For example, look at the Wiki page on bitcoin. Is it in good or proper form to capitalize it when its originator specifically intended that its proprietary name not be capitalized? Or for another example, if some musician decides to spell his or her name in all lowercase letters, should the first name be capitalized in formal writing if it begins a sentence? Is it a hard and fast rule that the first letter of a sentence is always capitalized, no matter what?
There’s no real authority on this, and different publications have decided on differnet rules.
But my personal view is — YES. A word that starts with a lower-case letter should be capitalized at the start of a sentence.
But I might go even deeper than that. If I were to be writing a style guide from my own self, I might just say that proper names must start with a capital letter, always, whether at the start of a sentence or not.
The Chicago Manual of Style forbids starting a sentence with a lowercase letter (except for names like eBay) and suggests rewriting if possible.
Otherwise, it’s just a matter of style. If you are writing for a particular publication, you just follow whatever they use for their style guide.
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For example, look at the Wiki page on bitcoin. Is it in good or proper form to capitalize it when its originator specifically intended that its proprietary name not be capitalized?
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That example has nothing to do with whether the word is capitalized at the beginning of a sentence, only capitalization within a sentence. You’ll notice that the Wiki article capitalizes it in the title and at the start of the first sentence.
Personally, I would almost always capitalize a word at the beginning of a sentence. I think the rule about capitalizing the first word overrides any convention about non-capitalizing a proper name. After all, most words appearing at the start of a sentence are not normally capitalized. Why should the rule change for uncapitalized proper names?
Really and truly? What say the MLA and the Chicago Manual of Style? Surely at least one of them must have chimed in on this by now.
No there is not. Would you capitalize eBay or iPhone at the start of a sentence or headline? The Chicago Manual of Style says:* “Brand names or names of companies that are spelled with a lowercase initial letter followed by a capital letter (eBay, iPod, iPhone, etc.) need not be capitalized at the beginning of a sentence or heading, though some editors may prefer to reword.”*
The New York Times has printed headlines with “iPhone” as the first word, and it was not capitalized. However as the Chicago manual says, “some editors may prefer to reword”. Maybe that means avoid the problem by rewording the sentence so it’s not the first word?
nm.
They’re just style guides like any other. Any publication can choose to follow one of them or not. And they can choose to follow them, but make exceptions. Style guides are (proposed) policies, not authorities.
bell hooks is a writer who styles her name with lowercase initial letters. A quick glance at the internet reveals that her preferences are often not followed, but I did find a NYT headline that begins with a lowercase b:
bell hooks: Buddhism, the Beats and Loving Blackness - The New York Times
ETA, I just noticed that in the byline, her name is given as BELL HOOKS, all caps.
But that’s exactly what I’m asking. If the author recognizes that a proper name is uncapitalized, is it in proper form to capitalize it if it begins a sentence?
The English-language newspapers in Thailand generally cap the first letter of such names if they start a sentence, but there are exceptions. Thailand has a communications satellite in orbit that normally would be rendered Ipstar, but the government insists on spelling it iPSTAR. Rather than having IPSTAR at the start of a sentence, they keep the lowercase beginning.
It’s not up to the author. It’s up to **you **whether your rules of style override the eccentricities of a million individuals. If **you **want consistency, you can choose that. If **you **want to avoid the pain and time and challenge of checking every individual who decides to eschew standard orthography **you **can do that. **You **are the boss of you.
Most professional publications like the consistency and standardization of a style guide because it’s so much easier to tell people to look it up. But again, those are individual organizations making the choice. Unless you are writing for one of those organizations, nothing they say or do is contingent on you.
There are no answers. There is no body of experts. There are no general rules. “Proper” has no defined meaning. Sorry, but that’s the only thing any of us can say.
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Absolutely not. The beginning of a sentence has no special meaning with regard to names as any other position.
It would be comparable to enforcing making a person’s name lower case if it appears elsewhere!
Think about that for a second.
Insisting that you have to right to alter someone’s name is bizarre.
If your style is to lower case names, then go ahead and lower case names. The way I choose to format my publication and implement consistency is not an imposition on you. Capitalization is a matter of style and convention. It’s not a matter of identity. The written word is just an approximation of human language anyway.
Rewording is simple to do and results in even, readable text. It’s the way to go.
Exactly. If I’m writing a publication and write everything in lowercase for stylistic reasons, of course the proper names are going to appear in lowercase.
Chicago Manual of Style basically says re-write the sentence, as all sentences must begin with a capital letter. I believe AP Style simply says to capitalize, but I can’t find my AP Stylebook for some reason. Here’s an example in the New York Times where they simply capitalized Bell Hooks’s name in all instances.
Interesting, because earlier the Times did not capitalize k.d. lang. But it was disconcerting.
For what it’s worth, in an online venue such as this, I preserve usernames absolutely, regardless of position in the sentence. There are two main reasons for this: First, if (capitalized) names are capitalized even in the middle of a sentence, that implies that the name rules supersede the position-in-sentence rules, and so for consistency, they ought also to do so at the beginning of a sentence. Second, many usernames here originate from case-sensitive contexts such as Unix usernames, and so changing the capitalization of a username, in any context, would be invalid: A single system could, for instance, have two separate users named “ftg” and “Ftg”.
Ftg has the right principle but is invoking it incorrectly. As noted, there is no special meaning with regard to names. So a name which normally begins with an uncapitalized letter, like ftg, is treated like any other word which normally begins with an uncapitalized letter, like as or so - and the rule is such words are capitalized when they’re the first word of a sentence.
Here’s an article about the Chicago Manual:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/books/28chic.html
**the Chicago Manual says it is not all right to capitalize the name of the writer bell hooks because she insists that it be lower case.
“This makes life difficult, however, for those of us who cannot bear to begin a sentence with a lowercase letter,” the manual says. “We advise you to rewrite.”**