Help:Style conventions

Note: This page was begun on 12 June 2009 and is still under construction.

Style conventions at ChoralWiki

The purpose of this page is to outline various style conventions in effect at ChoralWiki. These have evolved over the period of time since the inception of ChoralWiki in 2005, and the material presented here has been largely culled from norms specified in various places here, as well as from the practices adopted and agreed upon by Administrators. As a general rule, the style and grammar conventions here are the same as (or very similar to) those of Wikipedia. However, unlike Wikipedia, which has a huge number of users that regularly patrol, correct, and enforce conventions there, CPDL has a rather small core of volunteers (often with divided reponsibilities and commitments) for these tasks.

As a consequence, help from new volunteers for such tasks is solicited and will be greatly appreciated. Moreover, all users making contributions to ChoralWiki are strongly encouraged to become acquainted with and make use of the guidelines presented here, thereby reducing the workload on those having to make corrections to contributions in order to bring them into accord with style conventions.

Note: Sometimes there might be disagreement on these issues, in which case users should discuss the matter amicably towards an agreeable resolution, but in cases where acceptable agreement cannot be reached, please accede to a determination by the Administrators.

Titles of works and pages

• When the title is text the convention is: capitalize only the first word and any proper nouns (or proper noun phrases such as "Holy Spirit") in a page or musical work title, unless the title is in a non-English language where other capitalization standards apply (eg. German).¹ This more or less parallels the Wikipedia convention. An exception to this rule occurs when the verifiable original source text of the work (not the title of the text work) uses different capitalization, and in cases of doubt, the above convention should be followed. Thus, a title such as "Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow" is completely inappropriate (even if you find that way it in a hymnal); instead, it should be "Praise God from whom all blessings flow" (note, that even though "whom" refers to "God", it is uncapitalized).

• For musical works with a non-text title (in English), the convention is slightly more flexible, in that minor words are to be uncapitalized, such as pronouns (except "I" and, when it refers to the Deity, "Thee"), indefinite articles ("a", "an", "the"), standard conjunctions ("and", "or", "but", etc.), prepositions ("in", "of", "with", etc.). This is, more or less, the convention many publishing houses use for book and other titles. Words other than proper nouns may also be uncapitalized (as with the "title is text" case) and is encouraged for new works.

• For non-musical work page titles, the convention is the same as the title is text convention above, eg. "CPDL passes the 10,000 score pages milestone" or "Score submission guide" (have you read this? If not, you really should!).

Arranger information

When posting an arrangement of a work by another composer that is not a significant recomposition of a work listed at ChoralWiki, the arrangement should be posted on the work page with the original composer's name, and the Arranger template cited just beneath the "Edition notes:" section of the arranged edition. Examples of such arrangements include Descants composed for a hymn, minor reharmonizations of hymns or hymn settings, new accompaniments (other than Keyboard reductions of a cappella works or straightforward Keyboard reductions of instrumental accompaniments).

Transposed edition information

When posting a transposition of a work to a key different from the original, the "Edition notes:" section should contain the degree of transposition (eg. "up a minor third" or "up three semitones"), and a Voicing template added just beneath the "Edition notes:" section specifying any new voicing resulting from the transposition.

References

¹ See Help:Score submission guide.