[WikiEN-l] A plea for sanity in capitalisation from the coalface

Sun Apr 27 18:29:33 UTC 2003

Tony Wilson wrote:

>Mav writes: 
>
>>Thus common nouns (those that tell the "kind" of something) are not
>>capitalized but proper nouns (those that name a singular, specific person,
>>place or thing) are capitalized. Anything other than that complicates
>>matters.
>>
>
>This sounds logical but is completely inconsistent. Consider
>
>V-1 Flying Bomb: This is a *kind* of aircraft, but it is capitalised
>Labrador Retriever: This is a *kind* of dog, but it is capitalised
>Splendid Fairy-wren: This is a specific *kind* of fairy-wren, which is
>why it too is capitalised. (A non-specific kind is written as
>plain"fairy-wren".)
>
Aircraft have nothing to do with the present debate.  Applying this kind 
of analogy is another kind of logical fallacy.

Ec