Capital punishment

R-E-S-P-E-C-T?

Some years ago I received an email from a reader of a book I had written about Harry Truman, Douglas MacArthur and the Korean war. I described the landing of U.S. marines at Inchon in the action that proved the turning point in the war. The reader said he liked the book but was upset that I had not capitalized the word “marines.” This showed disrespect, he said, unworthy of those brave men.

I replied that no disrespect was intended. It was simply a stylistic decision. The author of a book is the arbiter of style in that author's own book. The rules are different for magazines and newspapers, where the editors control the style sheet. I prefer what is called a “down style,” with relatively few uppercase letters beyond the first letters of sentences and of proper names. I pointed out that I wrote “the president," and if the commander-in-chief didn't rate capitalization, then neither should the rank and file.

I didn't think much more about the matter until the summer of 2020 when the New York Times and the Washington Post announced a change in their style sheets. Subsequently they would employ "Black” in reference to individuals of African descent. “We believe this style best conveys elements of shared history and identity, and reflects our goal to be respectful of all the people and communities we cover,” explained the Times’ executive editor.

Once an institution as visible as the New York Times declared, like the person who wrote to me about my Korean war book, that capitalization was a matter of respect, resisting the change became difficult. Especially in that fraught moment, nobody wanted to be accused of disrespect.

But almost nobody addressed the underlying question: What does capitalization have to do with respect? Where did that idea come from?

It's hard to say. In the beginning there were no such things as capital, or uppercase, letters, because there were no such things as lowercase letters. There were just letters. The Romans knew only the block capitals that adorn their ancient temples. One reason their letters were blocky is that it was easier to chisel them into stone.

Over the centuries, scribes sought easier ways of writing. They liked curves rather than straight lines and sharp angles. They got in the habit of running one letter into the next. While they were at it, they added punctuation marks, including periods at the end of sentences. The Romans had simply strung words together and left it to readers to figure out where to pause. As an additional indicator of sentence breaks, the medieval scribes used the old uppercase letters to start new sentences.

This practice raised the possibility that uppercase letters could be used for emphasis, much as boldface and italics are used today. Here’s where the confusion that still vexes us began. What to emphasize? And why?

Practices varied among countries and cultures. Some adopted the practice of capitalizing most nouns, common or proper. Yet this diminished the efficiency the scribes had been looking for with their flowing strokes.

A new twist entered the argument with the introduction of movable type. It was no more time-consuming to set an uppercase letter than a lowercase letter. But having both cases required twice as many letters as the Romans had required. It was at this time that the terms uppercase and lowercase seem to have come into use. The uppercase letters, being used less frequently, were placed in cases higher up and less easily reached than the lowercase letters.

For a variety of reasons, not all of them clear, Germans used lots of capital letters, and still do. The French were more sparing of capitals, and still are.

The English were in between. And English authors could be idiosyncratic, with some using lots of capitals and others fewer. The English tradition was carried to America with English colonists. Benjamin Franklin, who entered the printing business in Boston in the 1720s, capitalized most substantive nouns. Over his lifetime, Franklin used fewer and fewer capitals. Thomas Jefferson, thirty-seven years younger than Franklin, never used as many, but his draft of the Declaration of Independence sprinkles capitals where no American writer would put them today.

The historian who writes about the likes of Franklin and Jefferson and wants to quote their words has to decide how to handle orthography that looks strange to modern eyes. To reproduce their words as they wrote them might make them appear hopelessly antique. Worse, to that majority of us who have been taught that there is a right way and a wrong way of writing and spelling, their divergence from modern standards might make them seem silly or stupid. On the other hand, to edit them to modern standards risks depriving readers of the fun that comes from seeing history as at least slightly exotic.

My solution has been to leave enough of the 18th century in their writing to keep readers aware that these were different people in a different time, but not so much that readers get annoyed by bumping up against capitals in every third word.

I'm reasonably satisfied with how it works out. I think most of my readers are too. At any rate complaints about my de-capitalizations reach me only infrequently. I haven't heard back from the fellow who emailed me about the marines.