Typing song title & punctuation-national customs

Subject: RE: Typing song title & punctuation-national customs
From: beeliner
Date: 05 Sep 10 - 01:38 AM

Beeliner, are you THAT old?

Yes. The big 7-0 is only a few weeks off.

I think I remember seeing capitalized German "familiar" second-person pronouns from letters from back in the 1940s, but German pronouns were all lower-case when I learned German in the 1960s, except for second-person "formal address" (Sie, Ihr, Ihnen, and the like). I think most of the "new" Rechtschreibung rules were in common usage long before they became official.

Well, I'm referring to the new, new rules which only became official a couple of years ago, after a transitional period of several years. Until then, capitalizing familiar 2nd-person pronouns in personal letters, especially if hand-written, was considered polite if not strictly required, and I gotta admit, I still do so, old habits dying hard as the song says.

Another rule that has changed regards three of the same consonant in a row. Previously this was permitted only if another consonant follwed, such as MASS+STAB = MASSSTAB, the scale of a map. But if a vowel followed, one of the three was dropped, e.g. BETT+TUCH = BETTUCH, bedsheet, EXCEPT if the word was hyphenated at the end of a line, in which case the third consosnant was restored. Now the three consonants together are permitted, or rather required, in all such cases.

Subject: RE: Typing song title & punctuation-national customs
From: beeliner
Date: 06 Sep 10 - 09:43 AM

Song title capping convention in English is to uppercase every word in the song title. Check out any songbook, music book, or piece of sheet music to see examples. Case closed.

I will re-open the case just briefly. Before me I have the sheet music for "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now" (Howard-Hough-Adams), from the film of the same name. There is a sidebar listing other songs from the same film as "Be Sweet to Me Kid" and "What's the Use of Dreaming", both written thusly.

So the 'every word capitalized' seems to be a convention of the sheet music publishing industry and not the general rule for song titles, which is the same as for other titles.

In this box there are about 100 pieces of sheet music. I did a very rough approximation and it looks as if about 45%, give or take, of the titles are in caps and l.c. with EVERY word capitalized, 50% are in ALL CAPS, and the remaining 5% or so are 'mavericks'; for example, here is Hazel Scott's piano solo arrangement of 'boogie-woogie', written thus (all lower case). "Candy" (David-Whitney-Kramer) has the title formed from pieces of candy canes.

Some of these songs give new meaning to the term 'oblivion'. Anybody remember "I SAID MY PAJAMAS (And Put On My Pray'rs)" (Pola-Wyle)? How about "A STORY OF TWO CIGARETTES" (Stoner-Jay-Marker)?

Irving Berlin wrote some of the most famous songs in American history. He also wrote tons and tons of absolute crap. Who remembers "YIDDLE ON YOUR FIDDLE"? (That sounds almost obscene!) How about "NEXT TO YOUR MOTHER WHO DO YOU LOVE?"? Anybody remember "KEEP AWAY FROM THE FELLOW WHO OWNS AN AUTOMOBILE", "PULLMAN PORTERS ON PARADE", "HE'S A RAG PICKER", or "COHEN OWES ME $97"?