The Traffic Signs Manual now recommends that the centre of a town be signposted as "Town centre", with a small "c". But many people regard it as a title and feel that "Town Centre" both looks better and is more correct. What do you think?

I much prefer "Town Centre", as it reads better for a start. It may not be what the grammar pedants on SABRE like but for aesthetics which are paramount to drivers it is helpful.

"Ring Road" looks better than "Ring road" too.

'Town Centre' for me also. Whilst not grammatically accurate, it stands out better for those who may not be familiar with the area and in my opinion, looks much neater on road signs.

I'm not in favour of the new recommendation.

I don't think the new recommendation has much to do with so-called grammatical accuracy; after all, haven't they just introduced a rule that apostrophes will no longer be used on road signs?

As far as I can see, 'Town Centre', 'town centre' and 'Town centre' are all perfectly legitimate. Most (if not all) people with a PhD in Linguistics will tell you that there is no 'correct' or 'incorrect' form of any language, because languages and their conventions change over time. Capitalisation is a particularly subjective area, and the important thing is to be consistent in your usage.

Personally, I favour 'Town Centre' - not because it is 'right' or 'wrong', but because it looks neater on a signpost.

I wonder how many hours of meetings they needed to make such a crucial decision, and if they managed any fact-finding trips overseas.

Yes just stick with "Town Centre". Looks better IMHO.

I think 'Town Centre' looks better on a sign, even if it's not grammatically correct. It just appears to be bettered balanced, and it makes sense if you think of it like letters in a title (in lower case letters), even if those words wouldn't normally be given capital letters.

I agree with that point of view. I can understand why the powers that be have decided to adopt a small 'c', since "town centre" is not a Proper Noun (unlike, say, "East Kilbride"). However, I'd argue that all legends being displayed on signs can be considered titles, and can be capitalised as such (like "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time").

I tend to prefer keeping to lower case as much as possible, so voted for 'Town centre'. It's not a question of one being right and the other wrong, but I would suggest two things:

1. By analogy with other textual messages not involving proper nouns, a small c is more consistent. For example, 'Cattle grid', 'Dual carriageway ahead', 'Hidden dip' all use sentence case. I agree, though, that 'Town Centre' could be considered a proper noun, although I don't subscribe to that view myself.

2. If you're dealing with text that by its nature tends to have a lot of capitals (for proper nouns or abbreviations) already, it makes sense to use lower case wherever possible according to the usual conventions of English. Just as it's easier to read sentence case than ALL CAPITALS, it's also easier to read than Title Case Where Every Word Has A Capital, and it makes the words that do require a capital (names, in this case) stand out more.

So I'm in favour of the change, but I'm not going to lie down in front of a tank for it.

I voted for the small c, for two reasons.

* Destinations like "Town centre," "Ring road" etc. are formally special destinations. Chapter 7 capitalization rules are predicated on the principle that any generic element of a special destination will appear in lowercase only unless it is the first word in the phrase. This is because special destinations are not necessarily proper nouns. "Town centre," "Ring road," etc. are wholly generic. Similarly, it is good form to write "Towcester town centre" rather than "Towcester Town Centre" on a sign, unless of course the phrase is actually a proper noun. For example, "Towcester Town Centre" (accompanied with a Shopmobility icon) might refer to a shopping center within Towcester.

* As FosseWay notes, sentence case accords better with British signing practice in general. Initial caps are actually an Americanism. Because most US traffic signs use uppercase-only legend, but it is considered shouty to use uppercase-only in print and Internet contexts, sign messages are rendered in initial caps: "Long Vehicles Not Advised," "RVs Prohibited," "24 North," etc. It has actually been proposed that initial caps be adopted as an actual signing standard if mixed-case Clearview Bold typefaces are ever approved for use on warning and regulatory signs. I loathe initial caps used this way, and wouldn't wish on anyone the responsibility of explaining away an Americanism in this particular sphere.

In reality, there are only a few such examples I'd use with inital caps - "Ring Road", "City Centre" and "Town Centre" perhaps covers the majority - I'd be unhappy to see initial caps on other worded signs.

My reasoning being that I consider the three examples above to be actual places when designing a signing strategy, you direct drivers to the X Centre when they come in, breaking down into car parking destinations afterwards, then to the "Ring Road2 when they go out, at which point they chose their next destination - it's never quite that simple and many places don't have a "Ring Road" as such, but practically all towns and cities have some form of ring type route, even if for local reasons its not considered to be a ring route ;¬) cue new thread...

(Off topic...)



I share your dislike, but I wasn't aware the phenomenon was a true Americanism (in the way that 'color', 'plow' etc. are). It always jars with me when I read US newspaper headlines that do this, but then I've noticed the same in older (e.g. WW2-era) British papers. Is this one of those things, like some aspects of punctuation, where British usage has evolved further from traditional usage than US has?

Perhaps they will get in some (expensive) arty design consultancy who will decide to use all lower case "town centre" "manchester" etc.

I would say that it is, but at the same time US usage is not uniform. The New York Times (which is conservative in other ways--e.g. the use of courtesy titles like "Mr." and "Ms." when referring to specific people in articles, which nowadays seems almost patronizing) and the Washington Post both use initial caps in headlines, but the Wichita Eagle uses sentence case, much like the Guardian in the UK.

Where UK traffic signing is concerned, the big sea change came with Anderson and, to a much greater extent, Worboys. It was David Kindersley who lost the battle for all-caps on traffic signs in the early 1960's. In contradistinction, the US signing system is a more or less seamless continuation (bar the introduction of rounded typefaces in 1945, green background for guide signs in 1958-1971, and symbol signs in 1971) of that spelled out in the AASHO signing and marking manual for US highways in 1927.

I've just put in a vote for the big C for the totally rational reason that I think it it looks nicer!

But subconsciously it may be a pronunciation thing, the emphasis being on the Cen of Centre rather than on Town.

But of course this argument falls flat on its face with, say, the example of 'Dual carriageway'. Still, too late, the vote's been cast.

I voted lower case, again simply out of it looking better. But if there was a change on that I would prefer to see the Spanish/Italian/Gibraltar 'target' with simply the word 'centre' by it.

"Town Centre" is better than "Town centre", as it looks more gramatically (in terms of noun usage) and aesthetically correct. The use of "centre" should be reserved for where "town centre" is used - but this would be incredibly rare!

My vote is for "Centre Ville"

Or perhaps the Spanish usage of just "Centre" which always has an accompanying icon, think RAF symbol but in black and white.

On a slightly different note, I noticed a direction sign yesterday in Manchester for the Marks and Spencer car park and "Collect by Car" service. Car had a "c", despite the M&S sign in the entrance-way utilising a "C"!