Why do monsters' names start with an undercase letter?

[removeelyvilon]

It triggers me a little on the inside.

[Sprucery]

Because they are not proper nouns?

[Shtopit]

Tolkien wrote Elf, Dwarf and so on with a capital letter, but even he never managed to be consistent, and so a lot of revisions followed, and even then things still weren't the way they were supposed to be. So I guess that using lowercase just solves a lot of problems.

[spudwalt]

Probably because they're not proper nouns. You're not looking at *the* Stone Giant, you're looking at *a* stone giant. Meanwhile, Uniques (who are... well, unique) do start with capital letters, because there's only one Sigmund or Erolcha or Serpent of Hell or what have you.

[Quazifuji]

I'd say it's pretty common for out of context (i.e. not part of a sentence) phrases to be capitalized (either the first word capitalized, or every word capitalized), regardless of whether it's a proper noun or not. An uncapitalized word or phrase that's not part of a sentence looks weird to me, personally.

I mean, just look around this website. Every phrase, whether proper noun or not, has at least the first word capitalized. Just looking around the post-editing page, I see "Edit post," "Delete post," "Post icon," "User Control Panel," "Subject," "Search," "Upload attachment," etc. Not a single uncapitalized phrase in sight.

[ion_frigate]

So I did a quick survey of the roguelikes on my current PC and ones I could find dumplogs for:

Sil: Capitalizes everything everywhere
Brogue: Works as you say, capitalizes the first letter
CDDA: Works like DCSS, only capitalizes proper nouns
Nethack: Like DCSS
TGGW: Doesn't capitalize, no singular pronouns
Skeleton Crew: Capitalizes
ADOM: Like DCSS

The point is, this isn't consistent across roguelikes at all, but DCSS' way of doing it actually seems to be the most common. It also squares with the way one would make informal lists in general: you can capitalize or not.

[Doesnt]

It'd be rather weird IMO to capitalize the names of a lot of real animals:

  Code:

A Polar Bear, 3 Yaks, and a Hornet come into view.

[Quazifuji]

The point is, this isn't consistent across roguelikes at all, but DCSS' way of doing it actually seems to be the most common. It also squares with the way one would make informal lists in general: you can capitalize or not.

I guess maybe it's a matter of personal preference but I would always capitalized an informal list and think they look weird when not capitalized.

It'd be rather weird IMO to capitalize the names of a lot of real animals:

  Code:

A Polar Bear, 3 Yaks, and a Hornet come into view.

Sure, because that's in the middle of a sentence. I wouldn't expect it to be capitalized there. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be capitalized on the list on the side of the screen.

[Sprucery]

I think it would look very strange if the names were capitalized, but I'm not a native English speaker so there's that.

I wouldn't capitalize the items on my shopping list if I wrote one in English...

[Quazifuji]

I wouldn't capitalize the items on my shopping list if I wrote one in English...

I'm a native English speaker and I do, in fact, generally capitalize items on my shopping lists. On the other hand, I just asked my girlfriend (who does not play DCSS), who said she doesn't capitalize her shopping lists, and when shown the picture in the OP said it would look weird if capitalized.

So I'm going to go with "either one can be fine and it's a matter of personal preference." I'd be in favor of capitalizing it but I don't think it's incorrect not to do so.

[duvessa]

So when are we going to admit that this use of "triggered" is just "u mad bro?" but with a surface coating of edginess

[Shard1697]

usually, but not in the case of OP's post because they're refering to themselves and people didn't say "I'm mad bro?"