Quick and dirty tips for better writing - Mignon Fogarty 2008
Chapter 5. Big and tall: capitalization
I took german in high school, and one of the first things I noticed was that all the nouns were capitalized. Common nouns and proper nouns—they all get capitalized in German. English is different, but there was a period between roughly 1600 and 1800 when it was trendy to capitalize all the nouns in English too. Next time you’re browsing the U.S. Constitution with friends, you can impress them by pointing out that all the nouns are capitalized because the document was written during this trendy capitalize-all-nouns period.
PRIM AND PROPER: PROPER NOUNS
If you remember the Saturday morning cartoon Schoolhouse Rock!, you’ll remember that a noun is a person, place, or thing. (“Things” can be concrete things like rocks or abstract things like courage.) But for capitalization purposes, English nouns are divided into two types: proper nouns and common nouns.
A proper noun is capitalized and names a specific person, place, or thing.
The difference is that proper nouns name specific people, places, or things and common nouns name general people, places, or things. Proper nouns like Squiggly, Mississippi River, and Golden Gate Bridge are capitalized because they are proper nouns that name specific people, places, or things—they are names. On the other hand, snail, river, and bridge aren’t capitalized because they are common nouns that don’t refer to any one individual person, place, or thing.
Adjectives that are derived from proper nouns are capitalized too. For example, if Aardvark lives in Seattle, he is a Seattleite.
So names are easy, they are capitalized, but some words are less clear, and then you have to decide if they are naming something specific or something general. (And even then, sometimes the answer isn’t clear and you just have to use your best judgment.) Here are two examples:
Ground Zero
Last year, I realized that sometimes I see the words ground zero capitalized and sometimes I don’t. Back in 2001, it seemed as if the name Ground Zero got assigned to the site of the World Trade Center in New York almost immediately. Traditionally, ground zero means the site of a nuclear explosion, and sometimes it is used to refer to the site of a more general explosion or an area where rapid change has taken place. In those general instances, ground zero would be a common noun and wouldn’t be capitalized. On the other hand, although there are a few dissenters, most notably The New York Times, most people agree that Ground Zero is the name of the specific site of the former World Trade Center; therefore, it’s a proper noun that needs to be capitalized when it is used in that way.
Depression
Depression is another word that’s sort of like ground zero, in that sometimes it’s a proper noun and sometimes it’s a common noun. If you’re talking about a general economic depression, then it’s lowercased; but if you’re talking about the Great Depression, then you are referring to a specific historical period, so it’s capitalized.
Planets
Have you ever heard that people can be irrational about their home? Well, since earth is our home, maybe that explains why it doesn’t follow the typical capitalization rules.
All the other planet names (Mars, Jupiter, etc.) are always capitalized because they’re names that refer to specific places, but for some reason, most people treat earth differently and don’t capitalize it. (When you are using the word earth to refer to dirt, of course it’s lowercased.) Sometimes you’ll see earth capitalized when it’s listed with all the other planet names or when it’s referred to in an astronomical way. For example, it will likely be capitalized in a sentence talking about space travel like, “We plan to leave Earth in January and arrive at Mars in October,” but it is likely to be lowercased in a sentence where it is used more generically, like, “I’m wishing for peace on earth and goodwill to men.” So the word earth is an exception to the rule that something is always a proper noun and capitalized if it names one specific place. I hate exceptions, but it’s good to know about them.
TALK GRAMMAR TO ME, BABY
A quick and dirty tip is that nicknames are capitalized, and terms of endearment are not. So to take a line from Dirty Dancing, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.” But baby would not be capitalized in a more generic setting: Come here, baby.
A similar rule holds true for family names such as mother, mom, father, and dad. Mom is generally a capitalized nickname, whereas mother is generally a lowercased generic term:
How’s your mother these days?
How’s Mom these days?
Aunt, uncle, and cousin are also usually lowercased unless they are part of someone’s name:
Did you call Aunt Mathilda?
My aunt Mathilda always hiccoughs during dinner.
THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT AT HILL AND DALE COLLEGE: DEGREES AND DEPARTMENTS
People often think there is a typo on my “About Grammar Girl” Web page because it says I have an undergraduate degree in English (capitalized) and a graduate degree in biology (lowercased).
Although I’ve never claimed to be perfect, that isn’t a typo. English is capitalized because it is derived from a proper noun (England), and biology is lowercased because it is not derived from a proper noun. Similarly, Spanish, Italian, and German are capitalized and chemistry, math, and visual arts are not.
“Department” is capitalized when it is part of the exact name of a specific department, but not when it is used generically as a common noun:
The Department of Computer Gaming issued an announcement.
The department chairperson just won the World of Warcraft pumpkin-carving contest.
THIS TITLE USES TITLE CAPS
When you’re writing a title, you are confronted with a shocking number of formatting options. How you decide to handle capitalization is up to you: it’s a style issue! If your boss, editor, or teacher has a preferred style, you should use that; but if you’re the master of your own universe (e.g., you’re writing on your own blog), you’re free to choose any of the following methods:
Capitalize the First Letter of Prepositions Over Three Letters Long, and Every Noun, Verb, Pronoun, Adjective, Adverb, and Subordinating Conjunction. (recommended)
Capitalize the First Letter of Every Word Except Internal Articles and Prepositions.
Capitalize only the first letter of the first word.
Capitalize The First Letter Of Every Word.
CAPITALIZE EVERY LETTER.
Despite all the options, I learned the hard way that Grammar Girl readers have an overwhelming preference for the first option, which can also be stated as capitalize everything except a, an, and, at, but, by, for, in, nor, of, on, or, so, the, to, up, and yet. The original version of the Grammar Girl website used a different style, and boy, did I hear about it.
CAPITALIZATION, HYPHENS, AND TITLES
Hyphenated title words present you with a tricky choice. Do you capitalize the part after the hyphen or not? Again, it’s a style issue. Some style guides say to capitalize the second part of a compound if it has the same weight or importance as the first part of the compound or if it is a noun, and other style guides say to make the second part lowercase if the word is always hyphenated.
The best thing to do is pick a style and stick with it. I capitalize the part after the hyphen if it would be capitalized without the hyphen.
Green-Bean Casserole Reported Missing
Worker Fired for Writing Run-on Sentence
AARDVARK, PRESIDENT OF SEATTLE: THE OTHER KIND OF TITLES
People usually obtain titles through hard work, birth, or imagination, but regardless of the method by which they gained the title, the titled class are often persnickety. So it’s important to get the formatting right if you want to keep your head off the chopping block.
To make things harder for us lowly commoners, sometimes you capitalize titles and sometimes you don’t.
In general, titles that come before names and are part of a title are capitalized, and titles that come after names are not capitalized. The key distinction you have to make is whether the word is part of an official title (in which case it is capitalized) or a descriptor (in which case it is lowercased). Common titles include emperor as others, president, mayor, director, and chairperson.
We invited President Aardvark to dinner.
Aardvark, president of Seattle, came to dinner.
The president came to dinner.
Sometimes a title may come directly before the name but still be lowercased because it is a descriptor instead of part of the name:
Seattle president Aardvark Blueback came over for dinner.
Sometimes writers ignore these rules; for example, writers may capitalize titles when they are creating a bulletin board or graduation program that includes many people with titles after their names.
Similarly, if you have the pleasure of addressing a knight, sir is capitalized. But if you are addressing someone who is not a knight, sir is lowercased.
Sir Fragalot Franklin has a problem making complete sentences.
Sir Fragalot, please repeat the sentence.
Please repeat the sentence, sir.
GOD BLESS GRAMMAR GIRL: RELIGIOUS TERMS
The reason you aren’t sure whether to capitalize god and he (when he refers to god) is that in some cases it’s a style issue.
Of course, like any other proper noun, when god is the name of one specific god, it is capitalized, and when the word refers to multiple gods or is used as a descriptor it is lowercased:
Christians believe God is omniscient.
Stories about the Greek gods provide great inspiration for modern fiction.
The god Apollo is often shown playing the lyre.
But less straightforward examples tend to vary with the religiosity of the publication. For example, newspapers tend to lowercase words that include god, such as godsend and godlike, whereas religious publications, tend to uppercase these words out of respect for God.
Similarly, most secular publications lowercase the pronoun he when it refers to God, but many religious publications uppercase the pronoun he out of respect.
In God we trust; he hasn’t let us down yet. (secular)
In God we trust; He hasn’t let us down yet. (religious)
There isn’t a right answer; it simply depends on your audience.
WOOF AND MEOW: BREEDS
When in doubt about whether to capitalize a breed name, consult a dictionary. But in general, capitalize words derived from proper nouns and lowercase words derived from common nouns:
English mastiff
Yorkshire terrier
British shorthair
Havana brown
ragdoll
beagle
WANDERING THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE EARTH: DIRECTIONS
Direction names are lowercase when they describe a direction and uppercase when they describe a specific place (just like other proper nouns):
Go southeast until you reach the mall, then head west.
He moved from the South to the Midwest.
He’s from southern France.
He’s from South Korea.
TURN, TURN, TURN: DAYS, MONTHS, AND SEASONS
Days of the week and names of months are capitalized, but seasons are lowercased (unless they are part of a proper name).
Last November we had the winter dance on a Friday.
The 2010 Winter Olympics will be in Vancouver.
FROM NOON TO MIDNIGHT
There are multiple acceptable ways to abbreviate ante meridiem and post meridiem.
American style is often to use small capital letters with periods after each letter and no space in between: A.M. and P.M. Using small capitals without periods is an acceptable alternative: AM and PM.
Because I can’t figure out how to make small capitals in my e-mail program or on the website, I prefer the British method, which uses lowercase letters followed by periods: a.m. and p.m.
THE GRAMMAR GIRL ERA
Eras and time periods with specific names are capitalized:
Pliocene era
Romantic period
Middle Ages
Roaring Twenties
THE CAPITOL, THE CONGRESS, AND THE CONSTITUTION
In the United States, when the word capitol refers to the specific capitol building in Washington, D.C., it is capitalized: Capitol, U.S. Capitol. When it refers to the specific capitol building of a state or a complex of buildings, it is lowercased: capitol. (See this discussion of capitol versus capital.) Similarly, Congress is capitalized when it refers to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives or a specific session of the U.S. legislative body: He spoke before the 22nd Congress. He’s speaking before Congress today. The adjective congressional is lowercased.
The word Constitution is capitalized when it is used to refer to the United States Constitution. However, the adjective constitutional is lowercased. The names of other historical documents, treaties, proclamations, bills, and acts are also capitalized: Magna Carta, Treaty of Versailles, Declaration of Independence, First Amendment, Bill of Rights, Patriot Act, and so on.