PinYin and capital (upper case) letters

[Shelley]

When using pinyin some of my text books use capital letters as you would expect when writing English, some use them just for names and others don't use capitals at all.

 

Is there a correct way or are there no rules about it when using Pinyin?

[imron]

Why yes there is a correct way.

[Shelley]

Thank you, I felt there had to be some rules. That link is excellent (I have book marked it), answered a few more questions about pinyin i didn't even really know I had

[raydpratt]

Thank you, imron:

 

I enjoyed how concise and clear the list of rules are, and I, too, bookmarked it.

[imron]

That whole site is chock full of information, make sure to read the other pages too

[Lu]

I have a question about pinyin.info. It's extremely useful and it's my 参考 of choice for things pinyin, but as I understand it, it's in no way an official thing. So where does the maker of the site get the rules from?

Asking because a while ago I was editing something and tried to get the author, a respected Western academic, to change things like 'Rier' and 'Longe' to 'Ri'er' and 'Long'e', and 'Ji'nan' to 'Jinan'. He of course thought his own system was the correct one and asked me what my source was for those rules. I felt I could hardly tell a scholar like him that I got it from a website, and without any other source to point to, either academic or from the Chinese government, I didn't really have an argument.

[Guest realmayo]

Interesting -- I'd never thought too much about apostrophes but had assumed it was about removing ambiguities, until I saw your "Jinan" and realised "Ji'nan" would look horrid. http://www.pinyin.info/romanization/hanyu/apostrophes.html cleared it up for me.

[imron]

The left column of the above page links to two sources, both books:

 

http://pinyin.info/readings/orthography.html

http://pinyin.info/readings/zyg.html

 

With the first one containing a quote from John DeFrancis - "This book is an indispensible tool for understanding the officially approved rules of Pinyin orthography."

 

As far as respected Western academics go, it's hard to get more respected than John DeFrancis.

[Lu]

Imron: thanks! That should come in useful next time.

Realmayo: 'Ji'nan' is one of my pet peeves :-) Looks ugly as sin, if you ask me.

[roddy]

There is actually this, but wants paid for. In Chinese you want the 汉语拼音方案, which I can't actually find a copy of online. 

[imron]

'Ji'nan' is one of my pet peeves :-) Looks ugly as sin, if you ask me.

Is Jin'an any better even though it would be correct (assuming Jin an rather than Ji nan)?

[Guest realmayo]

Jin'an looks okay to me, presumably because conditioned to not be surprised if there's an apostrophe before an "an".

[Lu]

Ji'nan makes me stumble over a roadblock in the word. Jin'an just alerts me that I'm stepping into a new syllable here.

(Yes it's all conditioning and just happening to know what is correct. Had I instead been educated in the system of the scholar I mentioned I probably wouldn't stumble, but I haven't, so I do.)