Talk:Getrag/Archive 1

message: :Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *Support or *Oppose, then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.
*Support as nom. Recently moved by a user who calls this an acronym of Getriebe- und Zahnradfabrik Hermann Hagenmeyer AG. Same user also reverted an attempt to move it back. Capitalized on the company's website.
:However, not capitalized in most Google News searches, most Google Scholar searches, most (all?) Google Books searches, and not capitalized on its home language article at de:Getrag. Site specific searches of NY Times, the BBC, Reuters, CNN, The (London) Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal all show the uncapitalized form as most common.
:User recommends amending WP:MOSTM to insist the acronyms should be capitalized, but both the Chicago Manual of Style and the Guardian Style Guide recommend against all caps unless the acronym is also an initialism (this is only a contraction).
:Majority of inbound links to the page come from the Getrag redirect (partly because the article existed there for years prior to the recent move, no doubt). Conversations at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Automobiles#Category:GETRAG transmissions and subsequently at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (trademarks)#Partial Acronyms as Registered Trademarks saw no progress. User insists that web searches and news searches "do not reflect common usage".
:Our article at acronym and initialism points out that "Mid-20th century German showed a tendency toward acronym-contractions", giving the non-capitalized Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei) as one of several examples, none of which are all caps.
:If this is moved, we'll also tidy up the categories, since the user who moved the page also created :Category:GETRAG transmissions, a duplicate of :Category:Getrag transmissions. Other pages with "GETRAG" in the name will also be moved.
*Oppose This move should not take place as this is an acronym.  Another example of such an acronym is SYSCO, which is also an incomplete acronym, or acronym-contraction as it stands for Systems and Services Company, but is an acronym never the less.
:*Wikipedia's Manual of Style on Capitalization (MOS:CL#All caps)  covers this on point, stating as a caveat to the WP:MOSTM reference for trademarks, "write acronyms and initialisms in all capitals. But note that some acronyms have now become ordinary lowercase words, such as scuba and laser."  GETRAG is an acronym and therefore falls under the first sentence quoted.  GETRAG does not fall under the second statement about common words because it is not used as a common noun, it is only ever a proper noun referring to the GETRAG Corporate Group, unlike laser and scuba which refer to no particular identity.  Acronym-contractions are not differentiated under the established rule.  If this page is moved, we need to first revise the aforementioned rule found in the Manual of Style on Capitalization.
:*Common usage for reference to the company at hand is in all capitol letters, as GETRAG.  Technical articles, catalog pages, faq information and so on is all caps.  I have seen locations where it has been written without all capitol letters, however, this is most certainly done in ignorance of the fact that GETRAG is an acronym
:*Furthermore, we don't use Google news searches to dictate our English usage rules; Google searches only show most commonly accessed web pages given a search string (users don't choose pages based on an agreeable capitalization scheme, they click on most recent news stories).  The reason for news searches showing so many normal case examples is most likely that many news media companies use normal case, which differs from the norm of all-capitalization (see Acronym#Pronunciation-dependent style 2).
:*The article on acronyms, specifically the Acronym#Case section, notes that acronyms are only subject to normal capitalization when they have become normal words.
:*Either way - the contention that GETRAG is not an acronym is countered by the Acronym article, see Acronym#Back-capitalization.  The definition in that case asserts that when such acronyms are not strict acronyms they are capitalized, and when they aren't evenn proper nouns, they are still often capitalized (notice the example of the non-popper noun MARC as Mailing list ARChive).  This gives an even stronger case to capitalize GETRAG because it follows that proper nouns acronyms should be capitalized all of the time, and non-proper nouns only sometimes.
:*The fact that GETRAG is not in all capitol letters at de:Getrag does not speak to how we ought to capitalize in en:GETRAG.  German capitalization is starkly different than English, for example, all nouns are capitalized in German regardless of whether the noun is proper or not.
:I do, however, support tidying up duplicate categories.  Tidying should be done regardless of this surrey's outcome. Nicholas SL Smithchatter 02:02, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Survey

message: It is pretty clear that the consensus is to leave the article at GETRAG at present. I suggest cleaning up the duplicated categories. Neil ☎ 11:44, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The "Getrag" transmission category has been cleaned up - working to clean up other issues. Nicholas SL Smithchatter 02:21, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think I've cleaned up all Getrag/GETRAG issues -- Nicholas SL Smithchatter 02:52, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Requested move discussion