Besides, what’s wrong with egocentricity?
That’s what I always say.
My Moon can beat up your Moon!
Anyway, it’s easy to understand what the wolves call it. They call it the MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON.
Who knew wolves and cows had so much in common?
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Samuel R Delany - don’t remember the name of the book, but the city is called Bellona.
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Left as an excercise to the rest of the readership (that means “I don’t know” :))
And I don’t qualify for the honor…
Dan Abarbanel
Says Who? Webster’s says:
OK, so it says “often” rather than always but it sounds like it’s OK to capitalize it. It should really be classified as a proper noun and capitalized, IMHO, and that’s the way it’s used by astronomers. I haven’t heard astronomers use “Luna,” “Selene” or other names preferred by sci-fi authors.
“Called Luna by the Romans, Selene and Artemis by the Greeks, and many other names in other mythologies.”
http://www.seds.org/billa/tnp/luna.html
I think since WE only have one moon, there’s really no need to specify it with a “name” as such.
scr4, the dictionary is not a grammar reference; it’s a definition and spelling reference. It’s correct in saying that the word is often capitalized, but that doesn’t mean it’s correct or incorrect to do so.
But the standard rules of grammar dictate that proper nouns are capitalized, and the use of the term to refer to the body orbitting the Earth is a proper noun. Similarly, we refer to our own Sun, Solar System, Galaxy, and Universe, but one can also refer to some other moon (anything orbiting a planet), sun (any star with planets around it), solar system (a sun together with its planets), galaxy, or (hypothetically) universe.
It’s still a stylistic convention. If it were considered to be only a proper noun, then it would be capitalized in the dictionary. Sometimes it’s a proper noun, and sometimes it’s a common noun.
What a lot of publishers will do is use the dictionary spelling (including capitalization) of a word as the rule and then have a separate style sheet that lists words they prefer to express differently (capitalization, hyphenation, and so forth).
(http://www.public.asu.edu/~gelderen/314text/chap4.htm has an example of the word not being capitalized; it’s a grammar instruction site.)
“Moon” is one of these. At my work, we capitalize it (and Sun). But it’s on our style sheet as an exception to the norm.
Nobody has mentioned Cruithne yet?
Here is a site:
http://athena.english.vt.edu/~IDLE/Gym2/workout7/w7a.stretch2.2.html
Actually the webpage is specifically discussing articles (a, an, the) but it shows sentences using moon and sun in lowercase. As I’ve said, I believe that is proper grammar, but at the risk of having many exam papers marked incorrect, I always will capitalize the Moon and the Sun. As I’ve said, in astronomy publications they are always uppercase.
Thank you.
And we all shine on… like the Moon and the stars and the Sun
On the other hand,
http://www.musicsonglyrics.com/J/John%20Lennon/John%20Lennon%20-%20Instant%20Karma%20lyrics.htm
[quote]
Well we all shine on,
Like the moon and the stars and the sun,
Yeah we all shine on,
Come on and on and on on on,
Yeah yeah, alright, uh huh, ah - .
[quote]
[Patriotic Brit]
That name’s already taken for something else.
[/Patriotic Brit]
Duckster asked
"But can you dance to it?"
I can.
- Dances with Wolves, MD
dantheman
That is precisely my point. That is the reason for my failing my “Instant Karma” test in college. Incorrect uppercase usage.
LOL
Well, my point was that it’s capped by some and not capped by others. So there!