Talk:Letters patent (United Kingdom)

Capitalization of "Letters Patent"
The Crown Office refers to Letters Patents with both letters capitalized, as seen in the Crown Office Guidance referenced in the Article. Other sources simplify this to just "letters patent", though this is not the correct form. MaximusWikipedian (talk) 22:01, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, the Crown Office does so. Whether that is correct is not determined by the Crown Office, however. The Crown Office is not an authority on orthography. Various government agencies capitalize nouns in contravention of established academic orthography. For example, 10 Downing Street always writes "Prime Minister", despite "prime minister" being deemed correct by academic style guides such as the Oxford Manual of Style. I am not suggesting anything drastic; merely removing the line suggesting lowercasing "letters patent" is a factual mistake and staying silent on the matter. Surtsicna (talk) 22:37, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
 * The Crown Office is the governing institution over Letters Patent; they use capital letters for both L and P, and the Gazette does the same too. That is 2 entities that have a concensus on the capitalization of the said words, which suggests that that is the correct form. MaximusWikipedian (talk) 14:50, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
 * The Gazette does not always use capital letters. Most tellingly it does not capitalize here where it defines what letters patent are. It is one of the reasons why it is not appropriate for Wikipedia to suggest that the capitalized form is the only correct one. Judging by The Gazette usage, letters patent are upper case only when discussing specific letters patent, e.g. Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the Realm dated 31 December 2012. Surtsicna (talk) 15:54, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
 * The "examples" you have provided are information forms and are not notices themselves. Just look for "Letters Patent" in notices and you'll see that both the L and the P are always capitalized, except of course before the 20th century where spelling and grammar worked differently.MaximusWikipedian (talk) 18:18, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Being so dismissive is hardly constructive. Yes, those examples are information forms and not notices themselves, just like this article is not a notice itself (or about a specific notice) but a collection of information about UK letters patent in general. So how can we still claim that the capitalized form is the only correct one when The Gazette not only uses the lower case form too but uses it in the exact same context as our lead sentence (i.e. when defining letters patent)? Surtsicna (talk) 19:14, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Move to Letters patent (United Kingdom)
The thread was implicitly a request to move the page to Letters patent (United Kingdom). I concur with User:Surtsicna's rationale, and support move: there is not a proper noun called "Letters Patent" that is distinct from the common noun "letters patent". Naming conventions (capitalization) has clear guidelines. (The Crown Office Can Capitalize Every Word If They Want To; it has minimal relevance to us.) TheFeds  17:26, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 20 May 2022

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: moved. —usernamekiran (talk) 13:21, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Letters Patent (United Kingdom) → Letters patent (United Kingdom) – As per MOS:CAPS and WP:TITLE, Wikipedia does not capitalise terms such as this – notwithstanding the practice of any other organisation in styling terms in their own writing – and this page should be moved to be consistent with the article letters patent. Please also read Specialized-style fallacy as it is relevant in this case. Mauls (talk) 11:18, 20 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Support. This article is about the class of all legal instruments collectively known as letters patent (a common noun). It doesn't matter whether someone uses a decorative capitalization—it would only matter if there were a distinction in meaning signified by the alternative capitalization. But the meaning is the same, and we should not rationalize that there is something special about some letters patent by distinguishing based on different users' consistent usages. (We could ask, do they explicitly and consciously distinguish between their "Letters Patent" and the concept of letters patent in general, or do they just capitalize all such references as if due to a stylistic affectation?) TheFeds  15:54, 20 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Against. The Crown Office refers to Letters Patents with both letters capitalized, as seen in the Crown Office Guidance referenced in the Article. Other sources simplify this to just "letters patent", though this is not the correct form.MaximusWikipedian (talk) 19:20, 20 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Support: We follow the guidance of the Naming conventions (capitalization) and the Manual of Style and its MOS:CAPS, not the guidance of the Crown Office. —&#8288;&#8202;&#8288;BarrelProof (talk) 23:43, 20 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Support: In Wikipedia we follow Wikipedia's style. If I'm writing for the Crown Office, I'll use their style, but today I'm writing for Wikipedia. SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨ 00:13, 21 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Support: There is no assertion that this is a proper name but rather a matter of editorial style which is not WPs style. To paraphrase: when in WP do as the WPedians do. It is also a matter of WP:CONSISTENT (see letters patent). WP:CONSISTENT is a matter of policy and therefore, takes precedence - though I'm not seeing any WP:P&G based argument that would contradict this. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:27, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Number of letters patent
Whilst the Ministry of Justice has confirmed that there are 92 types of letters patent, there are definitely more than that. The MoJ's list fails to include even basic letters patent like the ones appointing Garter aKings of Arms. It is impossible to identify the official number of types of letters patent as some can be rather ad hoc. For example, letters patent were passed under the Great Seal on 2 June 2008 confirming a previous grant of property by letters patent in 1608 to the Treasurers and Masters of Inner Temple and Middle Temple.

The citation needed note next to the claim that there are more than 92 types of letters patent may be difficult to satisfy, unless even a single source identifying one type of letters patent that isn't included on the MoJ's list is sufficient.

OhDidgeridoo (talk) 11:22, 15 August 2022 (UTC)