Here you go:
I’m assuming @TokyoBayer meant a cite for small-s soldier meaning a member of a country’s armed forces.
That was my assumption also.
Why would he ask for a cite for what is basically the dictionary definition?
I’m pretty sure he was asking about capitalizing Soldier when referring to a member of the U.S. Army, though.
Or maybe @bump’s point was indeed about capitalization (since the rest of his post goes on to talk about non-capitalized “small-s” sailors who aren’t in the Navy), but @TokyoBayer (and everyone else, apparently) was focusing on the second part of his statement.
I don’t know if it was mentioned above, the the Corps also has aircraft, like the Harrier, which is one bad-ass airplane, although I guess they’ve transitioned to the F-35.
Servicemembers is the preferred, inclusive and least offensive term.
In fact, in 2020, the US Army updated their regulation on Preparing and Managing Correspondence to prescribe the use of “Servicemember” over “Soldier” in all official correspondence. I find myself often editing memos and other documents to make this correction. 2020 was a different time and a different climate. I would not be surprised if this is updated again soon. Soldier was perfectly fine and it was unisex.
Anyway, for an inclusive term that addresses all people among all branches of the military, you can’t go wrong with using it.
That’s not really about being a proper noun, though. Did you also notice on that style guide that “Family” is also supposed to be capitalized in Army correspondence when referring to the Family of a Soldier? I can probably find the original orders or regulations prescribing this practice buried in my hard drive somewhere. When these practices started, the explicit justification was something to the effect of “To bring recognition to the importance of the [Soldier/Family] to the success of the Army’s mission”.
Perhaps it was more to account for the possibility of joint command structures (in which correspondence might be addressed to individuals from other services within the command) than some misguided attempt at gender inclusivity. Especially since it was, you know, 2020 (not 2021-2024).
Back to that U.S. Army Style Guide I linked to above. It talks about the term “troops” as well that we discussed upthread.
No, because it doesn’t just say to use the term, Servicemember, generally. It specifically says to replace use of the word “Soldiers” with “Servicemembers”. It really was a strange thing to change. It doesn’t even say to change Marine with Servicemember or Guardian with Servicemember. Just “Soldier”. But yea, as soon as the current administration realized this, it will be immediately changed to something more aggressive and war-related, I’m sure.
They also went back to adding two spaces after all ending punction, like periods. This, despite the fact that Word does it automatically. Now all our memos have huge ass gaps between every sentence.
Back in the day a “troop” (like F-Troop!) used to be a unit of cavalry roughly equivalent to an infantry company (or an artillery battery). And a “trooper” was a cavalryman.
Does capitalizing something make it a proper noun? I agree it’s basically pandering at best and propaganda at worst. Interestingly, we got similar guidance from Boy Scouts of America (now Scouting America) to capitalize Scout when referring to youth members of the organization.
The million dollar question.
I take back this whole thing. I went back and looked at the 2020 update. I think there was a misunderstanding at some point. The summary of updates in the regulation only mentioned a specific paragraph within the document where the term Soldier was changed to Servicemember. Upon re-read, it isn’t required to change Soldier to Servicemember. The author just changed it in once specific part of the regulation concerning retired personnel and made note of this change in the Summary of Change section. Interesting.
After a little thought, I’m going to go with no, it is not a proper noun. For two reasons:
Army Regulation 25-50 Preparing and Managing Correspondence, discusses this in paragraph 1-14 under the title Unique Capitalization. If these were proper nouns, their capitalization would not be unique. The three uniquely capitalized words are:
a. Capitalize the word “Soldier” when it refers to a U.S. Army Soldier.
b. Capitalize the word “Family” when it refers to U.S. Army Family or Family members.
c. Capitalize the word “Civilian” when it refers to Army Civilians and is used in conjunction with Soldier and/or Family.
Second, is says this is the “selection of style and usage preferences for internal Army correspondence” (emphasis added). If the intent was to make it a proper noun, it wouldn’t be only capitalized within internal documents, but all external communications as well.
A quick Google gave me this:
Capitalize when:
- Referring to a specific nation’s forces: “the U.S. Army,” “the Navy,” “the British Army”
- Used as part of an official name: “Army Corps of Engineers,” “Navy SEAL”
- Standing alone but clearly referring to a specific force: “The Army announced new recruitment goals”
Lowercase when:
- Used generically: “He joined the army after college”
- Referring to military forces in general: “The country’s army and navy were well-equipped”
- Used as an adjective: “army regulations,” “navy blue”
I graduated from the DINFOS back in the 80’s as a military journalist.
We went by the New York Times style guide. Marine was capital M always, soldier small s. African American was capital B Black, but Caucasian white was small w. There was a list of cities that didn’t require the state named afterwards. Beware using trade names like Xerox instead of photocopy, or Styrofoam for polystyrene.
And most oppressive of all: do not use the Boston comma.
Is that another name for the Oxford comma?
My bad - Oxford.
Now I use it consciously, but if I’m typing fast I don’t because it was hammered into me not to.
(If you bomb out of DINFOS, you’re still under an enlistment contract, so you’re sent to become an Army grunt or a Navy deck ape. So you obey the style guide!)
A cite the supports the supposed differentiation.
People who aren’t familiar with the terminology may use “soldier” for Marines, and possibly even for any member of the military.
But this supposed rule doesn’t exist. Outside of the internal guidelines, uppercase-s isn’t used.