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The police chief in Wilmington, North Carolina, has publicly lambasted one of his officers. The officer recently pulled over a local attorney moonlighting as an Uber driver and told the driver that he could not film the traffic stop.
"Taking photographs and videos of people that are in plain sight, including the police, is your legal right," Chief Ralph Evangelous said in a Wednesday statement published on the department's Facebook page. "As a matter of fact, we invite citizens to do so when they believe it is necessary. We believe that public videos help to protect the police as well as our citizens and provide critical information during police and citizen interaction."
The statement concluded: "A copy of this statement will be disseminated to every officer within the Wilmington Police Department."
During the February 26 traffic stop, Jesse Bright began filming Sgt. Kenneth Becker when he and other law enforcement officers approached his car. Sgt. Becker, who appeared to be wearing a VieVu body-worn camera, told Bright that a "new law" forbids citizens from filming encounters with police.
"Turn it off or I'll take you to jail," Becker said.
"For recording you?" Bright retorted. "What is the law?"
The officers were unable to cite him the "new law," as it does not exist.
Source: ArsTechnica
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday March 14 2017, @05:53PM (5 children)
As am I, but the examples you see are imported. You might want to read a style guide written in England. They all recommend against it.
Why is it that the English always want to blame bad habits on "imported Americanisms," when 90% of the time the practices originated in England? This is very common for a lot of usage and grammar issues, where supposed "Americanisms" just reflect the state of English usage from a century ago or whatever. In some cases, certain usage died out (or at least became infrequent) in England, but then has seemed to return to the homeland in recent years. In other cases, the claim for an American origin is wholly false.
Anyhow, here's a brief history of typographical standards for capitalization. The early 18th century was probably the heyday of capitalization. The English vogue for capitalization gradually spread to American presses, which imitated the "motherland." English looked almost like German, with most nouns capitalized. During the late 18th century, this practice gradually decreased, where there were often standard changes: all-caps turned into "title case" (with all nouns and sometimes other words capitalized), title case turned into italic title case or italic sentence case, and the use of italics in general decreased. These changes continued in the 19th century.
If you look at books and newspapers published in England in the 1800s, you'll see all sorts of standards. The use of all-caps in titles and headlines was still quite common (and basically standard). Small caps using "title case" (with larger caps on important words) was also common for headings and subheadings. Mixed case like modern title case was mostly reserved for in-text references to titles of books, etc. (often in italic) but can sometimes be seen for headings.
Anyhow, in the 20th century, these trends toward decreased capitalization continued. All-caps and small-caps use became less frequent, with title case substituted in many cases. Title case remained standard in England for references to actual, well, TITLES (of books, plays, etc.). Headlines in newspapers of the early 20th century were still often in all-caps, but subheadings and lesser headlines shifted to title case (both in the U.S. *and* in England).
For whatever reason, England started dropping title case in headlines somewhere around the mid-20th century. American newspapers frequently retained it. Title case still remained common in England when referencing actual titles of works, though some publishing houses switched to sentence case (initially those who wanted to seem cool and "modern").
Whether modern examples in England of headlines in title case are merely old-fashioned or derived from American style (itself ultimately based on the 17th and 18th-century English vogue for unnecessary capitalization everywhere) is probably an open question. But the idea that title case originated in America is simply nonsense.
Or pick up an older book from before we imported any American typographical conventions and see chapter titles (and even the cover) with initial capitalisation but no title case.
I suggest you might consider looking at books printed before the mid-20th century. Actual book title pages and covers for many presses have consistently been in title case since they switched from the all-caps format common more than a century ago. My sense is that chapter titles and headings shifted more directly in England from all-caps (still common until early 20th century) to sentence case, but I don't claim to know that for certain. I'm speaking mostly of academic and scholarly presses here, which tend to follow more consistent style guides. Trade books make all sorts of random typographical decisions, particularly since the "artistic" use of capitalization spread in the 20th century.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday March 14 2017, @06:39PM (3 children)
Why is it that the English always want to blame bad habits on "imported Americanisms," when 90% of the time the practices originated in England?
No-one's doing that.
The Brits just got round to moving to a better system before the Yanks did. Sound familiar? ;)
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday March 14 2017, @06:45PM (1 child)
No-one's doing that.
The post I was responding to said the following about older books:
... before we imported any American typographical conventions...
To me, that implies that title-case originated in America, no?
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday March 14 2017, @06:46PM
Oop.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:24AM
Why is it that the English always want to blame bad habits on "imported Americanisms," when 90% of the time the practices originated in England?
No-one's doing that.
The Brits just got round to moving to a better system before the Yanks did. Sound familiar? ;)
Nope. We got Donald Trump large and in charge and Nigel Farage isn't running things yet.
'murikkka! Fuck yeah!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @04:58AM
you know a WOT is going to kick ass when it starts with "Anyhow, here's a brief history of typographical standards for capitalization."