Talk:Individual savings account

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 after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Per MOS:CAPS, not consistently capitalized. (closed by non-admin page mover) Vpab15 (talk) 18:46, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

Individual savings account → Individual Savings AccountIndividual Savings Account – The official terminology is capitalised for each word - see for example https://www.gov.uk/individual-savings-accounts or https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2024/1022/made. Little Professor (talk) 11:35, 2 November 2025 (UTC) — Relisting. ~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 11:49, 9 November 2025 (UTC) — Relisting. TarnishedPath^talk 01:02, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

• Support This article is about a specific UK program, not the general concept of saving accounts for individuals. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 15:24, 2 November 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose per the previous RM in 2019. Regardless of whether the "official" usage capitalises it or not, this is a common noun, not a proper noun. Similar titles are not capitalised (Individual retirement account, Tax-free savings account, Individual pension plan, Registered education savings plan, Registered retirement savings plan, Retirement compensation arrangements, etc.). Wikipedia uses WP:SENTENCECASE. The article is about the "a class of retail investment arrangement"; it is not the name of the program; it is the type of account. Independent sources from 2nd page of search results for "UK individual savings account" (the first page was all advertisements): , . —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:48, 2 November 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose per BarrelProof. Per MOS:CAPS, we only capitalize things that are consistently capitalized by reliable secondary sources. Even at a cursory glance this term does not meet that high bar. E.g., the FT and the Guardian both lowercase. Wallnot (talk) 22:29, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  Not really true though. Try more than a cursory glance 1 2 3 4 Little Professor (talk) 09:24, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Oppose per MOS:CAPS, which requires a "substantial majority" of sources use the capitalized form. NGram data shows this is not the case , with significant periods of time where the all-lowercase form is more frequent than the uppercase form and there is only a moderate ratio in favor of the overcapitalized form in more recent usage. Katzrockso (talk) 23:12, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

If you read the article, the subject in question was only introduced in 1999. Including references to books from 1880 is irrelevant as they won't be referring to the subject of this article. Try https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=individual+savings+account&year_start=1999&year_end=2022&corpus=en-GB&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=true which shows the capitalised form is the most common usage Little Professor (talk) 09:08, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

"The most common" is not sufficient to show something is the common name. A term has to be used in a "substantial majority" of sources to be considered the common name, per MOS:CAPS. When we restrict to "an" preprending "individual savings account" , using your time period and British English, we find no consistency. The issue with decontextualized ngrams is that they can include titles, which prepending "an" prevents this confounding factor. Katzrockso (talk) 07:12, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

• Support, this is about a specific and properly named UK program, not the general term. Even the n-grams are in agreement that this is a proper name, and both the common and official name of the program show that uppercase is correct. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:55, 3 November 2025 (UTC)
  • Could you please let us know which n-gram you are looking at, as the one Katzrockso cites does not show "that this is a proper name"? Wallnot (talk) 02:05, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

That's the one. Please look at it again, thanks. Uppercase "leads" lowercase by a pretty good margin, especially taking into account that many uses of lowercase do not pertain to this page (this article is about a specific UK program introduced in 1999, as reflected in the n-gram, not the familiar general usage term which has now fallen back to pre-1999 levels). Randy Kryn (talk) 02:19, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

• Support: If you limit the n-gram to British English texts, it's nearly four to one in favor of initial caps. The article should be edited to make it clear that this is talking about the UK program, not the general concept. SchreiberBike | ⌨  02:34, 3 November 2025 (UTC)
• Support per WP:COMMONAME, The ngram linked by SchreiberBike shows that this is a proper name in British English. Kelob2678 (talk) 16:26, 14 November 2025 (UTC) Oppose per Katzrockso. Kelob2678 (talk) 21:52, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

  Not at all, see above where it is clearly that use in titles confounds the issue. Katzrockso (talk) 07:15, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

  Looks like a proper name, . Especially if we take into account a possible contamination of BE corpora with American English. Kelob2678 (talk) 09:46, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

  A proper name would not have equal usage of both capitalization forms - see the sources @BarrelProof links above too. Common name would be a more feasible interpretation of the evidence, but once again there is not a "significant majority" as required by MOS:CAPS. Indeed in the ngram linked, "an individual savings account" is the most common form (all lowercase) in recent sources. Katzrockso (talk) 21:29, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

  You are ultimately right about this, I cannot find a single British media that consistently capitalizes this. BBC, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, Sky News. Kelob2678 (talk) 21:52, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

  Wow, I didn't realize it was so inconsistent that The Daily Telegraph even used a lowercase acronym, that's wild. Katzrockso (talk) 21:57, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

  BBC uses the lowercase acronym with a capitalized full version in some articles, while lowercased acronym with lowercase full version in others , while using the uppercased acronym with lowercased full version in others . Katzrockso (talk) 22:00, 18 November 2025 (UTC)