Re:Standard Ebooks
by chrismorgan on Monday January 01, 2024 @11:10PM
(#38838019)
Sometimes capitalisation matters are close to purely stylistic, but other times they really are part of the content, guiding pronunciation or emphasis, so that lowercasing them harms the work. What is your opinion of my assessment in the above comment of some of the specific changes in <https://github.com/standardebooks/charles-dickens_a-christma...>?
I haven’t looked into your example, but certainly it can be true that lowercasing can be harmful. It goes without saying, I think, that the SE policy is only to lowercase words when doing so doesn’t harm.
When I see erroneous changes in SE books, I argue to revert, and have generally been successful. In my experience it’s drama‐free, like fixing any other typo.
Re:Standard Ebooks
by kevin_thibedeau on Tuesday January 02, 2024 @01:13AM
(#38838695)
The problem is when irregular spelling is intended to capture a vernacular. It does a disservice to everyone, erasing the author's intent with homogenized language.
In the case of Standard Ebooks, “sound‐alike” changes are allowed (so spelling and capitalization changes are allowed when they make sense). Censorship, and even innocuous grammatical changes, are not. Despite generally appreciating old works in their own context, I find the tradeoff in readability for such a widespread practice to be worth it given how minor SE’s alterations are.