Today in copyediting, while discussing style sheets, the topic of proper nouns that are written without caps came up, for example, bpNichol, bell hooks and e.e. cummings.
I don't think I agree with what Mark said about the English language not changing to suit a particular person's eccentric preferences. I can't help but think of particular patterns and styles of English that exist outside of Canada, or even within Canada, that have their own quirks. If this were the case, then why are there different spellings of catalogue or analogue?
The decision to be a published person and keep your name in lower-case could be as simple as aesthetics, but it could also be something more. It could be that you don't view yourself as a proper noun, but simply as a noun. It could be more political than that, I'm not sure. I capitalize my own name, so I can't go into the reasons why I wouldn't.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I'm guessing that there are different spellings of analogue and catalogue because they represent countries/nations/power. I keep thinking of past battles with Word's spell check("it's c-o-l-o-U-r, Mr. Gates! Quit trying to colonize my country through spelling!") when, for some reason, without question, I changed color back to colour. So, yeah, I think there is this whole political and/or power issue at play. Gets me thinking about who owns your name. Do I own my name? If yes, then does that not mean I can do what I want with it? But then what if everyone started to lower case certain letters in their name? I'm guessing it would lead to a drop in Chicago Manual sales, anarchy, cats and dogs sleeping together, end of the world kinda stuff. Or, at the very least, some really overworked copyeditors.
I think, in the case of bpNichol, it would be proper to spell it "bpNichol" on one of his published works, the street sign named after him, and in certain essays, simply out of respect. I don't think that it was an eccentric move by an eccentric poet, but rather a statement, and yes, probably a bit of marketing. Which is fine and rather smart.
I think, though, that if I'm getting a paycheck to copyedit a piece of work where this issue came up, then I'd just shut up and do whatever the style sheet told me to do.
i don't really agree with it either, but i suppose that's because i'm a person who favours the lowercase. i also believe that writers should be referred to however the hell they want to me, it's a name they've chosen for whatever reasons and i don't think that it hurts editors to leave their antiquated capitals behind.
I don't think Mark was denying that trends can have a lasting impact on language, rather, that even when someone of repute does something out of the ordinary, it takes far more for it to become part of the prescribed usage.
And I can understand. If language rules were to change too fast, it would become difficult for intentional breaks in usage to be recognized as a stylistic choice.
It would also make copyediting more difficult, I imagine, and perhaps that's why Mark views this particular oddity as uneccessary.
Antiquated capital-ists? harharhar.
Why the fuck am I even up this late.
Post a Comment