User:Epicgenius/capitalizations

This user page is about the capitalization of the "common noun" component of proper names. Naming conventions (capitalization) says Do not capitalize the second or subsequent words in an article title, unless the title is a proper name. Manual of Style/Capital letters says that proper names are usually capitalized. So barrier island would be lowercase, since that is a descriptor of a type of island, but Berrier Island would be uppercase since Berrier is the name of a specific island.

If there are multiple proper names that begin or end in the same word, though, that is when things get tricky. I have not found guidance on this in the MOS, so here is what I usually do. For multiple nouns which are referred to as a group, such as Long Island and Staten Island, I would lowercase the common-noun portion of the names, per the AP Stylebook (for example). Such as between Long and Staten islands. The conjunctions "and" or "or" would be a good indicator of this. The AP Stylebook says, Exception: plurals of formal titles with full names are capitalized: Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald R. Ford.

For multiple nouns that are referred to as single entities, I would keep them uppercase: from Long to Staten Islands. This applies to common nouns like streets, rivers, bridges, and buildings. I still haven't figured out what to do for multi-word nouns like police departments.