Talk:bell hooks

Corrupted link

In citation #42 —The link to article “What bell hooks taught me” is corrupted. Mlh414 (talk) 15:24, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

 Done Fixed using an archive link. Thank you for reporting this. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 02:26, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

"Bell hooks" or "bell hooks"

I understand the name is in lowercase. However, the image captions "bell hooks in October 2014", "bell hooks in 2009" and et cetera seem confusing.

Shouldn't "Bell" be capitalized simply because it is the first word in the sentence, regardless of stylization?
— Urro^{[talk][edits]} ⋮ 17:39, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

It seems to me that her name should be in lowercase even when it starts a sentence. A lot of other writings that use her name (such as her obituaries) opt to still start sentences with an all lowercase "bell hooks". — Toothlesswalrus (talk) 21:25, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia policy as per MOS:PERSONAL is quite clear on the matter, as is long-established consensus on the pages of other persons with names stylized in all-lowercase (cf. k.d. lang, danah boyd, maia arson crimew).

On a more abstract note, while Wikipedia depends on reliable secondary sources for facts (e.g. "bell hooks' name is stylized in all lowercase"), attempting to make it dependent on such sources for style would be a massive headache, given the wide variety- and inconsistent usage- of standards and conventions of style. American vs English spelling conventions are quite enough without opening up equivalent headaches for capitalization, punctuation, and spacing. Anything that can be a wiki-wide standard should be, for the sake of both editor workload complexity and reader experience consistency.

Thepsyborg (talk) 18:18, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarity!
— Urro^{[talk][edits]} ⋮ 23:14, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

The guideline is referenced above but is not described. To be clear, it says "the name is still capitalized when at the beginning of a sentence, per the normal rules of English". A similar statement is found at WP:LCITEMS, saying "When such a name is the first word in a sentence, the rule for initial letters in sentences and list items should take precedence, and the first letter of the personal name should be capitalized regardless of personal preference." Note that this talks about list items as well as sentences. This article has several lists with items in lowercase with her name at the beginning. It might be desirable to switch the word order to avoid the problem. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 17:29, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Now that I am becoming more aware of MOS conventions and how they are more broadly reflected in our culture and consensus-supported by many cross-platform authorities, along with the history behind these changes, and sometimes the much longer history of different conventions, Hooks' personal style convention is something that registers more prominently in my mind. OTOH, when I first discovered her 25-30 or so years ago as a young academic, I found her personal styling quite frustrating as I realized how citing her in print in any discussion related to her work and thought could be quite frustrating due to the challenges of locating her name within any printed work in which she and her thought and work appeared, were relevant, and had her name cited, although nowadays our technology can better assist in such location. But just now, upon my remembering how her very unconventional personal styling can bring up numerous issues related to manual of style, I just now realized how powerful anti-convention such as hers could be, as such can bring attention to her work. In terms of the personal effect on me, however, I can say that my initial frustrations over her convention 25-30 or so years ago turned me off to being further curious about her and I never followed through with any interest on her. I realize now that she must have been a very intelligent and interesting and successful person. My general stance is that longer-established convention related to capitalization, spacing (such as 2 spaces after a paragraph at the end of a sentence, rather than just 1 space), and also, within specific situations, the usage of numbers to articulate numbers rather than words articulating numbers, generally agree with facilitating cognitive ease when reading and should be preferred in most contexts. I personally wonder to what extent a more conventional personal style, whereas the presentation of her name in print is concerned, would have affected her individual success, and in which direction it would have done so. I can say, however, that in general, currently prevailing MOS conventions are often off-putting, and can even be damaging to both mental and physical well-being, not only individually but also collectively, and the accumulation of innumerable micro-irritations of such can be unnecessarily problematic - it is enough, summarily so, to state that they increase within me no desire, whatsoever, to be within the professional, paid publishing industry as it now stands. In slightly more than 4 years of her afterlife, I wonder what hooks' spirit has come to feel about such matters, now that she can no longer affect such matters directly.QuakerIlK (talk) 16:40, 23 December 2025 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Shaping of the Modern World

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 January 2025 and 21 May 2025. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Vic02964 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by DocBui (talk) 17:53, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Title should be capitalized

And the current version should be noted as "often stylized as" in the first sentence. ChickpeaAnxiety (talk) 22:55, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

No, because it's always lowercase. Not "often". Sumanuil. _{(talk to me)} 00:03, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

I agree that it's always lowercase. That was how hooks wanted it, and we respect that over standard English rules of capitalization. It's also the WP:IMPLICITCONSENSUS. I have had to go through the article fixing this problem numerous times because people change it to uppercase because they are too careless or too uninformed. Sundayclose (talk) 16:56, 19 October 2025 (UTC)