We need to tighten the credit style on my magazine; more stuff is appearing on page.
We're toying w/ using the Blueprint style: If the company name and the URL are the same, drop the company name and keep the URL.
But the all-lower-case style makes URLs hard to read.
I'm SO tempted to change a listing like:
Flower girl's dresses, Morgane Le Fay, morganelefay.com
to:
Flower girl's dresses, MorganeLeFay.com.
How stupid would that be?
I know that most pubs put URLs in all lower-case, because the browser doesn't need them. But it also doesn't CARE, right?
And if the capital letters make comprehension easier, and keep readers from trying to read a broken URL as an actual word, then wouldn't the initial caps be a sensible idea?
Tell me what you think.
(edited to fix a typo--thanks, Tony)
4 comments:
Perhaps because I work in advertising and not publishing, I'd be inclined to keep it lowercase unless the site in question uses the capitalization on the site or in supporting materials (if available).
If they refer to themselves with the capitalization, I'd take that as part of their brand identity. Also, they may use the capitalization in order to aide readability. For example, a real URL I came across is donedhardy.com. I don't know who Ned Hardy is or what they want me to do with him... Oh, wait! It's Don Ed Hardy and it has something to do with fashion.
(Oh, dang, I can't believe I'm pointing this out after I said I don't do this, but there appears to be a typo in the "before" example!)
Although I wouldn't have a problem with the shortened option, per se, I would worry that it might open the door to inconsistencies (sorry about the cliche, but my brain's fuzzy at the moment). Some businesses would get their name spelled out AND have their URL listed; others would have the name/URL combo. Although, depending on the publication, that may not be a problem . . .
The only problem I can see is that it might make people think the business was actually named MorganLeFay.com (like Amazon.com, though considering how many people call it just Amazon that might not matter).
Thanks for the input.
Editrix, they ran into that problem at Blueprint, when they left out company names if the URL was mostly the same. I don't know how much flak they caught over it.
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