Grammar Questions, Capitalisation

[maggenpye]

Question one.

"He's my dad, I call him 'Dad'"

"He's my Dad, I call him 'Dad'"

Which one s correct? I have always believed the top example to be right. The first dad is descriptive: "He is my teacher, I call him 'Phil'"

A member of my writing group insists the second is correct, that Dad, Father, Mum, Mother are always capitalised, regardless of context.




Question two.

I have overthought this one to the point where I honestly can't tell. My preference is no capittalisation but it's making me twitchy.

One of my character is verbally very demonstrative, damn near every sentence has some kind of enderment "Hello love / darling / sweetheart" etc

What say the grammar experts?

And location too, my writing group friend is from a different hemisphere, is that why we have differing opinions?

Thanks in advance.

[Maserschmidt]

You are correct. I've spent a large chunk of my life reading books, and that second sentence above seems weird to me.

[t-bonham@scc.net]

One of my character is verbally very demonstrative, damn near every sentence has some kind of enderment "Hello love / darling / sweetheart" etc

What say the grammar experts?Don't know about grammar, but spelling experts (my spellchecker) says it's spelled 'endearment'.

[RealityChuck]

Your writing group is wrong.

"Dad" in the first example is a description, not a name. It's a common noun, not a proper one for the simple reason that it implies that there is more than one dad -- you say "my dad" in order to specify that it's not Joe's dad.

"He's my dad, I call him 'Dad'" is capitalized correctly. It is however a comma splice and should be either "He's my dad. I call him 'Dad.'" or "He's my dad; I call him 'Dad.'"

It's the same thing with the other terms of endearment. They are common nouns, not proper ones.

[maggenpye]

RealityChuck & Maserschmidt, thanks very much, especially for the explanation.

It's only one member of the group who's brought this up. I wouldn't have worried about it except I was already fretting on the common/proper noun thing. Noted the splice comment.


TB, gee, thanks for playing. May Gaudere haunt your keyboard as she haunts mine.