Talk:Ancient woodland

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no move. No evidence presented that the subject is always "Ancient Woodland" as asserted. JPG-GR (talk) 16:27, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

"Ancient Woodland" is a formal designation, and so ought to have capital initials. I've corrected the text of the article, but the name of the article itself also needs to be changed. I therefore propose that it becomes "Ancient Woodland", with the caps. In the meantime, I've redirected a new page of that name here.--Richard New Forest 20:30, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I moved this page to Ancient Woodland on 29 October 2007 after no responses to the comment above. In February 2008 it was moved back to Ancient woodland without discussion, with a link in the edit summary to Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Lowercase_second_and_subsequent_words_in_titles. This states that second words in titles should have lower case initials, unless the term is normally capitalised in English.

As explained in my original comment above, the term Ancient Woodland is a formal designation which is indeed always capitalised in English. It should therefore be moved back again to Ancient Woodland. I have made an entry in WP:Requested moves. --Richard New Forest (talk) 14:35, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose. Four of the sources use ancient woodland, lower case; so where is the evidence for always capitalized? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:40, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

It is a formal designation, like, for example, Site of Special Scientific Interest, Special Area for Conservation etc. Any source using it uncapitalised is incorrect, unless they are using it in verbal senses, which is not what this article is about. It would be like saying "London transport", the "House of commons", or the "English channel" – it does not matter how many sources used those uncapitalised, they would still be wrong... --Richard New Forest (talk) 15:43, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I presume you mean proper name; but you have yet to supply evidence for your position. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:56, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, proper name, always capitalised. Not really my position – it's universally known throughout British ecology, and the official position of the UK Government and government agencies. It shouldn't be any trouble to find; I'll see what I can do. --Richard New Forest (talk) 18:16, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose: I don't agree that this term is normally capitalised, although it certainly is on occasion. There are sources which show it capitalised and others which do not. Therefore the status quo with the redirect is acceptable and should prevail. Naturenet | Talk 21:01, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose I can understand the nominator's argument, but it's not always formal designation. On a quick google search, I found that it was uncapitalised in the majority of cases. The only instances of capitalisation were the title of books ("Ancient Woodland: Its History"); a company; and countrysideinfo.com capitalises it in the title but uses lower case in the main text (something that occurs quite often). The government forestry website uses lower case. The Natural History Museum uses lower case. These are pretty reliable sources, and I don't think they would use the casing incorrectly. PeterSymonds | talk 04:43, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.