When I saw this headline, “Amazon To Acquire AbeBooks, And With It, A Stake In LibraryThing” via TechCrunch, I was sad, for some reason [Remind me to talk about capitalization in headlines some time. I've reproduced the style of this one here exactly as it was written on TechCrunch, but capitalizing Every Single Little Word? Ugh.].
I’m a newcomer to AbeBooks, but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve known of it. I’ve found several books I hadn’t been able to find (reasonably priced, anyway) elsewhere.
I’ve drooled over LibraryThing, but I’ve never added the contents of my bookshelves to the site. I’m not sure what’s held me back, though, other than time.
Apparently AbeBooks (according to a letter sent out to its sellers) will continue to operate as a standalone site.
Here’s a theoretical discussion of the financial aspects of the deal.
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August 1, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Tim
Well, I found this because it’s about LibraryThing—short message? don’t worry!—but I really want to agree with you on the capitalization bit. TechCrunch does that on every headline. Tech people! Don’t they realize how stupid it is to blindly capitalize every word? It’s like people ignorant of nature writing an algorithm that colors ever plant green. Yes, titles have caps and plants are green, generally, but can’t you go beyond that childish observation?
Makes me wonder what you thought of Roy Tennants argument about sentence and title case on library records: http://www.libraryjournal.com/blog/1090000309/post/1170029117.html?nid=3565
August 2, 2008 at 1:59 pm
wordlily
Hm, sentence and title case on library records, I hadn’t really ever thought about that before. I was thinking more along the lines of why headline styles sometimes differ from title case. I can’t recall really seeing such a bad style as that, though; even capitalizing articles, even when not the first word? That just doesn’t make sense. I think a computer did that.