This is not a treatise on economics, but a minor rant about the use of capital letters.
American media often like to capitalise every word in their headlines. For example: Trump Lectures South African President in Televised Oval Office Confrontation (New York Times) and Trump Claimed This Photo Proved ‘Genocide’ Of White South Africans, But There’s 1 Big Problem (HuffPost)
There are some exceptions to this practice in the US: see Trump confronts South African president, pushing claims of genocide (Washington Post). However in the UK none of our media capitalise headlines. For example: Trump ambushes South African president with video and false claims of anti-white racism (The Guardian) and Trump makes South African president squirm by playing ‘white genocide’ video montage during astonishing Oval Office moment (Daily Mail).
Being a kind of language nerd, on my editorial days I tend to carefully remove unnecessary capitals from the headlines of posts submitted to Lib Dem Voice.
I am equally strict about American spellings of words when the context does not justify it. “Defense” written instead of “defence” is a common error, and don’t get me started on “gotten”.
There is one exception to my rules – our wonderful contributor Tom Arms. Tom is an American, hence the Ex-Pat. I do leave his spelling intact, but I still can’t resist removing capital letters from headlines.
In his day as editor on Lib Dem Voice Mark Pack campaigned about the use of spaces after full stops – only one allowed, not two. For my part, I have been known to have a prolonged discussion with one of our academic contributors on the correct use of single and double speech marks, to the amusement of the other members of the LDV team. Mark and I are both published authors so we have had the experience of justifying our writing style and use of terminology to copyeditors and proof readers, which does help us to consolidate our position on these rather esoteric issues.
We don’t expect that level of linguistic nit-pickery in our contributors – but I would ask you, please, to avoid assigning random capital letters in your headings and general text. And do not use American spellings for good English words.
* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
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19 Comments
With the advent of smart devices and their predictive text abilities, it’s made one’s punctuation and syntax very lazy due to their convenience. I’m as guilty as anyone in that regard.
“Gotten” is the original past participle of “get”. Like a lot of Americanisms, it is a survival of an earlier correct English form.
I think written communication has evolved over time, and capital letters are used less than they used to be, maybe America hasn’t yet caught up? (as with ‘gotten’).
I still remember two things clearly from my editorial training twenty odd years ago.
Firstly, only use capital letters for names or titles (as you say above).
Secondly avoid acronyms, or if you have to use them spell the full meaning out the first time you use them, eg: UN Secretary General (UNSG) then you can use UNSG thereafter.
Wow, I feel called out… But noted for the future! 🙂
(Happily am on the same page re: the use of American English spellings…)
The capitalisation used in headlines has always been up to the editor rather than the contributor – otherwise there would be no consistency.
“Gotten” isn’t incorrect – we understand it readily enough – but it’s a long time since it has been idiomatic in England. I think it’s reasonable for the editor to prefer “got” for this reason and for the sake of consistency between authors.
It is no longer necessary to use more than one space after a full stop, but when I was taught to type I was taught to use two – word processors were not then well-established and I think typewriters needed two.
And when I was taught cataloguing and classification, the cataloguing rules specified that in titles only the first word and any proper names a title contained should have a capital. I have retained this practice, although I have a feeling the cataloguing rules have moved on from it (I’m afraid I’ve moved on from the cataloguing rules).
Single and double quotation marks are a matter of house style. Jan Tschichold, when he took Penguin Books’ typography in hand, insisted on single as primary, just as he insisted on the en-dash rather than the em-dash. You are within your rights to decide what your house style is to be and insist on it, but that doesn’t mean the alternative is in any absolute way incorrect.
“………do not use American spellings for good English words.”
They are a desecration of the language of Shakespeare. He would never have used the spellings “labor”, “center”, “theater”, “color”, or words like “gotten” !
Or would he?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9b/Loves_labours_tp.jpg/250px-Loves_labours_tp.jpg
@Jonathan Brown – I seem to have forced a confession! I didn’t mean to call you out. Actually your submission did trigger this post but I find myself removing capitals most days when I edit.
One copyeditor I worked with replaced the word “data” with “datum” in sentences like “The data is incorrect” throughout a book I wrote on computing. She insisted data could not function as a singular noun. I argued that it was now common practice to use it in that way, and that we were observing dynamic changes in the language. She only conceded when told (incorrectly, I think) that data could work as a collective noun. Incidentally when computer scientists need a term to refer to a single piece of data they usually use “data item” not “datum”.
Now don’t ask me about the punctuation of bullet points …
@Peter Martin – Love it!
Actually I would never justify present usage on the basis that Shakespeare did it – his spelling, even of his own name, was notoriously erratic. Our wonderful language is evolving all the time, but the current differences between US and UK English capture aspects of our differing histories and should be celebrated.
It seems to me that the best way to distinguish types of (non-proper) nouns is countable vs. uncountable. That accurately reflects how nouns are actually used, and seems a simpler and more useful categorisation than the common/collective/material/abstract that grammar websites seem to use. Uncountable nouns are almost never pluralised, but have the oddity that they can be used as singular without any article – in contrast to countable nouns which almost always take an article in the singular. Data is uncountable, but with the slightly unusual etymology of having originally been a plural form, which is now never used as a plural – only as an uncountable.
To me – as a computer scientist – ‘datum’ sounds archaic. I can’t see myself ever using it. As you say Mary, I would use ‘data item’.
I’m grateful to Mary for raising this. In fact, I’m probably the guilty party here, but will avoid over-use of capitals in future ! Regarding Americanisms, valid points have already been made about words they use which we’ve dropped but are actually old English (closet is another one), but I can’t agree with Stephen Pinker’s argument that language should be allowed to evolve, wherever it wants to go. The phrases “me and Tony went to town” and the corresponding error “they gave a prize to Tony and I” still grate with me, even though I live in Bristol, where the phrase “give that to I” doesn’t offend me, because avoiding use of the word ‘me’ is a local tradition.
While we’re about it, can we please drop the illogical American practice of quoting digital dates in the sequence month:day:year and keep to the UK (and European) practice of day:month:year!?
@Mary – No offence taken!
I have tended to capitalise all ‘big’ words in titles, but I’ve never really thought about why. Your article on the ‘why not’ was very interesting!
@Rif Winfield
I agree on preferring the British date order to the American one, but I have no objection to someone using the international standard (ISO 8601) of year:month:day which has the advantage of avoiding confusion between the British and US formats. Date formats are a problem in some countries such as Canada where both the US and British systems are in use, which is why many Canadians are starting to use the ISO format.
Talking to computers (and programmers) I would always use ISO but for a human transatlantic audience, 04 Jul 2025 is the most rapidly understood format. The other cause of international confusion is thousands separators. Is 12,345 a big English number or a small French one. The Germans use 12 345,678 which is fine on its own but a problem in lists of numbers. 12 345.678 would be ideal but nobody uses that.
Having posted that, I’m reminded of the other problem with spaces as thousands separators which is that many applications and sites don’t spot them as such and allow line breaks in the middle of numbers.
@Peter Davies: Is that correct? I was under the impression the Germans used a full stop as the thousands separator, so that – say – one thousand, two hundred and thirty four point five six would traditionally be written 1,234.56 in the UK/US and (confusingly) as the opposite: 1.234,56 in Germany. In practice, I personally tend to write 1 234.56, which I think is understandable/not too unfamiliar in the UK. It also looks neater to me for huge numbers, doesn’t confuse comma-separated lists (or CSV files) and I hope it’s not too confusing to most Europeans. A few websites claim it is also the way the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) now recommends writing numbers, although I can’t seem to find any confirmation of that on BIPM’s own site.
@Simon R: Various international bodies are pushing for the space (actually thin non-breakable space) as the standard thousands separator. It seems to have been widely adopted in Germany but not much elsewhere. Good to see you are also an early adopter.
When I divided my time between lecturing and the civil service, I was required to write “the data are clear” on days when I was an academic, and “the data is clear” on days when working as a civil servant…