So if Marine is capitalized, an Army service member might reasonably want to be treated the same way and ask that Soldier also be capitalized.
Unlike France with their Académie Française (which acts as an official authority on the French language), there is no comparable authority for English.
All we have are the various style guides. And I don’t see how the New York Times Style Guide is any more or less an “internal guideline” than the U.S. Army Style Guide.
More to the point, this is how the Army is indicating how it wants its service members to be referred to. And in general, it is reasonable to defer to how organizations and people want to be referred to. Even if we don’t necessarily agree with it or think it sounds dumb.
So if the U.S. Army wants its service members to be referred to as Soldiers, and the U.S. Marine Corps wants its service members to be referred to as Marines, and the Space Force wants its service members to be referred to as Guardians, I think that is their prerogative.
I read a lot of books about the Pacific War, and there is the Army, Navy, Army Air Force, the Marines, the Navy aviators, merchant marines, etc., and of course the Japanese side as well as the Australian and British forces. People at the time and historian then and now used and currently use specific words to describe the various groups.
For example, there were both Army and Marine units fighting side by side on the same island. No one, then or now referred or refers to them collectively as soldiers. The accepted terminology is to call the Army dudes “soldiers “ and the Marine dudes “Marines”. Because it’s standard terminology, trying to change usage now would be confusing.
If a writer says that there were X numbers of soldiers on the island, people will ask how many Marines there were. It’s that simple.
There are also various other terms used such as “troops” to indicate Army and Marine forces, “combatants” and “personnel”.
People at the time differentiated them. It was not simply that the Marines felt they were superior so they had their own word. Holding that view simply demonstrates a lack of historical understanding.
The Marines thought themselves to be bad ass. But the Army thought they were lite troops, not real soldiers. The Navy shook their collective heads at both of them and aviators from all sides felt sorry for the boys sleeping in the mud.
For the vast majority of people, it doesn’t matter at all!
However, there is a correct answer to the question of what terms were and are used by people who are familiar with the subject.
I think you’re missing the fact that the Army style guide is specific for internal correspondence and communication–the regulation feeding the guide even explicitly states this. This is not how the Army is indicating it wants its servicemembers to be referred to. It’s how the Army indicates it wants its servicemembers to refer to each other in memorandums and other documents not intended for external distribution.
The New York Times Style Guide explains to their journalists how to write consistently in what it produces for public consumption. If it had a separate guide for how to write intra-office and intra-agency memorandums, this would be an internal guideline. The Army correspondence regulation specifies an entirely different format and style for letters sent to civilians and other external organizations.
And as noted by @Bear_Nenno, this style guide is for internal communications. If for some reason I have the chance to write internal Army communications, I will defer to that guideline.
Unless I have missed something, they aren’t attempting to force this usage on the greater world.
ETA, @Bear_Nenno answered it better while I was trying to reply on my phone.
Although i rather like Soldier for members of the US Army, and soldier for everything else, including the toys children play with (and “tin soldiers” might include knights in armor, they are not restricted to toys representing members of the US Army.)
No, they’re not, so far as I am aware. And in fact, I wasn’t even aware of it until this thread. Notice I did not capitalize “soldier” in my first post upthread.
But as @puzzlegal points out, it does present an opportunity to distinguish a U.S. Army service member from a generic soldier. And it would be consistent with the capitalization of Marine, which has been accepted use for decades.
(I notice, @TokyoBayer, that you consistently capitalize the word Marine in your last post. Why should Soldier be treated differently?)
That’s a mistranslation from German (IMO as English usage is different).
In German the term Soldat (m)/Soldatin (f) covers members of all branches of the military (is also the legal term for the specific employment relationship of soldiers to the state, which is different to the other three statuses of employees, civil servants and judges); members of the four specific branches (Heer, Marine, Luftwaffe, Cyber- und Informationsraum) are disambiguated with additions where needed (Soldat der Marine etc.)
Well, yes, but for the most part this consists of operating machinery and pushing buttons while underway on a ship or a submarine. So they are Sailors, not soldiers.
Your average Sailor handles a firearm during boot camp and to maintain qualification, but that’s about it. Pretty much the antithesis of a soldier.
And the firearms on board a ship or submarine are typically hand-me-downs from the Army or Marines. Heck, some ships and subs still had old M-14 rifles in their small-arms lockers into the 1980s.
Back to the whole capitalization discussion. I was trying to find out if Sailor was supposed to be capitalized or not, and came across this:
This is just some guy’s blog, but I assume the information is correct. (Although the blogger also capitalizes Website, so maybe take this with a grain of salt. )
FWIW I asked my AI this question and here is its answer:
Based on my research of official U.S. military style guides, “Sailor” should be capitalized when referring to a member of the US Navy.
Official Military Style Guides
The Department of Defense Visual Information Style Guide (2020) explicitly states: “Sailor, Sailors Capitalize when referring to members of the U.S. Navy; not capitalized when referring to members of foreign navies.”
The U.S. Navy Style Guide also confirms this rule: “Sailor - ‘Sailor’ is to be capitalized in all references except those who belong to foreign navies.”
Comparison with AP Style
Interestingly, there’s a difference between military style guides and Associated Press (AP) style:
Military style: Capitalizes “Soldier,” “Sailor,” “Airman,” “Marine,” and “Coast Guardsman” when referring to U.S. service members
AP Style: Uses lowercase “sailor” as a generic term (e.g., “Army is soldier. Navy/Marines is sailor. Air Force is airman.”)
When to Use Which Style
Use capitalized “Sailor” when:
Writing for military publications
Following DoD style guidelines
Referring specifically to U.S. Navy personnel
Writing official military documents or press releases
U.S. Navy Style Guide: Available through military communication channels
Associated Press Stylebook: For civilian journalism standards
The most definitive answer is that in official military contexts, “Sailor” should be capitalized when referring to U.S. Navy personnel, while civilian news organizations following AP Style typically use lowercase “sailor.”
Well, topside and POOD do carry firearms on watch but let’s be honest–if anyone tries to invade the boat they’re up there to soak up bullets until we can get the hatches shut.
(I was in during the GWOT shortly after 9/11 and they even made us carry a sidearm as BDW. They even gave the roving watch back aft a sidearm! A nuke with a gun, insanity.)
Whenever I was acting as Nuclear Weapons Custodian, I was required to wear a sidearm. I was not required to be anywhere in particular during the missile transfer (other than onboard) but I was required to be armed. There was a detachment of heavily armed Marines (not soldiers!) on the tender above us. A bunch of my guys with shotguns and rifles topside. A boat out in the river with a rocket launcher. And me eating a tuna fish sandwich in the wardroom with a pistol strapped to my hip.
Right, and of course there was the whole “Repel Boarders bill” with a set of procedures to follow if anyone tried to board and take over the ship.
Some Googling tells me that the last time a ship actually had to repel boarders was the USS Buckley (DE-51) on 22 April 1944 when it rammed a German U-Boat and some of the German sailors managed to get on board the destroyer in the melee—resulting in hand-to-hand combat with small arms and whatever else was at hand (like coffee cups).
As I recall, our topside watches weren’t supposed to have their pistols loaded unless there was a reason to do so. But the watches were long and boring, and topside watchstanders would sometimes see how fast they could load their weapon if it was necessary. And would manage to shoot themselves in the foot or other extremity with some regularity somewhere in the fleet.
Yeah, at the time we carried at condition 1 with the weapon loaded and a round chambered.
Fortunately, we never had any NDs but every now and then we did have some chucklehead pull his mag and putz around with it and end up dropping a round in the drink and get into a bunch of trouble. Squids gonna squid, you know.
)