The “Lexical Case Conversion” Action

The Lexical Case Conversion action in the Conversion category uses the lexical tagging engine built into macOS to determine the lexical class of every word in your file names, i.e. whether it is a noun, a verb, an adjective, etc. It then lets you decide, class by class, whether to capitalize, uppercase, lowercase or leave each word untouched.

It is important to realize that this feature works within system limits and macOS’s lexical tagging engine is impressive in some ways and not so impressive in others. Your mileage may vary.

The controls

• Change: decides whether the action applies to the file name, the extension or both
• Language: selects the language the tagger should assume
• First Word: sets the treatment of the first word of the name, whatever its class
• One popup per word class: Nouns:, Proper Nouns:, Verbs:, Verb Contractions:, Adjectives:, Adverbs:, Pronouns:, Determiners:, Prepositions:, Conjunctions:, Interjections:, Particles:, Classifiers:, Idioms:, Numbers: and Other Words:, each offering Capitalize, Lowercase, Uppercase or Leave
• Force exact case: lists words that should always be spelled exactly as typed here, separated by normal spaces, no matter which class the tagger assigns them. IBM Mr PhD, for instance, keeps IBM in capitals, Mr with a single leading capital and PhD exactly so

Example

With First Word:, Nouns:, Proper Nouns:, Verbs: and Adjectives: set to Capitalize and Determiners:, Prepositions: and Conjunctions: set to Lowercase, which is the usual recipe for English titles:

• the lord of the rings.mp4 → The Lord of the Rings.mp4
• a brief history of time.pdf → A Brief History of Time.pdf

With IBM in the Force exact case: field: history of ibm.pdf → History of IBM.pdf