My girlfriend was reading something for school and noticed that one scholar’s name wasn’t capitalized in the text. Out of that sprung an idea in my head. I won’t take full credit for this idea as it’s probably been thought of before, but I vouch for anti-capitalization for proper nouns if you they don’t warrant respect. Just hear me out as I try to dig deeper into this hole of explanation.
I see capitalization as a sign of respect, for when you write someone’s name, say “John”, you use a capital “J”. Unless you’re texting on your phone without auto-capitalization or auto-correct, that will always be the case. You’ll rarely see someone’s name written as “john”. It’s see as a sign of respect to grant the first letter of a proper noun capitalized.
Let’s get into the pits of the argument. I want to take someone like Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela, generally agreed upon “good guys”. They deserve a lot of respect and for that, they’ve earned the capitalization in “G” and “N” and “M”. Someone like “Adolf Hitler” should instead be written as “adolf hitler”, as he hasn’t done anything to deserve the capitalization in his name. Pol Pot? Strip the capital “P”s away from his name as he doesn’t deserve them.
The Religious Problem
This brings me to the issue of religion. When speaking about “God” in Christianity, or as a matter of fact, “Christianity” in general, why should I capitalize “G” or “C”? I don’t personally have a belief in organized religion, specifically Christianity. In fact, I could argue religion causes more issues and divides more than what solves and brings to the table. That’s a discussion for another day. I have little respect for this being called “God”, so why is it improper to say “god” or when referring to Him, “him”?
In a scientific or researched article, I would have points taken off for writing “him” or “he” in reference to God. So personally, I vouch to say “he”, “him”, and “god”, as I don’t have respect.
Meeting New People
If I was to meet a new person, I would always introduce myself and refer to them with capitalization. This proves, until they do something that persuades me they are not deserving of the respect of capitalization. In speech, you can’t show capitalization; it’s something that must be shown through text conversation. So truly, this point would only work in specific instances.
What Qualifies As Respectable
There’s no singular definition that defines what qualities can be seen as respectable. Every person can make their own definitions and enforce them as they see fit. For example, one person might despise a certain sports team (couldn’t me be…). Maybe they begin to start speaking about players on that team without capitalization, because they don’t respect them. Or maybe the team is so bad, they don’t warrant respect from anyone (cough, Carolina Panthers, cough).
It could vary politically. Perhaps a Republican voter might not see a Democrat as respectable, and not capitalize their name when speaking about them. I won’t say who deserves this treatment, personally, but those who know me might be able to sleuth it out.
So while I won’t change anything I write for now, I will keep this in the back of my mind for the long run. I’ll always keep a mental note of who deserves and doesn’t deserve respect. Will I refer to these people with a capital letter? Who knows.
Today’s photo is of a meme I actually found that resonates with the topic. And believe it or not, it’s been in my camera roll for 2 years, on September 22nd, 2022.