Tags naming: Start with lowercase or uppercase letter

[zoliky 0]

Hi, I finished reading "Evernote Essentials" by Brett Kelly and "Evernote for Life" by Brandon Collins. 

I'm thinking of creating plural tags, but what about the first letter? Should I capitalize the first letter of the tag? (i.e. books or Books)
 

I know it's a matter of preference and consistency matters, but I'm curios how you name them.

Thank you!

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

I converted to lowercase tags to ensure that I am consistent. I found it easier to guarantee my behaviour with lowercase rather than uppercase. The exception is for acronyms, USDA, OMAFRA, CFIA are capitals.

Ultimately it is up to you, and it is good you are thinking about it now, because being deliberate on these matters makes life much easier! Good luck!

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

lower-case for consistency. everything, including titles, is in lower-case. it probably doesn't matter what you do with case, but be consistent in order to avoid problems such as duplicate tags.

[zoliky 0]

Thank you!

 

but be consistent in order to avoid problems such as duplicate tags.

I suppose you are talking about an older Evernote version. Evernote 5.5 doesn't allow duplicate tags.

 

 

 

lower-case for consistency, everything, including titles,

GrumpyMonkey, should I apply the same rule for note titles too?

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

 

lower-case for consistency, everything, including titles,

GrumpyMonkey, should I apply this rule for note titles too?

 

 

I do for consistency, but I don't think it matters as much there except in rather rare cases (the use of another app to search your drive for Evernote content, perhaps). This would be a case of personal preference.  Here are the rules I have for my account:

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=367

[jefito 5,589]

Tag casing doesn't matter. Capitalize or not as you choose. I usually capitalize, but since there's no right or wrong, do whatever's more convenient. Much better to spend time figuring out the nature of your tag organizational scheme if you're going to use tags to organize.

[zoliky 0]

Much better to spend time figuring out the nature of your tag organizational scheme if you're going to use tags to organize.

 

Thank you.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Tag casing doesn't matter. Capitalize or not as you choose. I usually capitalize, but since there's no right or wrong, do whatever's more convenient. Much better to spend time figuring out the nature of your tag organizational scheme if you're going to use tags to organize.

Doesn't it? I've found it quite messy to have multiple tags for the same thing because of capitalization issues. Notes show up in some searches and not in others because of inconsistent application. I find a few simple rules like all lower-case helps -- I don't have to think about it, because it is always lower-case. All upper-case is fine, too, but the consistency helps, in my experience.

[jefito 5,589]

Search Grammar says text and tag searches are supposed to be case-insensitive:

 

Matching literal terms

If no advanced search modifier is found in a search term, it will be matched against the note as a text content search. Words or quoted phrases must exactly match a word or phrase in the note contents, note title, tag name, or recognition index. Words in the content of the note are split by whitespace or punctuation. Words may end in a wildcard to match the start of a word. Searches are not case sensitive

tag:[tag name] - will match notes that have a tag with the literal name (word or quoted phrase). This requires an full case-insensitive match on the tag name. The tag name may end with a wildcard to match the beginning of a tag. The pattern will match from the beginning of the full tag name, and punctuation will be included. I.e. the tag and the search string are not tokenized by whitespace and/or punctuation. This can be used multiple times to specify all tags that must match the notes

Whether that's true in practice in all clients is another matter -- if not, that should be a bug, and reported.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Jeff,  I think case becomes an issue with things like emailing notes into Evernote. If I am not mistaken in this situation it IS case sensitive. Thus if I have the tag "receipts" and I use #Receipts in the subject line of the email, it won't get tagged properly. 

[jefito 5,589]

Jeff,  I think case becomes an issue with things like emailing notes into Evernote. If I am not mistaken in this situation it IS case sensitive. Thus if I have the tag "receipts" and I use #Receipts in the subject line of the email, it won't get tagged properly.

I maintain that that's a bug, too. But in the meantime, I guess it's something for users to watch out for.

[Emy 1]

I find it very difficult to rename tags to change case when using the Mac client, but no problem when using the web version.  When using the Mac client, it keeps trying to autocorrect the tag name to the way the tag was written initially.

[leslieh18 0]

I find it very difficult to rename tags to change case when using the Mac client, but no problem when using the web version.  When using the Mac client, it keeps trying to autocorrect the tag name to the way the tag was written initially.

Yes, me too!  I encounter this difficulty all the time when using Evernote for Mac.  It's an irritation I have accepted, but would love to see go.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

 

I find it very difficult to rename tags to change case when using the Mac client, but no problem when using the web version.  When using the Mac client, it keeps trying to autocorrect the tag name to the way the tag was written initially.

Yes, me too!  I encounter this difficulty all the time when using Evernote for Mac.  It's an irritation I have accepted, but would love to see go.

 

 

Hi. Welcome to the forums!

 

If I understand the complaint (I may be misunderstanding), it seems like a non-issue to me. If you just keep typing, the automatic tag completion disappears if you are changing the name within the note. In other words, I'm saying that it looks like it is autocorrecting, but it actually is not. Close your eyes, keep on typing, and it will go away

 

If you go to the tag screen (using the navigation buttons on the left side of the interface) there is no automatic completion at all, so this problem doesn't even occur. Personally, auto-complete isn't something I like at all, but a lot of people seem to love it, so I don't think it is going away. My guess is that the Web version will get it someday as well. 

[Kirby Krieger 72]

 

Personally, auto-complete isn't something I like at all, but a lot of people seem to love it, so I don't think it is going away. My guess is that the Web version will get it someday as well. 

 

I like it a lot, and recommend it in use, in one way, for one important reason: consistent tagging with minimum mistakes and administration.  My recommendation:

• use _only_ Title Case for Tags
• do not use any spaces in Tags
• Never type tags in Title Case, unless you are creating a new Tag

In practice, this results in the proper substitution of of your typing with a correctly spelled, already-included Tag.  It is easy to visually scan your Tags for any that do not start with a Capital Letter.  These have been input in error, and need to be corrected.

 

I'd like to see auto-complete made stronger.  In OmniFocus, the proposed matches are based on the sequence of letters, but they allow letters in-between.  (The algorithm is "*a*b*c … ".)  Currently in Evernote, to select the Tag "SoftwareEvernoteMac", since I have that Tag as well as SoftwareEvernoteIOS (etc.), I have to type all the way to "M" or "I" or else select from the drop-down list.  Were my suggestion implemented, I could simply type "sem" and the Tag "SoftwareEvernoteMac" would be selected (assuming no other tags contained the letters "s", "e" and "m" in that order, in which case I might learn to type "soem" for that Tag).

 

It's a great time-saver.

[jefito 5,589]

"SoftwareEvernoteMac" is (or would be, if I had any Mac tags, which I don't) three tags for me: "Software", "Evernote", and "Mac". I realize that some folks like the explicit-hierarchy-in-tag-names paradigm, and why that is, but the downsides are changing your hierarchy means you need to change a lot of tag names. Plus, as noted, long tag names means bad cases in general for auto-completion. No thanks. Oh, and and consistent capitalization isn't my hobgoblin.

[Kirby Krieger 72]

Hi Jeff,

 

"SoftwareEvernoteMac" is (or would be, if I had any Mac tags, which I don't) three tags for me: "Software", "Evernote", and "Mac". I realize that some folks like the explicit-hierarchy-in-tag-names paradigm, and why that is, but the downsides are changing your hierarchy means you need to change a lot of tag names. Plus, as noted, long tag names means bad cases in general for auto-completion. No thanks. Oh, and and consistent capitalization isn't my hobgoblin.

 

It's three Tags for me, too.  But that's an unwanted MacGuffin, for which I apologize.   My point wasn't "how long can I make Tags", my points were:

• Capitalize Tags.  With auto-complete, it's a great way to easily see mistakenly created Tags (which happens a lot), and, as a follow-up
• Auto-complete is good; I'd like to see it even better.  (And that was, I'd thought, best illustrated with an example of long Tag names.)

 

I think each of those are worthy.

 

Consistent capitalization isn't my hobgoblin, either.  Database consistency is.  I've seen way too many keyword lists with things like "Family", "family", "fymily", and "FAmily".

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Why capitalize? Why not all lower-case as a rule? I haven't ever found it to be a problem, and it is even more likely to be consistent over time (only one case) than a mix of upper and lower.

[Kirby Krieger 72]

Why capitalize? Why not all lower-case as a rule? I haven't ever found it to be a problem, and it is even more likely to be consistent over time (only one case) than a mix of upper and lower.

 

Because if you Capitalize the first letter of every tag, and enter the Tags in lower-case, and let auto-complete do its job, then you can easily tell which Tags in your Tags list were mis-entered: they are lower-case.

 

Gah!  Nevermind.  I just found out that Evernote _stupidly_ doesn't return the initial letter in the Tag entry field to the case it was typed if the text entered doesn't match an existing Tag.  Better databases will _only_ change the case when the Tag _matches_.  If the Tag doesn't match, it is entered in whatever case it was typed.

 

Sorry to have not realized this before.  I'm surprised at Evernote's behavior here.  It's sloppy, imho.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

But, my tags are never mis-entered, because they are always lower-case. That's the point of having the rule: consistency. I don't know if there is anything bad or good about the Evernote interface in this regard. I use lower-case tags with everything in other apps as well. There's not much to think about this way -- it's just always lowercase.