Talk:Alexander Technique

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Alexander Technique article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9: 30 days

The contentious topics procedure applies to this page. This page is related to complementary and alternative medicine, which has been designated as a contentious topic.

Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator. Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page.

Dance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Dance, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Dance and Dance-related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.DanceWikipedia:WikiProject DanceTemplate:WikiProject DanceDance

WikiProject Dance To-do list:

To nominate at WP:FAC:
To improve to Featured standard:
To nominate as a Good article:
To expand: 18th century dance - 20th century ballet - Bolero - Choreography on Broadway - Dance education - English ballet - Indian classical dance - Italian ballet - List of dance companies - Meg Stuart - Opera ballet - Sasha Waltz - Scotch reel - Set dance - Physically integrated dance
To cleanup: Contra dance - Salsa (dance) - Dandiya - Lead and follow
To unbias:
To check for copyvios:
To merge: List of dancers and List of dance personalities‎ as per AfD discussion
Substubs needing expansion: see /substubs
To destub: Amir Hossain Babu - Canada Dance Festival - Dance etiquette - Flash dance - more
Needing references: Chorus line - specifically verifying that each girl actually started out as a chorine
To create: Broadway dance - Country Western Dance International - Dance and cinema - Dance and society - German folk dancing - Latin swing - Post-structuralist ballet - Push (dance) - Salon dance - Shuffle dance - Swing boogie - World Dance Alliance - Xavier Le Roy - more
Wanted Pics/Graphics: Category:Dance articles needing images

Alternative medicine

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Alternative medicine, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Alternative medicine related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Alternative medicineWikipedia:WikiProject Alternative medicineTemplate:WikiProject Alternative medicineAlternative medicine

Skepticism Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Skepticism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of science, pseudoscience, pseudohistory and skepticism related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SkepticismWikipedia:WikiProject SkepticismTemplate:WikiProject SkepticismSkepticism
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

This article was nominated for deletion on 28 September 2010. The result of the discussion was keep.

First sentence - no teacher would agree with

Regarding the second half of the first sentence of this article: ¨is a type of alternative therapy based on the idea that poor posture gives rise to a range of health problems.¨ I believe I can safely say that no Alexander technique teacher would agree with this statement. Typically it is not referred to as a therapy, the use of the word posture will mislead the reader, and AT is not focussed on relieving specific health problems but rather on changing global habits. What about this sentence: ¨The Alexander Technique (AT) is an approach to changing habits of postural support, muscle tension, movement, attention, and reactivity.¨ ( https://alexandertechniquescience.com/general-at/what-is-alexander-technique/ ) 213.93.108.91 (talk) 07:19, 26 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This has been discussed ad nauseam; see this Talk page and its archives. As a 'real world' check I look online at what AT vendors are offering and straight away see it being touted for asthma,[1] Looks to me like a classic Motte and bailey fallacy is in play. When challenged, AT vendors are like 'me!? medical!? oh no!" but left to their own devices they are happy to advertise with medical claims. Bon courage (talk) 07:42, 26 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pagename (capitalization)

I see that some editors disagree about whether the pagename should be spelled with "Technique" capitalized, or lower case. I don't feel strongly, but I lean towards thinking lower case looks more natural. I'd like to discuss this. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:30, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this is a proper name, per n-grams, sources, etc. At least for the last 50 years. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I've been thinking about this, and I have some follow-up thoughts. The relevant policies and guidelines are MOS:AT, WP:NCCAPS, and WP:LOWERCASE. They all say that lowercase should be used, except, as you say, it is a proper noun. I agree with you that common use is the appropriate way to assess that, but it also occurs to me that overall statistics do not distinguish between sources that are promoting AT, and those that are criticizing it or evaluating it in a scholarly way. And given the POV issues that can arise with a fringe-y topic like this, not all search hits are the same. I looked for some sources that are scholarly evaluations: [2], [3], or health agency evaluations: [4]. Those source use lower case for "technique". That's far from a statistical analysis, and I make no claim that it negates what you have shown about common use. Maybe the overall common-use trend that you describe really is the right way to go, but I want to consider the possibility that the capitalization is something that was created as a way to puff up the importance of AT, as opposed to a true proper name, as recognized by independent and neutral sources. Looking at pages that use "technique" in the pagename: [5], and pages in categories about health practice techniques, it's uncommon to treat this word as part of a proper name. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:10, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 31 March 2025

It has been proposed in this section that Alexander Technique be renamed and moved to Alexander technique.

A bot will list this discussion on the requested moves current discussions subpage within an hour of this tag being placed. The discussion may be closed 7 days after being opened, if consensus has been reached (see the closing instructions). Please base arguments on article title policy, and keep discussion succinct and civil.

Please use {{subst:requested move}}. Do not use {{requested move/dated}} directly.

Links: current log • target log • direct move

Alexander Technique → Alexander technique – There are valid arguments to be made for either version of the pagename, as discussed in the talk section just above, and I feel that it would be best to have a discussion that brings in more editors. There is a strong case to be made that using a title with a capitalized "Technique" reflects the fact that overall search results show that capitalization is significantly more common than lower case: [6]. On the other hand, such a title construction tends to go against MOS:AT, WP:NCCAPS, and WP:LOWERCASE. It is also atypical for us to capitalize "technique" in titles of other pages: [7], or in other pages about health-related techniques. I think that this comes down to whether or not the capitalized version is truly a proper name, or something that has arisen from promotional efforts on behalf of a fringe-y alt-med technique. In the talk section above, I link to some mainstream sources that eschew the capitalization. So, what do editors think? -- Tryptofish (talk) 20:47, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Listed at WP:FTN: [8]. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:28, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, this has been a proper name for over half-a-century, as reflected in the overwhelmingly uppercased n-grams. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:18, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support: The first two scholarly sources that I picked that were cited in the article were this and this. Neither of them capitalizes the word "technique". I had a little difficulty accessing another one, but found it here, and it doesn't use capitalization either. I was a bit surprised by this, because the citations in the article make it appear that uppercase is used in the cited titles, but it isn't in these actual sources. Some other sources do capitalize it, but it doesn't seem necessary, and Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization. My rough impression is that the sources I notice that capitalize it are mostly the lower-quality and non-independent sources. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 02:29, 1 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support Per WP:NCCAPS: For multiword page titles, one should leave the second and subsequent words in lowercase unless the title phrase is a proper name that would always occur capitalized, even mid-sentence. The ngram search (here) at 69% capitalisation shows that this is far from always capped in sources and therefore not a proper name that we should cap per NCCAPS. Note, the ngram search does not exclude normal uses of title case such as headings and titles in citations but nor does a search for the Alexander technique reasonably exclude use in citations. We would also lowercase this per MOS:SCIMATH, a specific exception to the general advice at MOS:CAPS. Cinderella157 (talk) 09:28, 1 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support. On balance the WP:PAG scales tip in favour of Tryptofish's argument. Bon courage (talk) 10:19, 1 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]