Locations

While editing for my internship, a question arose: do I capitalize terms such as Eastside, Westside, etc.? The rule for cardinal directions seems to be that the lowercase is used if the directions merely indicate direction (ex: Honolulu is south of Waimea) and capitalized when they refer to places (ex: the South). My guess would be that the terms "Eastside", etc. refer to proper places so they should be capitalized?

Unique Baby Names??

I can't even begin to explain how I ended up on this web page, but I found a site that suggested ways to come up with unique names for your newborn (or to be born) children.

Unique punctuation - Create a totally unique name by making unusual use of punction such as the placing of an apostrophe, a hyphen or a middle Capital Letter.

Alternative Spellings - An easy way to create unique baby names. A good example is Ryann or Delyia.

First of all, does that really say 'punction'?

And second, there should be editing rules against this sort of baby naming.

Capitalization Confusion

Since I wasn't in class Thursday I'm not sure whether or not this was discussed, so I'll mention it anyway. I felt like I really knew the rules of capitalization until I attempted the exercise on page 164. Some of the words were pretty clear, like lower-casing "Staff Secretary," but others really threw me, "Deputy Undersecretary of the Army" for example. I think the context made this exercise a little bit more difficult. Did anyone else feel this way?

I recently wrote a short blog for HONOLULU magazine on-line. I was reporting on specials that the bars are having for football promotions. The Yard House was having specials on bloody mary, mimosa, and other cocktails. At first I capitalized them all. I was following the e-mail the manager had sent. Then I was not sure if they should or shouldn't be. I had to go ask the editor. She said it was not in their style to capitalize the names of drinks, even if it is their proper name. Made sense after, but I am glad I asked.

I always turn to the Grammar Girl for her Quick and Dirty Tips.
So here’s the Quick and Dirty Tip on random or vanity capitalization: don’t.

One reason capitalization matters is that a word’s meaning can change depending on whether it's uppercase or lowercase.

“See those three domiciles over there? Well, I live in the white house.” That’s quite different from, “I live in the White House [capital W, capital H].” That White House is where the president lives.

In English, we capitalize words that are proper nouns—that is, they describe a specific thing or entity. They could be a title, a name, or a specific place such as the president's residence: [THEE] White House.

We lowercase words that are considered common nouns—that is, they can be used to describe many things, such as any one of the multitude of white colored houses in the world.

(As an aside, I'll note that in German all nouns and certain pronouns get uppercased; now there's a gratuitous “Das Kapital” reference just waiting to be made. And so I made one.)

Colons and Caps

Is there a rule for capitalizing the first word after a colon? I see this around sometimes, for example in our text book on p. 161. At my internship last summer, if I used a colon, my boss would always edit the sentence to capitalize the first word after the colon. Is this correct? When is this appropriate?