Things that make me go huh?

[gwyn]

Why do people always lowercase the h in human, but uppercase the C in Cylon? I would like to start a campaign to stamp out the indiscriminate title-casing of selective species. When I realized this discrepancy, I started lowercasing the c, but people like to gently "correct" me in posts. Cylon is neither a product/brand name nor an organization (Firefly-class ship, Nexus 6 replicant, the Alliance, the Mounties, Browncoats), nor a nationality/continental/planetary identity (Canadian, African, Bajoran, Betelgeusian, Vulcan), nor a religious identification (Jewish, Christian, Muslim) though admittedly, it could become that eventually. It's a classification no different than human in the series, yet across fandom, people treat it as more significant by uppercasing the c.

Comments

[voleuse.livejournal.com]

I've capitalized the word, but now that you bring it up, I have no idea why. Huh. Maybe something in the official show descriptions?

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Probably. And the thing is, those are written by people who have little understanding of the rules, and probably wouldn't know a style guide if it bit them in the ass. I don't think there's a production company around that employes copyeditors.

[jackiekjono.livejournal.com]

Hmm.

I don't know if they have ever made it clear where the name came from. Cylons were originally manufactured so it could be the original brand name but, then again, they could just be the product. Are they Kleenex or tissue?

And what's the default? If you aren't sure and there isn't an authority to refer to which do you choose? I would imagine it would not be a proper name until you can prove it's a proper name.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

It could very well have begun as a product name, but now that its come to mean a race (of human clones and robots, both), I vote for lowercasing. I should start the Intergalactic Press Style Book and Libel Manual.

[jackiekjono.livejournal.com]

Clearly, there is a need. And clearly you are the one to fill it.

You should get an agent.

I am only half kidding here.

[abrakadabrah.livejournal.com]

I kind of think of it as a brand of robot™. Which evolved into a race.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Which is why it should now be lowercase! Or Human gets an upgrade.

[abrakadabrah.livejournal.com]

Well, I think, realistically speaking, if Cylons did exist in competition to Humans, Humans would get an upgrade. They'd need one too, and not just in an evolutionary sense.

[melinafandom.livejournal.com]

Dunno why, but capitalizing Cylon just seems right to me. Is "human" really a race? Isn't it a species? I don't know what that makes Cylon, if it is. Erf. Okay, officially too deep for me.

I'm think I'm just more likely to be bugged by people getting their apostrophes wrong :)

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

You know, human race. But yeah, it's a species... so why isn't cylon a species, too? Or, if species are capped, then why not human? As descriptors go, this doesn't make sense to me. I've been thinking about this for a long time. Also, we don't have a good name for ourselves in English -- Earthlings is as good as it gets.

[sherrold.livejournal.com]

What about Terrans? -- way cooler than Earthlings, and always capitalized, too.

My theory is "human" is just a bad translation. They are using a noun that means "member of our society, who is not a Cylon" and it is being mistranlated, probably by those silly proles on SciFi channel, as "human".

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I had a feeling someone would bring that one up! I don't think it plays, though, because have you ever heard anyone outside SF circles say it? I could be wrong. We don't have a sensible name for ourselves.

I'm willing to go with the mistranslation, though.

[jidabug.livejournal.com]

So the same thing would apply to Trek fandom: vulcans and romulans and klingons (oh my). It seems to me that I usually see those capitalized.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

It's the problem of descriptors. We use human race to distinguish ourselves, but it's, as Melina talks about above, a species issue. So, in SF, you have species with planetary names (Vulcan, etc.), but here, we have only the silly Earthlings. We don't generally go for Earthers. The tag that we provide, then, for our planetary species identification is human (race). Which doesn't equate to cylon as a species/race, either. They could be Caprican cylons, or maybe Kobolian (Kobolite?) cylons... or something else, but they would still be semantically equivalent to human if you were saying the same thing about humans.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Also, this is how I generally give myself headaches.

[reginaspina.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, until you raised this issue I unthinkingly capitalized "Cylon" as well. But now that I'm thinking about it, I guess there is no good reason!

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I know! At the very least, as human is standing in for Earthling/Earther/Terran [insert your silly epithet of choice], it should be capped in this case if we're going to insist that cylon is something akin to Bajoran or Vulcan or what have you. I demand parity!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jems_/]

See, I was also thinking it was a brand name, but you're right that it'd probably have evolved away from that.

Add to that the general schizophrenic thing I've got going between Swedish and English were nations are capitalized, but not nationalities and you've got the makings of one very confused fangirl.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. Just today, when I copyedited a piece, I lowercased communist per Associated Press style, which we follow. the proofer told me I needed to uppercase it, and I said, but! AP! And she said it's our house style to uppercase the party but not the belief system (or maybe it's the other way around, I'm bewildered and totally disagree), and I was thinking, how the hell can people keep ridiculous things like that right? I think that's interesting about not capping nationalities -- I didn't know that!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jems_/]

We also don't do it with languages. Basically, capitalization is only for names. So if I ever don't capitalize it's usually because I'm confused as to what language I'm writing in. You'd be amazed how many times I can't recall which language I've translated something into.

[escritoireazul.livejournal.com]

Wow. I do not even follow that fandom (or watch the source material) but your thoughts, and all the comments, were really, really interesting. Yes.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I get rather... obsessed with things like this. ;-)

[meko00.livejournal.com]

Fascinating discussion. Also, I think it has something to do with the lack of descriptors being in use for the overall majority. Now, I'm left-handed, and identify as such (writing, kitchen appliances etc), but 75-90% of all humans (heh) don't go around and identify as right-handers, do they? It is always the odd ones out who get labelled, isn't it? I could get on about the Other, but I can't be bothered at the moment. Plus, I haven't read enough on the subject.

Up the revolution!

[merricatk.livejournal.com]

I just want you to know that, while I'm not in the fandom & will most likely never have occasion to write about cylons (except for right here, right now), in my heart it will always be lower-case.

Yours in solidarity,


Mer

[jackiekjono.livejournal.com]

I'm rethinking this. Many of the humans in the BSG universe do not really think of the cylons as a race. they think of them as malfunctioning machines. If your story is from the point of view of Admiral Cain, you may want to capitalize just to make the distinction that she still thinks of it as a trademark - not a race.

It's kind of the inverse of that discussion elynross had some time ago about whether or not to capitalize God.