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Is the word 'neo-scholasticism' capitalized in academic writing, or not?

It is lowercase in the Merriam Webster dictionary, but capitalized in the Collins English dictionary. So in a thesis, which would be correct:

Option A: neo-scholasticism

Option B: Neo-Scholasticism

Joe
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1 Answers1

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Academic writing is usually in compliance with the relevant institution or publisher's style guide. As you see here, they differ sometimes:

Penn State University

Capitalize names of cultural movements and styles if they are derived from proper nouns; otherwise they should be lowercased: Cynicism, Doric, Gothic, Neoplatonism, Pre-Raphaelite, Romanesque; but baroque, classical, cubism, Dadaism, modernism, neoclassicism, postmodernism, romanticism.

Capitalization (Penn State)

However...

Association of Art Editors:

In general, sharply delimited period titles are capitalized, whereas broad periods and terms applicable to several periods are not:

Archaic period Baroque Early Renaissance High Renaissance Early Christian Gothic Greek Classicism of the fifth century (otherwise, classicism) Imperial Impressionism Islamic Mannerist Middle Ages Neoclassicism (for the late-18th-century movement; otherwise, neoclassicism) Post-Impressionism Pre-Columbian, Precolumbian Rococo Roman Romanesque Romantic period antique, antiquity classicism (see above) medieval modern, modernism neoclassicism (see above) postmodern prehistoric quattrocento

Association of Art Editors Style Guide

Some sources advise neo-Scholasticism and Merriam Webster has neo-scholasticism.

Michael Harvey
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    The second rule is far more useful than the first. Saying that capitalisation depends on whether the term is derived from a proper name or a common noun is not very helpful, because in many such cases it will not be obvious whether the term should be regarded as derived from a proper name or a common noun. The origin of Renaissance, for example, is a French word that is both a common noun and a proper name for one definite, unrepeatable time period. – jsw29 May 27 '21 at 21:16
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    One thing that weakens the Penn State example (assuming that the definition is copied and pasted or otherwise transcribed without error) is that they have included Dadaism as an example of a movement whose name is not derived from a proper noun but have capitalised the name. – BoldBen May 28 '21 at 06:12
  • @Boldben - if you follow the link I gave, you will see it was faithfully copied and pasted. I have noticed that the original question is a close relative of this one https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/88360/capitalization-of-artistic-trends – Michael Harvey May 28 '21 at 06:47
  • Thank you everyone for the much needed and excellent feedback. I see that the Blackwell Companion to Nineteenth Century Theology has also capitalized the term Neo-Scholasticism. – Joe May 28 '21 at 08:26
  • @MichaelHarvey There was no criticism of you intended Michael. Penn State seem to have either got themselves confused or commited a typo. I, personally, would always capitalise Dadaism, I was surprised to see it in that list. – BoldBen May 29 '21 at 15:19
  • @BoldBen - I never felt any criticism from you. I would capitalise Dadaism too. As I would Arts and Crafts, Cubism, the Vorticists etc. – Michael Harvey May 29 '21 at 15:30
  • @MichaelHarvey Glad you didn't feel criticism, Michael. Of the Penn State list of non-capitlaised names baroque and classical would be the only ones that I would not capitalise. As far as I know all the others were deliberately named by their practitioners so, to me, the movements have proper nouns. No practitioner of baroque or classical art would have referred to himself as a baroque or classical artist, those labels were created later. Perhaps that's the distinction. – BoldBen May 31 '21 at 09:32