Lowercasing words in the middle of ETI

I’m curious about how other editors would capitalize several track titles from https://musicbrainz.org/release/aac3151d-0c31-4215-a146-d07ad72f998a in conjunction with the ETI guidelines. Here’s what’s currently in MB:

  • With Dirt and Two Texts (Afternoon Version)
  • With Dirt and Two Texts (Later Version with Love)
  • Matrimonioids..... (For Elivin + Susana Estela)

I think the ETI in the third title should be (for Elivin + Susana Estela), assuming that it’s a dedication rather than an alternate title.

I’d probably change the first title’s ETI to (afternoon version), since it looks like “afternoon” is being used descriptively rather than as a title.

The second title throws me for a loop, though. If “afternoon version” is lowercased, then “later version” should be too, but (later version with love) looks a bit odd to me, and other variants like (later version With Love) seem obviously wrong.

The other option is just to keep the first and second titles the way they are right now.

For what it’s worth, the back cover uses all-lowercase apart from people’s names:

  • with dirt and two texts - afternoon version
  • with dirt and two texts - later version with love
  • matrimonioids ..... (for Elivin + Susana Estela)

Some earlier threads:


As a tangent, I tried to figure out why “Guess case” lowercases “with” and “without” in ETI, which seems at odds with the English guidelines. It looks like it was added by MBS-1312, Guess Case, replace "w/o" with "without". · metabrainz/musicbrainz-server@423c8f5 · GitHub for https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/MBS-1312, but there’s no justification there. I think that the original ticket might’ve predated NGS, so maybe it was added for featured artists. I’m happy to upload a PR removing it if it doesn’t make sense anymore.

3 Likes

I’d go with “afternoon version”, “later version with love”, “For Elivin + Susana Estela”.
Reasons: 1st 2 are descriptive. I know it looks odd having love lowercase, just because it’s rare to see that as descriptive, but it’s not a word that would be normally capitalized. On the last, “For” would remain capitalized because it’s a dedication and therefore is, IMO, considered an alternate title. It’s not a continuation of the title.

I agree about guess case. It’s just wrong on many instances. “with” should always be lowercase in ETI, but capitalized when not. I guess guess case can’t distinguish between main title and ETI on capitalization.

2 Likes

I think I´d choose:

  • afternoon version
  • later version with love
  • For Elivin + Susana Estela

But I wouldn’t oppose alternative casing for any of them. These examples are certainly in the twilight zone.

1 Like

I agree with others on “afternoon version” and “later version with love.” But I don’t think “For Elivin + Susana Estela” works as an alternative title. I think it’s simple ETI, and I would lower-case “for.”

3 Likes

Thanks! I created edits to lowercase the ETI in the first two titles but left the third one alone since there were different opinions about it.

Tracklist edits: