# If an uncapitalized name begins a sentence, should it capitalized? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 11, 2017, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578 "2017-02-11T20:20:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578/101 "2017-02-13T14:52:54Z")
> [@](#): > > Just for fun, I checked to see what the style guides in the UK say, and [The Guardian and Observer’s](https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-e) style also says “EBay.” Oops. The end of the sentence should read, “also say to capitalize the E at the beginning of the sentence.” (Which is clear if you read the rest of the quote and my comment following it.) ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578/102 "2017-02-13T15:01:08Z")
Oops #2. I somehow edited out my original post above, which read that the BBC Style Guide also says to capitalize the E at the beginning of a sentence: > [@](#): > > eBay > ie (despite our usual practice of using conventional typography) lower case ‘e’, and upper case ‘B’, except at the start of sentences, where it should be written ‘EBay’; but headlines can begin ‘eBay’. ---
**Author:** ![Debillw3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@Debillw3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debillw3)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578/103 "2017-02-13T15:28:25Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Once again, tell it to the AP and all the newspapers around the US who do, in fact, use that spelling when starting a sentence. I have. When I was in school, I wrote a paper about instances where AP Style goes against the wishes of the people and brands being discussed. I took the liberty of sending them a copy–they never got back to me. The big one that stuck out to me (and got that ball rolling) was their disagreement with Lego over the capitalization & pluralization of their product. When I asked the professor why we don’t just respect Lego’s wishes, since it’s their product, and what grounds AP has to dictate how we refer to them in print, I didn’t find the answer satisfactory. If you can answer that, beyond just saying “AP says so and it’s their style”, then I’ll be more than happy to change my mind. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578/104 "2017-02-13T16:05:49Z")
When it comes to style guides, it is pretty much “because they said so.” Now, I’m sure they have reasons for it, but it’s all a judgment call in the end made for the sake of consistency, readability, and aesthetics. If I’m an editor (and in my own personal style), I write in a way that I think improves readability and looks aesthetically pleasing, to me. I think staring a sentence with eBay looks stupid, so I don’t do it in my own writings, and I don’t really give a shit what marketing says. If I were to write for a publication that says they want “eBay” at the head of a sentence, I would do so. i have no desire to change your style. Continue to write as you are writing, just adjust it if you are writing for publications or contexts that have a style guide associated with them. My whole point here is that there isn’t ONE RIGHT WAY. There’s obviously many ways, depending on the context of your writing. I certainly don’t slavishly follow AP style in my own writing, nor the Chicago Manual of Style. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578/105 "2017-02-13T16:37:47Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > See post 40 and 51 in this thread. My apologies for having skipped those posts when I joined this conversation late. I should have read the thread more throughly . If one decides that “E.E. Cummings” is proper, because he had no specific wish for his name to appear in lower case, and because his wishes should be deferred to rather that his publisher’s, then certainly consistently write it as “E. E. Cummings.” The “basic manners” principle remains. A woman whose given name is Elizabeth Mary O’Conner is a poet. If she consistently signs her work as Mary O’Conner then referring to her as Elizabeth O’Conner when writing about her in the context of her work, or Betsy, or Meg, would not be illegal, but it would be rude. If it is done it is calling attention to the action of not respecting the wishes of the artist or product owner. Sometimes in communication such is in fact the desired action, disrespect is intended, as I suspect was **Acsenray** ’s intent when (s)he wrote “Bell Hooks”. Similar as well is some writers referring to one of the United States’ major parties as “The Democrat Party” - intentionally or not it communicates disrespect. When signaling such disrespect is not intended then showing it detracts from clear communication. Unless one intends only to write for oneself alone the goal of writing should be to clearly communicate to readers what was intended to be communicated. Writing “MiRNA regulates …” would jar most readers of scientific literature and thus take the reader out of thinking about the science being presented for a moment as they pause briefly to understand that the writer means “miRNA” and some new acronym for something else. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578/106 "2017-02-13T16:42:12Z")
Ignoring the actual name someone prefers to be identified by is rather different than disagreeing about how a name should be rendered in text. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578/107 "2017-02-13T16:46:53Z")
Exactly agree (DSeid) with your last paragraph, hence why publications have style guides. To me, starting a sentence with lower case causes me a bit of confusion and I stumble on the sentence. I feel (and many style guides feel) it detracts from readability. If it changes with time, and I won’t be surprised if it does over the next generation as language evolves, then the stylebooks will change (And that was, indeed, one of the changes between the 15th and 16th eds. of the Chicago Manual of Style. It was permitted to start a sentence with “eBay” in the lower case.) ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578/108 "2017-02-13T16:47:36Z")
e. e. cummings would not have approved. My attitude is that the one thing a person has a right to is their own name. I had an acquaintance once who went up to someone named Shawn and insisted he was misspelling it. On a different occasion the same a-hole went up to someone named Sean, which the person in question pronounced like scene, and insisted he was mispronouncing it. In writing mathematics, you are not supposed to start a sentence with a mathematical symbol since case is significant (x and X will generally stand for different things; x is often an element of a set X for example). You are expected to reword the sentence, often by putting a useless word in front, but I have been known to ignore the rule, both as an author and as a copy editor. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578/109 "2017-02-13T16:54:50Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > e. e. cummings would not have approved. Unfortunately, you picked a bad example. E. E. Cummings would have approved. (Read through the thread.) Maybe bell hooks/Bell Hooks would be a better example. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578/110 "2017-02-13T17:46:07Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Unfortunately, you picked a bad example. E. E. Cummings would have approved. (Read through the thread.) Maybe bell hooks/Bell Hooks would be a better example. Or pulykamell. DSeid, I gave earlier the reasons that style guides strive for consistency. In a perfect world, a writer would research the history of an orthogonally unusual name and use the originator’s most preferred version. In our imperfect world, this is often infeasible when not downright impossible. Not to mention that the creative may frequently change their names and intentions. Especially for newspapers, with their deadline pressure, such research has to yield to style guide consistency lest the paper be accused of favoritism or disparagement or rudeness, to use your word. Yes, it’s because the AP says so. Or The New York Times. Or The New Yorker. Or the Chicago Manual of Style. Or MLA style. Or any of the other style guides that exist. They are all a set of compromises so that writers and editors and proofreaders and copyeditors can function without having to invent their own consistencies for the million and one possible decisions that writing calls for. Here on the Dope there is no style guide. We do get people who lower case every word. We have people who don’t use paragraphs and those who format paragraphs with hard returns. We have Watchwolf who ends all sentences with ellipses. We have Wendell Wagner who uses an old-fashioned quote style. We have lots of posters with various idiosyncratic styles. We manage, irregardless. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578/111 "2017-02-13T18:53:01Z")
> [@Washoe](#): > > 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. Neither is a _real authority . Unlike France, the USA has no national board deciding these things. The Chicago Manual of Style_, etc is only a authority if your boss sez it is. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578/112 "2017-02-13T18:57:41Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Is there any limit to this line of argument? If someone insists their name appear in a particular typeface, or color, or size, or otherwise, is everyone obligated to comply? Like Hyman Kaplans name? You must spell it all caps, with a \* between each letter and each letter a different color, insofar as possible. Honestly if we just ignored then, they’d stop. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578/113 "2017-02-13T19:00:27Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > A rule is something that everyone is free to break when and how they please, provided they are prepared to accept the consequences of doing so. Breaking this rule will result in the consequence of people not understanding one, or calling, one illiterate or some other epithet which is unlikely to be complimentary. > > And yes, they are rules. > > But, if you wish to call it so, then it is the convention to not capitalize the names of units of currency, which is overridden by the convention of capitalizing first word of a sentence, which addresses the OP’s question. Really? People wont understand me if i write Bitcoin? Or Hyman Kaplan? :dubious::dubious::dubious: ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578/114 "2017-02-13T19:05:08Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Agreed. E.e. cummings agrees with me. As posted before, he didnt write his name that way. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578/115 "2017-02-13T19:05:39Z")
I should have added that E. E. Cummings is the best argument for adhering to a style guide. The one thing that everybody knows about E. E. Cummings is that he styled his name as e. e. cummings. And yet that turns out to be a myth. So if we must adhere to a person’s intent, which is correct? How do we know? Whose authority are you accepting? Now multiply that by a thousand or ten thousand and style guides suddenly make perfect sense. But you don’t have to follow any style guide if you don’t want. You can always create your own in the absence of one. Just as we’re doing here. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578/116 "2017-02-13T19:11:22Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > I’m uppercasing Bell Hooks, and if she has a problem with that, she can talk to me herself. Why not just write Gloria Jean Watkins?😛 ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578/117 "2017-02-13T21:12:19Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > And, indeed, it is “Isis” [in the British press](http://www.independent.co.uk/topic/isis). And [New Zealand](http://m.nzherald.co.nz/isis-islamic-state/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503746&objectid=11798642). And [South Africa](http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/isis-threat-real-for-sa-2089400). Much of the English speaking world gets by just fine rendering it as Isis instead of ISIS. ISIL is better. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578/118 "2017-02-13T21:27:15Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > ISIL is better. I’ve been seeing news outlets refer to it as just Islamic State or IS. If that’s not accepted, we can argue over what the definition of “IS” is. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578/119 "2017-02-13T21:35:33Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I’ve been seeing news outlets refer to it as just Islamic State or IS. > > If that’s not accepted, we can argue over what the definition of “IS” is. I will accept either. “Isis” is right out and was a stupid, stupid choice. Very good! :D:D ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578/120 "2017-02-13T22:15:03Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > ISIL is better. Or “Isil” in keeping with their style to spell out acronyms that way. (Whether it’s Isis or Isil or Daesh or whatever wasn’t germane to my point.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-uncapitalized-name-begins-a-sentence-should-it-capitalized/779578.md?page=7)