A post on Dan Santow‘s Word Wise blog says, “It’s bad out there and getting worse.”
He’s talking about the increasingly common habit of inserting capital letters where none are required to indicate an Important Word. He goes on to give a comprehensive list of where you do need capital letters, such as proper names, places and events.
I have received quite a few draft articles or pieces of background information that throw capital letters around like confetti, or should I say Confetti. It makes me laugh but at the same time it makes me crazy. (Maybe I’ve been in a home office too long!)
I just quietly remove the capitals and throw them in my overflowing Capital Trash Can. As Dan says:
“Capital letters — aside from starting sentences, titles, headlines, and so forth — are reserved for proper nouns. ’Nuff said. End of story. Finis. Now go buy yourself something nice.”
Image: Capital A by Bogdan Dada on Unsplash.
I Know what you Mean, Sue. I see this All The Time and It drives me CRAZY! SEE?
Oh good, I am not the only Crazy One!
What do you do when the Manager of a Company wants to capitalize everybody’s position? In journalism, the standard is to downplay job titles, but Corporations seem to value titles like Junior Vice-President of Internal and External Marketing and Corporate Communications. That can go on business cards, but generally, it’s enough to say Joe Blow of the marketing department.
Gloria, this is where style guides come in. One of my clients has decided to make titles like manager, vice president, supervisor and so on lower case in the newsletter, although the department itself gets capitalized. If anyone (including the president) questions it, the answer is simply “this is the style we have adopted.” It may or may not meet CP or AP style, but at least you stay consistent.
That works when you have a style guide. But some companies don’t. I agree that consistency is most important. I think that a lot of capitalization comes from vanity.