Talk:Dear Colleague letter

Requested move 20 July 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved. The consensus is that the title is commonly capitalised and in usage is commonly capitalised as 'Dear Colleague'. (non-admin closure) — Frayæ (Talk/Spjall) 20:54, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

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Dear colleague letter → Dear Colleague letter – There most certainly no consensus by the reliable English media to leave the word "colleague" uncapitalized. "Dear Colleague" is the preferred choice of reliable sources as well as the way the phrase is actually formatted in most "Dear Colleague" letters. Per WP:COMMONNAME, this article should be moved to "Dear Colleague letter". Mysterymanblue (talk) 03:09, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose. No reason to capitalise a common name. It is not an official title. Let's follow the guidelines consistently. 83.228.159.212 (talk) 16:00, 20 July 2018 (UTC).
  • Comment : this should be a grouped request and discussion with Talk:Dear colleague letter (United States)#Requested move 20 July 2018. 83.228.159.212 (talk) 16:01, 20 July 2018 (UTC).
• Oppose. Not a proper noun so shouldn't be capitalized. Rreagan007 (talk) 16:44, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
• Strong support per nom and per sources, on this page and especially at the other nom where there are many references and sources which universally upper-case this. And this n-gram shows no result for lower-case. I'm saying 'strong' support because of above 'oppose' comments, upper-case is by far the common name and it's how the letter is addressed by the people who actually use it. Randy Kryn (talk) 17:04, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
• Support - following sources is good. This is capitalized because it refers to the proper noun ("Colleague" here functions as a title) Red Slash 13:47, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Distinction from "Dear Colleague letter (United States)"

It's not clear to me why this is a separate article from Dear Colleague letter (United States). The only non-US example given is of the UK's use of the term within the Department of Health, which isn't at all the same thing as described here - the UK version instead "convey[s] general information, policy updates or a request for information or action to a range of NHS and social care audiences" (Wayback Machine version of the link in the article). I haven't been able to find any use of the term outside the US other than this.

It feels like this article should perhaps be merged with the (much more substantial) US-specific article? Or else if the term is genuinely widely used outside the US, the article should be generalised to cover that wider area, rather than just duplicating what's on the US page, but with less detail? Podargidae (talk) 14:07, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

I think this is a reasonable proposal; we can keep the brief reference to the UK, but merge the rest of the content since this topic is chiefly American. However, the merged content should be available at “Dear Colleague letter”, not “Dear Colleague letter (United States)”, since the parenthetical disambiguation is not necessary with a single primary topic.  Mysterymanblue  14:24, 14 May 2021 (UTC)