Upper or Lower Case?

Diesel at Our Garden Pond Last Summer

Last week my publisher sent me the proofread copy of Grounds for Murder. Although I—and others—had gone through my manuscript countless times, the proofreader still found many errors. Some of them were typos. Others were the result of carelessness (I used grey and gray interchangeably) or ignorance of house style (5:30 instead of five thirty). A few sentences required rewording for greater clarity. The most perplexing problems, however, were the result of my use of outdated conventions.

The majority of these related to the use of upper and lower case. The rules have changed since I was a kid. Writers no longer capitalize words with the frequency they did in the past. For the most part, I applaud this trend. The use of upper case draws attention. When an excessive number of words are capitalized, the reader’s attention is pulled in many directions. It becomes hard to determine what the author considers really important.

Reducing the use of lower case has the opposite effect; it appears to devalue the word in question.

The late Don Kerr, professor in English at the University of Saskatchewan and my dissertation advisor back in the early ‘90s, taught me to capitalize Nature. By doing do, we give Nature the same status that many people give God. We say that Nature is important. Like a number of other writers, I always assign it upper case.

More problematic is the use of upper and lower case for the names of animal breeds and species. Yellow Warbler or yellow warbler? Bernese Mountain Dog or Bernese mountain dog? The current trend is to use lower case except for those words that refer to people or places. So, the first word of Cooper’s hawk is capitalized while red-tailed hawk uses only lower case. I use upper case for both. Cooper’s Hawk and Red-tailed Hawk. Am I hopelessly old-fashioned? And pedantic? Maybe. But birds are important, not just in general but also as individual species. I pay tribute to this importance by capitalizing their names.

Bless my editor at ECW Press. She’s willing to make my preferences an exception to the rules established in the Chicago Manual of Style. Will I capitalize Nature? Absolutely. But the breed of animals like Diesel, my beloved Maine Coon? I still have to finalize that decision.