598 Messages
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13.5K Points
Capitalisation of "MacKay" etc when on-screen credits are all in upper-case
What is the house style where credits are displayed on-screen in all upper-case (or occasionally all lower-case) and the surname is conventionally written in CamelCase?
I presume that all lower-case is treated as an affectation and that a character "john smith" (on-screen) should always be converted to "John Smith". I realise that the capitalisation of titles is different, hence the correct entry for tt0161140 is "dinnerladies" (as written on-screen) and not "Dinnerladies, " DinnerLadies" or "Dinner Ladies".
For example, someone who is listed as MACKAY or MCKAY in the on-screen credits. Should that be transcribed as Mackay or Mckay, or as MacKay or McKay, with the latter camel-case being conventional way that a Scottish/Irish surnames are written because the Mac is a son-of prefix.
I can't see any mention of this on the character/cast help page.
Also, am I right to correct IMDB credits of the form "Head teacher" or "Security guard" where the second word has not been capitalised in IMDB although it *is* shown as "Head Teacher" (or "HEAD TEACHER") in the on-screen credits. There seems to have been a submitter or group of submitters who have submitted a lot of credits where all words apart from the first are not capitalised - and often I find that the on-screen credits do have every word capitalised apart from prepositions and articles, so it's not a transcibe-as-seen problem. Was IMDB's house style ever for "Head teacher" etc, at some time in the past?
Ozzy
Employee
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1.6K Messages
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16K Points
2 months ago
Hi @martin_695862,
Thank you for your problem report.
I have requested a review of the Help guide content pertaining to the "son-of" prefixes, which may lead to any required updates following the review.
Otherwise, I can confirm that the above on lower-case capitalization for characters such as "'john smith' (on-screen)" and titles is correct. Please see our guidelines on title capitalization formatting.
Additionally, we also have our guidelines documented for character capitalization formatting:
Therefore, if you do see credits not following this formatting, you are welcome to correct them via the Contribution Form.
I hope this helps!
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Peter_pbn
Champion
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14.2K Messages
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327.8K Points
2 months ago
If it's a character name I would try to use the version used in the episode or in secondary sources, if applicable.
Sometimes small caps are used for the c or ac, which I think suggests that the K should be capitalized in those cases.
Discussed here:
https://community-imdb.sprinklr.com/conversations/data-issues-policy-discussions/capitalisation-of-words-in-character-field-of-a-titles-cast/64624350a4c6a26bcd0da9a2
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