Translation "Base-Handbuch" - capitalize Headers?

I haven't learned English so well, that I can say: This should be
capitalized and that shouldn't.

I remember, that there were rules to write a word with a capital, when
it's a name or it's a noun (in a heading/title). Then I had a look at
the English "Introducing Writer", which I downloaded at
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/images/e/e3/0201WG3-IntroducingWriter.pdf
After reading the contents I am confused. Some nouns are written with a
capital letter at the beginning of the words, others are not.

Now I want to add or correct something in
http://www.odfauthors.org/libreoffice/english/base-handbook/drafts/base-3.5-chapter-3-tables/view
, because I have written the German "Base-Handbuch".

If there is any rule for writing words with a capitalized letter at the
beginning, which sombody like me could understand, please let me know.

Regards,

Robert

There are differences of opinion (and different "rules") about what to capitalise in English, and in our books you will find capitalisation is not consistent if our copyeditor Hazel has not been through the book recently.

The rule I follow is that if a term is used is used in a general sense, it is not capitalised, but if the same word is used as a name somewhere else, it is capitalised. For example, the name of a book might be Base Handbook, but if you say something like "...in Chapter 3 of this handbook..." it is not capitalised. Or "...several chapters in this book..." but "Chapters 3 and 4..."

I suggest you don't need to be concerned about capitalisation in this book because someone else will fix it as needed for consistency.

--Jean

Hi :) 
Don't worry about getting it wrong.  Most native English speakers get it wrong too anyway and it's not a fixed target.  Companies usually have a "house style" to guess at, sometimes it's written down.

Also language evolves.  Names such as G.N.U. are tiresome to type out or write in full if written often so they gradually become GNU, then Gnu and along the way may start to be used in other ways, to describe a similar system.  So if the word was used in a medical text-book it would be G.N.U. but in an OpenSource context it's more likely to be Gnu or even gnu.  Likewise there are medical words and legal jargon that we would write in full.

Trying to understand it by reading a rule-book is going to make things confusing.  Rule-books are a good place to start to get a good foundation.  Then you just have to adapt through experience.

If you are confused it's because it is confusing.  Don't worry about it.  Native English-speakers get confused too.  People have often used this mailing list to ask about specific words and circumstances and we have tried to be consistent but circumstances might be subtly different and mistakes are possible.

If there is a specific example that you think is wrong then let us know and we'll either try to justify it or encourage you to fix it.  It helps us all learn.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi :slight_smile:
Don't worry about getting it wrong. Most native English speakers get it wrong too anyway and it's not a fixed target. Companies usually have a "house style" to guess at, sometimes it's written down.

To add to the confusion; different versions of English (US/UK/etc) have
somewhat different rules about usage and particularly spelling (litre vs
liter). So, being in the US, I will normally follow US usage and style
not UK, Canadian, Australian, etc.

One person remarked (Churchill?) that the US and Britain are two
countries separated by a common language.

As, said below, do your best but do worry about it, let the editors
clean up the style and usage so its reasonably consistent.