Читать книгу Collins Improve Your Punctuation - Graham King - Страница 10

Capital letters are an important form of punctuation in that they help to guide the eye and mind through a text. Try this:

mi5 is the branch of the british intelligence organisation responsible for internal security and counter-espionage in the united kingdom. mi6 is the branch responsible for international espionage. the us has its fbi, south africa has its boss, israel its mossad and the republic of ireland its g2. spies love abbreviations. Then, in britain there’s mi1, mi8, mi9 and, ultimately, wx, the butlins of the spy world.

That’s a paragraph shorn of capital letters. It’s readable, with some effort, but how much easier would the eye glide through it were the beginnings of sentences and names guide-posted with capital letters – not to mention abbreviations!

Using capitals to flag the start of sentences is clear enough but confusion surrounds the capitalising of certain nouns and names. Try this Capital Quiz:

Capital Quiz

Of this dozen nouns and names, half are incorrect.

Which ones?

the Army, Spring and Autumn, bulldog, Great Dane, union jack, Vincent Van Gogh, jacuzzi, french fries, Renaissance, Venus, new testament, down under.

[Answers: the army, spring and autumn, Union Jack, Vincent van Gogh, Jacuzzi, New Testament, Down Under. The others are correct.]

Some capitalisations are logical but many are not. Some are consistent throughout the language while others are arbitrary, differing from country to country and even from one publisher or newspaper to another. Here, as a guideline, are the generally accepted capitalisations for a range of fairly common nouns and names.