To distinguish the rank of "university professor" from the job of professor at a university, you can add context, such as "the rank of university professor" or "promoted to university professor"; using capitals is very undependable, and is at odds with Wikipedia's MoS (MOS:JOBTITLES). It is not a unique entity; lots of institutions have people at the rank of university professor, and some have several at that rank. It's just a rank, and we don't capitalize it, just as we don't capitalize military ranks ("she was a lieutenant colonel") even though military organizations often do. Just follow Wikipedia's style. Chris the speller yack 18:46, 19 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
- We use "Distinguished Professor" to mean a specific title of distinction, not "distinguished professor" to mean a professor who happens to be distinguished in some way. We use "Chancellor's Professor" to mean a title of distinction given at some universities to mark them as being distinguished in some way, rather than "chancellor's professor" to mean a professor who is somehow possessed by a chancellor. We use "University Professor" in the same way, to mean someone who has a specific title of distinction (at my university , this is a title of distinction far above Distinguished Professor, which is above Chancellor's Professor; in the German system it is not so high, but still a specific rank above that of an ordinary full professor). It is essential to get these distinctions correct because they are directly contributory to WP:PROF#C5 notability, which asks for a rank or title that is above ordinary full professor.
- When you lowercase words, you tell readers that they should be interpreted as ordinary English words. Uppercase phrases are essentially proper noun phrases that are the names of these specific professorial ranks. By indiscriminately lowercasing things you are destroying the meaning of these phrases and destroying what should be a clear statement of notability in these articles.
- The same issue does not arise for assistant professor or associate professor, which are unambiguous and should remain lowercase. We should not have to contort our language or introduce circumlocutions to state that someone has a specific title of distinction.
- Another grammatical marker that should have tipped you off that this is a proper noun phrase not a colloquial use of lowercase words: it is correct to write "She is University Professor" without an article. For lowercased colloquial words like assistant professor, an article would normally be used: "She is an assistant professor". —David Eppstein (talk) 20:33, 19 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
