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Proper names in the title field of BibTeX entries should be enclosed in curly brackets to avoid being made lowercase on some bibliography styles.

Now, is it also recommended to enclose a proper name in curly brackets when it's the first of word in a sentence? For example:

title = {{Darwin's} dangerous idea}

Sigur
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n.r.
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  • I do not think so. But I also don't think it would hurt – daleif Aug 25 '15 at 15:38
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    Doesn't "enclose proper names in curly brackets" fully include the set of "enclose proper names in curly brackets when it's the first word of a sentence"? That is, isn't the guidance redundant? – Steven B. Segletes Aug 25 '15 at 15:43
  • Does it? I don't know. – n.r. Aug 25 '15 at 15:51
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    Just for the related link BibTeX loses capitals when creating .bbl file – moewe Aug 25 '15 at 16:56
  • @Moewe: OK, I'll remove my comment. – Bernard Aug 25 '15 at 17:50
  • All sentence casing macros I have come across so far do not change the first character of a string (see e.g. this answer for a comment on the built-in change.case$ of BibTeX), so it would seem that it is no benefit from putting braces around the first word in a string. Since I'm not aware of any harm it might do to do so regardless, you might as well still wrap it in braces to follow the advice of "enclose proper names [read: everything that needs to be capitalised at all times] in curly brackets". – moewe Aug 26 '15 at 05:24
  • I think it comes down to a matter of taste in the end. And whether you can be bothered to go through the additional keystrokes to get the (mostly unnecessary) braces or not. – moewe Aug 26 '15 at 05:26
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    Note that for "NASA faks moon landing" you will need the curly braces after all {{NASA} fakes moon landing}, so I really think it is a good idea to use curly braces for cases such as {{Darwin's} dangerous idea} just for consistency and continuity in what you are doing. – moewe Aug 28 '15 at 07:43

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All sentence casing macros I have come across so far do not change the first character of a string (see e.g. this answer for a comment on the built-in change.case$ of BibTeX), so it would seem that you would be fine not enclosing proper nouns such as "Darwin" in curly brackets at the beginning of a string. As far as I can see, though, there should be no adverse affects from still doing so regardless.

A good general rule seems to be

enclose words that need to retain their capitalisation in curly brackets

(see BibTeX loses capitals when creating .bbl file)

So you might as well go for brackets at all times and not exempt words at the beginning of a string.

Note that for "NASA fakes moon landing" you will need the curly braces after all

{{NASA} fakes moon landing}

so I really think it is a good idea to use curly braces for cases such as

{{Darwin's} dangerous idea}

just for consistency and continuity in what you are doing.

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