. it might make more sense to say that "go on" is a phrasal verb and a single lexical item. (Note that we could replace "go on" in its entirely with a more semantically shallow "leave" without affecting the rest of the sentence.) "To" is tricky because it seems that we can replace it with a conjunction and maintain the meaning of the sentence— "I go on and start Woven" does mean nearly the same thing. However, you need to look at the ellipsis (linguisticspeak for omission): "I go on and [I] start Woven" makes sense. "I go on to [I] start Woven" obviously doesn't work. So we've actually changed the structure of the sentence, meaning our replacement is no good. It makes more sense to see the "to" as attached to the infinitive "start", with the form working as an adverb of reason: "Why do you go on? To start Woven." The actual implied conjunction here is probably "in order". (If you're feeling clever, the infinitive also assumes the subject of the main clause, thus the ellipsis: "I go on [in order] [for me] to start Woven.") So by my analysis, both of those words are actually part of verb forms. Uncapitalizing either seems to separate them from their verb phrase, causing the confusion we've seen. However I'd recommend, especially in this informal context, just using normal sentence capitalization, which everyone will have no trouble parsing— and which is how the title is capitalized on the blog itself!
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- simonw 16y ago
  I'm not a big fan of that headline style - it tends to look a bit cheesy in my opinion. I think it's mor of a US newspaper thing - the NY Times do it, but guardian.co.uk doesn't. To be fair, neither does the washingtonpost.com
- simonw 16y ago
  I'm not a big fan of that headline style - it tends to look a bit cheesy in my opinion. I think it's mor of a US newspaper thing - the NY Times do it, but guardian.co.uk doesn't. To be fair, neither does the washingtonpost.com

The weird capitalization made me think the company name was "Start Woven."

by ojbyrne 16y ago

The weird capitalization made me think the company name was "Start Woven."

It's a headline, so generally, everything except articles 'on', 'to', 'the', 'an', etc, are capitalized. Here are the basic rules: http://www.newsletterfillers.com/archives/grammar/capitalization_headline.htm http://www.newsletterfillers.com/archives/grammar/capitaliza...

aepstein 16y ago
Think it's the lowercase "go" that made it confusing...
klochner 16y ago
"On To" is a subordinating conjunction, so it should be capitalized. side note: grammatical rules aren't set in stone, they're guidelines to help you achieve clarity -- if the title looks wrong, it probably is.
- Cushman 16y ago
  Really? I'd say "on" is pretty clearly a preposition— here meaning "onward". Since "on" isn't often used in that sense except in the case of compounds like "go on", "move on", "drive on" etc. it might make more sense to say that "go on" is a phrasal verb and a single lexical item. (Note that we could replace "go on" in its entirely with a more semantically shallow "leave" without affecting the rest of the sentence.) "To" is tricky because it seems that we can replace it with a conjunction and maintain the meaning of the sentence— "I go on and start Woven" does mean nearly the same thing. However, you need to look at the ellipsis (linguisticspeak for omission): "I go on and [I] start Woven" makes sense. "I go on to [I] start Woven" obviously doesn't work. So we've actually changed the structure of the sentence, meaning our replacement is no good. It makes more sense to see the "to" as attached to the infinitive "start", with the form working as an adverb of reason: "Why do you go on? To start Woven." The actual implied conjunction here is probably "in order". (If you're feeling clever, the infinitive also assumes the subject of the main clause, thus the ellipsis: "I go on [in order] [for me] to start Woven.") So by my analysis, both of those words are actually part of verb forms. Uncapitalizing either seems to separate them from their verb phrase, causing the confusion we've seen. However I'd recommend, especially in this informal context, just using normal sentence capitalization, which everyone will have no trouble parsing— and which is how the title is capitalized on the blog itself!
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simonw 16y ago
I'm not a big fan of that headline style - it tends to look a bit cheesy in my opinion. I think it's mor of a US newspaper thing - the NY Times do it, but guardian.co.uk doesn't. To be fair, neither does the washingtonpost.com
simonw 16y ago
I'm not a big fan of that headline style - it tends to look a bit cheesy in my opinion. I think it's mor of a US newspaper thing - the NY Times do it, but guardian.co.uk doesn't. To be fair, neither does the washingtonpost.com