Capital offencesAt school we are told that, as well as being used for the first words of sentences, initial capital letters are for proper nouns, and for adjectives like English in English language. This is one of the simpler rules of written English, yet it is widely disregarded. It begins in school where pupils are encouraged to write History and Headmaster (Principal). In corporate life companies have a President and Chief Executive Officer, though rarely a Truck Driver or Secretary. In public life we have Congressmen and Members of Parliament.When challenged, the defenders of the superfluous initial capital say that such nouns refer to "a specific person or thing", yet this would justify the capitalisation of the first letters of all singular nouns (e.g. Table, Chair). A rule of thumb on which nouns' first letters to capitalise is available to virtually everyone. It is the telephone-directory. If it's in there, you can give it an initial capital. Thus, peoples' names get initial capitals, as do the names of companies and non-profit institutions, while words which people think are somehow important (such as government and stock-exchange) don't, and neither should job-titles. While there may be exceptions and ambiguous cases, the benefit of using the phone-book as a manual of style is that everybody has one and, in most cases, you don't even need to look. |