Talk: SLEEPY (novel)

Sleepy or SLEEPY?[]

SLEEPY is the artificial intelligence (?) the book centers around and so it would seem to be the title is this name as opposed to the adjective "sleepy". Both the Discontinuity Guide and the Doctor Who Reference Guide agree on this even though the latter is inconsistent on the main page. I know the PROSE books are all caps on the covers but I think that is how this one is meant to be.--Nyktimos 04:07, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not so sure. I see the rationale for SLEEPY, but that seems too literal a name for Kate Orman. I think she'd wanna have a bit of word play. As always with these book title pages, the thing that carries the day is the name under which the book is copyrighted. So, what does it say on the copyright page?

A secondary problem we'll need to consider is how we're going to name the page for the entity that is SLEEPY, versus the book. Is this Sleepy (novel) or is the other thing SLEEPY (construct)? Apparently, no one has written a page on the SLEEPY entity itself, as this link on the character page of the book just loops back to the book's page. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 03:50, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

It's been over a decade; can this be resolved? SLEEPY (novel) is the obvious title after the titular character: SLEEPY. The copyright page (reproduced below) doesn't actually list the title:

First published in Great Britain in 1996 by Doctor Who Books an imprint of Virgin Publishing Ltd

332 Ladbroke Grove London W10 5AH

The right of Kate Orman to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Cover illustration by Mark Wilkinson

Internal illustrations by Jason Towers

ISBN 0 426 20465 4

Typeset by Galleon Typesetting, Ipswich Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham PLC

LegoK9 ☎ 16:15, March 25, 2020 (UTC)

I'd be inclined to listen to the records of the US Library of Congress, WorldCat, etc., over a literalist interpretation with no source in the book as printed. These covers capitalise all the titles, but we follow regular title case all the same here, barring evidence. Where is the evidence?
× SOTO (☎/✍/↯) 19:17, May 24, 2020 (UTC)

While I don't have an immediate example for the Library of Congress on hand, WorldCat is not going to be a trusted source on this, as they capitalize book titles that are all lower case. So WorldCat at the very least forces books into a very specific format when it puts them into their database, even if that format is wrong. Library of Congress doesn't seem to have records of any of the books I've found examples of. Unless we include Randall Munroe's other books, being stylized as all lower case, but even Amazon gets those wrong as well, so it's not clear to me whether that's the actual name of the book or a title cover/page stylization. Suffice it to say that neither of these are definitive, and WorldCat certainly isn't useful at all. Najawin ☎ 19:37, May 24, 2020 (UTC)

Well spotted! I can't seem to find (or remember) an example of a book title that's entirely an acronym that might be found there, but the Library of Congress do indeed title-case all-lower case titles, it seems: [1]. Acronyms might well fare better in styleguides, though.
× SOTO (☎/✍/↯) 20:20, May 24, 2020 (UTC)

Obviously not definitive, but I've been going through the blog version of Tardis Eruditorum recently to try and distill down the recurring themes for a write up on here. (Hopefully that should be done within a week) Orman herself comments on the website from time to time, and they use the "SLEEPY" stylization. Not definitive because Orman might just have not corrected the mistake, but it's certainly evidence, given that Orman is herself a fan of the site and has appeared on the podcast associated with it. Najawin ☎ 10:11, May 30, 2020 (UTC)

Good point. But — speaking of capitalization — Najawin, shouldn't that be "TARDIS Eruditorum"? That's how it's spelled on the table of contents you linked to, anyway. I'm not sure about the book versions, and I'm equally unsure whether, and how, T:TARDIS would apply if it should turn out that the book versions did in fact use the form "Tardis". --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 11:31, May 30, 2020 (UTC)

It should indeed, I'm just bad at capitalization and was writing that right before I went to bed. Najawin ☎ 18:06, May 30, 2020 (UTC)

Well, I can't verify that it's 100% her website, but I think I found Orman's Wordpress. It uses "SLEEPY". Najawin ☎ 07:48, June 10, 2020 (UTC)

Anyone else have thoughts? Najawin ☎ 01:34, July 9, 2020 (UTC)

After seeing Najawin link this talk page on Talk:Main Range, I thought I'd come and give it a look-over. [[SLEEPY (novel)]] sounds good to me.

Epsilon 📯 📂

12:51, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

I know this page had already been tagged for speedy renaming so the debate is purely academic, but I would like to add one thing. In reference to the comment about "a bit of wordplay" mentioned earlier, I think that's exactly what IS happening here. It's wordplay, taking advantage of the fact that all the VNA titles are in ALLCAPS anyway, to make a deliberately ambiguous title. However, I agree, given the evidence here include from the author herself, "SLEEPY" is definitely "more correct". But I do think the ambiguity is purposeful. NightmareofEden ☎ 11:27, 3 February 2022 (UTC)