In some older literature, I notice that all the nouns are capitalized, rather than just the proper nouns. (For example, the monkey ate a banana would be the Monkey ate a Banana).
When did the habit of capitalizing all the nouns in a piece of literature begin? When did it die out? Was it always done, or was it only done in “official” or “important” letters and documents?
I don’t know the answer but this is the convention in German, and I suspect that if it appeared in English it was influence from German, which eventually died out (not German, the influence).
As CookingWithGas said, that’s the way it’s done in German. I was going to ask you for an example, since at first I couldn’t remember seeing any writing like this in English, but then I remembered that the Penguin Books edition of Bejamin Franklin’s Autobiography (which I don’t have handy right now) is printed this way. However, other editions that I’ve been able to find online (e.g. at Project Gutenberg) do not have all nouns capitalized. The obvious question would be, how did Franklin originally write it?—except that apparently, if I understand correctly, Franklin originally wrote it in French.
Around the time of the American Revolution (I’m not sure how long this practice survived, but I assume it’s much older than that), it seems that important nouns were capitalized in English or at least American writing. Check out the Declaration of Independence, for example.
You can also see it in the Constitution. This was a phase that English went through starting in the early 17th century and through the 18th century. It largely died out by the beginning of the 19th century. However, it wasn’t always followed. You can find some writing from that period where the nouns are not capitalized. Also there are some where only the important nouns are capitalized. This latter practice is common at the beginning of the 19th century as sort of a phase-out of the practice.
Here’s a site with a lot of legal documents from many centuries. You can sample some and see how it changed.
Here are two documents from the period which do not capitalize all nouns: 1) Fundamental Orders of 1639 with very few nouns capitalized and 2) Government of New Haven Colony (1643) with no nouns capitalized that we wouldn’t today. On the other hand, the The First Charter of Virginia; April 10, 1606 capitalizes all the nouns.
As an example of the important nouns only, there’s Treaty Of Peace and Amity between the United States of America and the Bashaw, Bey and Subjects of Tripoli in Barbary. where just some of the nouns are capitalized.
Wild Guess: Could it be a cultural influence from German-speaking Protestants?
FWIW, the first edition of the KJV Bible (1611) has few capitalized nouns, but the first Shakespeare folio a decade later is packed with them.
I’ve noticed that this persists with some less well-educated people in the UK and Ireland - particularly Ireland.
Personally I get weirded out by the use of title case in US business and media writing.
BBC:
New York state approves gay marriage
Fox News:
New York Legalizes Gay Marriage
I know it’s merely a dialectical difference, but it looks really archaic to my eyes.
Dialectal is the wrong word to use there – I’d say Fox is being conservative (or old-fashioned). Traditionally, all but a few minor words in titles are capitalized, but in recent times most news sources have dropped that practice for their stories. My local (American) paper has, as has the AP.
Note that if you are using old documents as examples, you need to look at the originals, as transcriptions often remove or change stylistic elements such as this (and if there are multiple contemporary copies, even they may not be consistent).
I am fighting a one-man war on Wikipedia against the capitalization of “marine,” “air force,” and similar terms. People seem convinced “Legion” must always be capitalized because it looks cooler that way.
I suspect it is a holdover from German.
This is another example of Title Case. An arbitraty standard that varies with language, and individual printing standards. It presents one of the most difficult challenges in localizing text in multiple languages.
That’s probably because of the typesetter factor. Up until relatively recently, the typesetter of a text would often change the text to match his preferences. This applied not just to capitalization but also to spelling, punctuation and other things.
Noah Webster was aware of this, so to promote his spelling reforms, on various trips he made to market his books, he would stop by the local printer and talk with the typesetters. He’d give them a list of spellings of certain words and encourage their use. It worked to a large degree.
Well, I guess that’s one thing that FoxNews and the NYT has in common!
I have a problem when people capitalize randomly.
Like I often See this on the Internet and it Drives me Crazy.