Talk:Bill bissett/@comment-4097182-20150314141716

This discussion (from Wikipedia) about capitalizing bissett's name was added to the article. I have moved it to the comments section:

Capitalization discussion
Bill Bissett (whose name is often not capitalised)  -- Actually, bill's name is never capitalized, except by people who just don't get what his aesthetic is all about, primarily stuffy editors of newspapers and modern-verse-hostile literature teachers etc. -- so before I go in and correct the article, I'd like to make sure that people realize that it is a poet's perogative to use alternate spellings, including capitalization on proper nouns, and that those decisions must be respected. His name is bill bissett, and should be spelled as such (an exception can be made for automatic formatting done by indexing etc.). It will automatically capitalize the first letter of the article title, which would leave us with "Bill bissett", but sure, make whatever changes you like. K.d. lang is another example of this issue coming up.

I've edited the article to properly display bissett's name in lowercase. This is the way bissett's name is written according to The Canadian Encyclopedia. bissett claims to have had his name legally changed to lowercase:


 * "I spell my name all lower case, including first and last name. It was William. I had trouble at certain borders. So I had it all changed to Bill and both names lower case. I wrote to the Government to get my name changed. It was $250 ten years. The only thing is legally its all lower case but the Passport its all upper case. I am a writer as well as a painter. I only use large letters for emphasis like loud. I wouldn't want to say "B-ill. I just say "b-ill". I sort of visualize language which originally was visual." (according to this page)

I cut this from the article: "One person art show, curated by Scott Watson, 1984-85 at the Vancouver Art Gallery and a rezoning construksyun group show 1989 four person show with Al Neil curated by Keith Wallace." I guess from other instances in the text that 'rezoning construksyun' is bissett's writing style, not spelling errors, but the sentence nonetheless is a fragment and makes no sense. Perhaps someone can figure it out and reincorporate it. I've changed way the name is listed in the category tags to lowercase, too - otherwise it appears incorrectly in the category listing pages. I changed the category tags back, as it appears the category listing pages interpret "b" as a completely different letter than "B" (which is odd!). I wonder if there is a way to have the name appear in lowercase on the category listing pages?

For all interested parties, there is a discussion going on right now at Wikipedia about whether or not to capitalize people's names against their wishes (like bill bissett, for example).