Board Thread:Wiki discussion/@comment-18014300-20170619050619/@comment-18014300-20170621043309

SupremeAssassin wrote: I don't know, I guess it's more a preference at this point than anything academic. I just think it's aesthetically pleasing to the eye, to say Renaissance Era, rather than Renaissance era. I would also still argue that capitalizing era would imply it's referring to that period of history. Of course, as with the examples of a political state or otherwise, when referring to a country under a rule, we would render it as the Holy Roman Empire (or Byzantine Empire). When referring to a country under a dynastic ruling body, I would still argue that rendering it as Ptolemaic Dynasty, or even better, the Ptolemaic Era would still be grammatically correct.

So, from what I understand of your reasons, we are not treating it as a political State, wherein, we would capitalize it, as saying, Nazi Germany, or The Kingdom of France because these are/were political regimes. When referring to an era or a dynasty, we are not referring to a political State but rather that period in the country's history.

That makes sense, and colloquially, it can be redirected as the Ptolemaic era, so if someone had searched on the Wiki using that rendering, they would be redirected to the article. Like how typing Connor on the Wiki redirects to Rathonhakedon.

Oh, I just made that up to illustrate my argument, I vaguely recalled that there was a Shang dynasty in China, but I just typed Li because I was thinking of a fictional character from Marvel Comics. Yeah, there's a certain point in grammar where it's just about convention and consensus as to what is the standard. And yes, you understand that correctly, according to sources like the Chicago Manual of Style, "dynasty" is to be treated like a reference to an era or period; it's not part of the name of the political state itself as in their time, they would not introduce themselves in foreign affairs as "We are the Dynasty of Shang".