I would say it should be “… and”, with a space after the ellipsis. The argument for lower case if that this is a fragment, that the end is not the first word, and in the middle of the sentence we use spaces before and after ellipses.
I think this is tricky because an ellipsis at the end of the sentence doesn’t necessarily mean part of the sentence was omitted, a sentence can end in an ellipsis. And, at the end of a sentence, the ellipsis doesn’t need a space before, but an extra dot (….), though I don’t think I’ve ever seen a title with for dots….
Erg… Maybe on some records, but in topology, the ellipsis is a final punctuation, it replaces the ending period, like the exclamation and question marks.
In all other European languages I know, yes, the ellipsis ends the sentence and it doesn’t require a full stop. But English is an exception, I think all/most authoritative style guides (MLA, CMOS, the Bluebook, Oxford Style Guide) demand an additional dot, and that’s what you see in professionally edited texts. Bringhurst also says:
In English (but usually not in French), when the ellipsis occurs at the end of a sentence, a fourth dot, the period, is added and the space at the beginning of the ellipsis disappears
But I’m actually not suggesting we add extra dots to all titles that end in ellipses. I think the four dots are almost never used in informal writing and probably never in titles — you also don’t generally have full stops at the end of a title. My point was more about the space, that sentence-ending ellipses generally don’t need a space before (except for style guides that demand one space before each dot). I was trying to point out that an ellipsis at the end of a sentence doesn’t necessarily represent an omission.
Edit #101655284 - MusicBrainz (“…And Justice for All”) looks like it’s going to pass, but I’d like to measure something slightly different.
Disregarding the “capitalize the first word” part of MB’s English guidelines and without any artist intent, how should a title stylized as “…OF BOTH WORLDS” be entered?
I ticked [something else] as it depends on context. How is the artist presenting it on the marketing material and album covers. It is their choice of title and that should be respected.
When I buy an album from Bandcamp I often override Picard\MusicBrainz to keep the original title as I was sold. I don’t like changing those titles to what an English Teacher tells me is “correct English”.
It like they would also need me to get out the Tippex and fix the “mistakes” on vinyl cover .
(Removed the OT Poll Privacy bit to the other thread…)
Well, that’s interesting, nobody voted for this option, yet it’s the one which would be the result of the current edit (assuming that the tally does not suddenly change drastically).
Exactly what @jesus2099 said. We cannot cast a vote due to the way that ballot has been written.
But thanks to the way the ballot is written we can be vocal with our thoughts.
The problem with discord votes is they can be unconsciously biased by the person creating them. You often see it happen with these votes and it can be kinda funny how it will skew the results.
And to be clearer - if the title was “…OF BOTH WORLDS” on a cover, I’d be typing “…Of Both Worlds” I would ONLY use the lower case option if I explicitly saw it typed like that.
This was the scenario I was trying to convey, but I used “stylized as” and “without artist intent” since I felt that the poll question was getting too wordy.
In any case, I think that the poll confirms that the guidelines should be clarified (and possibly reconsidered). The Metallica vote is passing because of how most people interpret the guidelines, not because they all necessarily think that “…And” is correct.
Absolutely disagree with assuming any kind of artist intent with capitalization. There should be a standard and all exceptions should be on a by case basis, with burden of proof on the editor claiming artist intent. In the Metallica case in the original post, there’s very likely no artist intent, because it’s written in caps on the cover art.
This is about capitalization standards (which we have for other parts of the English language), of course a poll wouldn’t include an solution that goes against the established artist intent and English capitalization guideline. If you want to get rid or modify those guidelines in favor of always using what’s printed on the cover, make a new thread with a new poll.
You have a solution for your particular use case that wouldn’t require removing the English guideline. You can use whatever data you want and we don’t have to abandon capitalization guidelines that have been used since forever. Isn’t that good enough of a compromise?
For capitalisation we said first word of the title is always uppercase, even if preceeded by funny stuff.
The artist intent thing we mentioned was not about capitalisation but about space or no space after that ellipsis.
If all major versions all have no space, it seems little bit of a pity to add a space in MB.
I think it’s the thing about which we shouldn’t be overly rigid.
Sorry for misrepresenting your position, the post by IvanDobsky does argue for keeping titles verbatim though. Which is something I really disagree with and I feel like isn’t relevant to this discussion. I don’t have any strong opinions about spaces in this case either, I normally enter titles like this without a leading space, though.
There’s no point arguing about this forever, but I’d actually like to understand this, as it seems the most popular choice. If the argument for lower case is that it is not the first word, and an ellipsis between words has spaces on both sides, why wouldn’t it have a space between the ellipsis and the first word of the fragment? If that’s what everybody thinks, then that’s it, but I really fail to understand the logic.
I also notice that in the article that was originally shared here to support lower case, there is always a space between the ellipsis and the first word of the segment. To me, it feels like accepting an argument but ignoring one of its natural conclusions.
I’m weary of making this last forever, but your first point is exactly what I can’t understand. If you want to preserve what was written, what’s the point of this whole topic? My understanding is we were trying to find what is the most “correct” and “standard” way to enter these titles. If we just want to preserve what was written, we also wouldn’t use lower case in many/most cases. So, how can it be both lower case (don’t preserve), and no space (preserve) at the same time?
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