Before the rise of technology culture, knowing when to capitalize a noun was pretty intuitive. Proper nouns were capitalized, while common nouns generally were not.
Things aren’t so simple now. The last twenty years have seen an explosion in the use of mixed case nouns. To complicate matters, the neologisms spouting from technology culture often take the form of compound and hyphenated words, which are sometimes mashups of abbreviations, too.
Some common mistakes I see almost daily:
- Wi-Fi often appears as “wifi” or “wi-fi”
- E Ink is commonly written “e-ink”
- LaTeX is lazily scrawled “latex” or “Latex”
- Macworld is often written incorrectly as “MacWorld”
- MacBook is often written incorrectly as “Macbook”
Just remember: Capitalize B after C except after…
Sorry, no such luck. These things don’t make any sense. They aren’t supposed to. In most cases (sorry again), the original creator of the thing described by the noun decided—probably on a whim—to do it one way, and that was that.
Sigh. So how am I supposed to remember the right way?
Better question: How can I avoid the need to remember? Answer to better question: Use TextExpander.
I like avoiding the shift key whenever possible (especially mid-word), so I’ve set up a number of TextExpander snippets that simply transform all-lower-case words into the proper capitalization.
When I type ‘iphone’, TextExpander turns it into ‘iPhone’. ‘wifi’ always becomes ‘Wi-Fi’. And so forth.
Maybe I’m being persnickety, but think about this: Unless you’re a podcaster or you regularly publish videos, your online presence is defined entirely by what you type. It’s never been more important to be grammatically correct and precise.
In real life, whether you like it or not, you are judged by how you dress and speak. Online, you are judged by your words. Make them right as much as you can.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Agreed. The way I tend to put it, in slightly broader terms is that “presentation is important”.
Dang. Proof-reading is, of course, an important part of that “presentation is important” idea. Inevitably(?), because I was in a bit of a rush, I skipped the proof-reading of my previous comment and never noticed the missing comma – until about three-billionths of a second after I clicked [Submit].
Sigh… :-)
One thing I’ve learned by blogging: Finding errors becomes much easier after hitting the publish button.
In fact, I was a little nervous when I published this post. I figured I probably made a mistake somewhere that would invalidate it. :)
The point is not to be perfect, however, but to aspire to be correct as often as possible.
All very well, and useful advice, but where exactly does on discover that Wi-Fi is correct, and not, for example, wifi or wi-fi? Does anyone maintain a proper list, or do you just go with the spelling that gets the most Google hits?
Wikipedia is almost always correct. Sometimes I crosscheck it with other sources. Wi-Fi is actually a trademark that refers to the 802.11 standard, which is used by every Wi-Fi device that I know of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Alliance
And, in keeping with the sub-text of this thread, I meant “one” and not “on”. Obviously.
I’d agree with the use of Wikipedia, at least for a starting point, if you don’t know the authoritative source.
Sticking with the given examples, macworld.com would be an example of an authoritative source that you could directly check very easily. Google might help you find less well known authoritative sources if you prefer that approach.
Also, I sometimes find that the voices in my head know and they’ll whisper to me as I’m typing. :-o
Actually, I’m kidding about the voices. Obviously.
Speaking as a grammar zombie…. sorry, it’s a losing battle on some of the capitalization issues you’re talking about.
With something like LaTeX, I will agree with you, due to the confusion with the stuff that oozes out of rubber plants.
But even with trademarked names… well… did you know “aspirin” used to be trademarked? linoleum? escalator?
I’m sure those all used to be capitalized, but we don’t any more.
My prediction: you’re going to be a loser on the “Wi-Fi” capitalization.
This is a handy tip – I still cringe when I see “IPhone” in various news media. Quick question – what is your strategy for using delimiters in TextExpander? I had as mine, but I’d never get used to typing a after, say “iphone”. I’d be curious to know your setup.