I am currently helping put together a marine field guide for a small Dutch Caribbean island.  The guide will be in British English, and it will include fish and a whole range of invertebrate phyla as well as marine plants. The marine mollusks (spelled molluscs) are one chapter. For each species covered, the common name will be listed first, and then the scientific name.

I see that "Names of marine mollusks" by Turgeon et al, 1998, stated that common names in text should be used without capital letters, except where a proper noun is part of the common name.

However, that opinion seems to have changed. On the fisheries.org website,

http://fisheries.org/docs/pub_style10.pdf

The text states: 

"Most common names of fishes are now capitalized (see section 9.7 for further information)."

Section 9.7 clearly states:

"Following the usage in the 7th edition of Common and Scientific Names of Fishes from the United States, Canada, and Mexico (AFS Special Publication 34; 2013), new rules apply to the capitalization of species names.
Capitalize the common names of all fish species, including those not in Common and Scientific Names and other AFS taxonomic publications."

The field guide we are preparing must use a unified system for the common names of all phyla, so I am planning to recommend that in the text we capitalize both parts of the common name (or where applicable all three parts) for all of the phyla including mollusks. So it would read like this "The Chestnut Turban is a common species in this area."

Any comments?

Personally I find that capitalization makes the common name stand out more clearly from the surrounding words, so I am quite happy to do this.

I will be grateful for any feedback.

Susan J. Hewitt

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