Читать книгу Collins Improve Your Punctuation - Graham King - Страница 11

Sentences	Begin every sentence with a capital letter.
First Person	Always capitalised: I said I was going out.
Pronoun	Capitals do not follow commas, semicolons or colons except where the following word is a name or proper noun.
Aircraft	Concorde, Boeing 747, Fokker, etc.
Armed Forces	British Army, Italian Navy, Brazilian Air Force, but army, navy, air force. The Royal Marines, but marine. Ranks are capitalised: Sergeant, Admiral, Lieutenant, etc.
The Calendar	Monday, March, Good Friday, the Millennium Dome but the new millennium.
Compass Points	north-west, south-south-west, but mysterious East, deep South, frozen North.
Days	Christmas Day, Derby Day, New Year’s Day, etc, but happy new year.
The Deity	God, Father, Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit, Almighty, Jehovah, Supreme Being, Jesus Christ, Son of Man, Holy Trinity, Redeemer, Saviour, He, Him, Thee, Thou; Virgin Mary, the Virgin, Madonna, the Holy Mother, Our Lady; Allah, Buddha, Muhammad, the Prophet, etc; Holy Bible, New Testament, Book of Common Prayer, Ten Commandments; all names from the Bible. Hades, but hell; heaven but Heaven when referring to the Deity.
Diplomatic	Nicaraguan embassy (embassy is usually lower case)
Dog Breeds	Capitalised: Afghan hound, Airedale terrier, Basenji, Great Dane, Kerry blue, Labrador, Newfoundland, Pomeranian, Samoyed, Schnauzer, Cairns terrier, Scotch terrier. Lower case: basset hound, bulldog, bull terrier, cocker spaniel, golden retriever, lurcher, pug, poodle, rottweiler. Check a good dictionary for other breeds.
Exclamations	Oh! Ahrrgh! Wow!
Flora and Fauna	Arab horse, Shetland pony, Montague’s harrier, but hen harrier (caps where proper name is involved). Plants are lower case but with scientific names, orders, classes, families and genuses are capitalised; species and varieties are lc: Agaricus bisporus.
Geographical	the West, the East, the Orient, Northern Hemisphere, Third World, British Commonwealth, the Gulf, the Midlands, the Levant, the Continent, the Tropics, the Left Bank, etc, but eastern counties, facing north, oriental life, tropical fruit, northern Britain, western fashions.
Headlines	With cap and lc headlines, capitalise nouns, pronouns, verbs and words of four or more letters. Generally, capitalise No, Not, Off, Out, So and Up but not a, and, as, at, but, by, for, if, in, of, on, the, to – except when they begin headlines. Capitalise both parts of hyphenated compounds: Sit-In, Cease-Fire, Post-War.
Heavenly Bodies	Mars, Venus, Ursa Major, Halley’s Comet, Southern Cross, Milky Way, etc.
History and Historical Names	Cambrian Era, Middle Ages, Elizabethan, the Depression, Renaissance, Year of the Rat, Georgian, Victorian etc.
Law and Lords	Lord Chancellor, Black Rod, Master of the Rolls, Lord Privy Seal, Queen’s Counsel.
Local
Government	council, but Kent County Council, Enfield Borough Council, Lord Mayor of Manchester.
Member of Parliament	member of parliament, but when abbreviated, MP.
Nations, Nationalities	Venezuela, Alaska, Brits, Estonians, Sudanese; Arabic, Latin, Hellenic, Parisian. Indian ink, Indian file, Indian clubs but indian summer. French polish, French stick, French kiss, French letter but french window. Morocco but morocco bound. Chinese but chinaware; Turkish bath, Turkish delight.
Personification	The family gods were Hope and Charity.
Political Parties, terms	Tory, Conservative Party, Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, Communist Party but communist, communism; Thatcherism, Leninist, Luddites, Marxist, Gaullist etc.
The Pope	the Pope but popes; Pope Paul, Pope John etc.
Proper Names	Names of people (Tony Blair, Spice Girls); places (Europe, Sydney, Mt Everest); titles (Pride and Prejudice, Nine O’Clock News); epithets (Iron Duke, Iron Lady); nicknames (‘Tubby’ Isaacs, ‘Leadfoot’ Evans).
Quotations	Capitalise the first word of complete quotations (The boss asked him, ‘Well, where’s the money?’), but not partial quotations, words or phrases.
Races	Aztecs, Shawnees, Aboriginals, Asiatic.
Religious Names	the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church etc, but church, synagogue, temple, cathedral. Rev Adam Black, Fr O’Brien, Sister Wendy, Mother Teresa, Archbishop of Canterbury; Catholics, Jew, Jewish, Semitic, anti-Semitism, Protestants, etc.
Royalty	The Queen, Duke of Edinburgh, Prince of Wales, Queen Mother, Princess Anne, the Crown.
Our Rulers	Her Majesty’s Government, House of Commons, Prime Minister (PM when abbreviated), Secretary of State, Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Satirised References	In Crowd, Heavy Brigade, She Who Must Be Obeyed, Bright Young Things, Her Indoors.
Scouts	Scouts, Guides, Cubs.
Seasons	spring, summer, autumn, winter (all lc).
Ships	Cutty Sark, HMS Invincible, Titanic.
Street Names	road, avenue, crescent, square etc, but Highfield Road, Spring Avenue, Eagle Crescent, Sloane Square.
Titles	Sir Thomas More, Lord Asquith, Mr and Mrs, Dr, etc.
Trade Marks, Names	Hoover, Peugeot, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Gillette, Durex, Xerox, Aspro, Kodak, Persil, Jacuzzi etc.
Van, Von etc	When writing Dutch names, van is lower case when part of the full name (Hans van Meegeren, Vincent van Gogh) but capitalised when used only with the surname (Van Gogh, Van Dyke). One exception is former US president Martin Van Buren. The same applies to den (Joop den Uyl, Mr Den Uyl). With Germanic names, von is always lc. With Da and D’ prefixes (Mayor D’Amato, Louise d’Amato) there is often inconsistency; such names require checking.
Wars	World War I, Boer War, Seven Years’ War etc.
Miscellany	Americanisation, anglicise, bologna sausage, braille, Central American, Caesarean section (but cesarean in US), Cheshire cheese, French dressing, Gothic architecture (but gothic novel), lyonnaise potatoes, madras cloth, melba toast, mid-Atlantic, Oxford Bags (but oxford shoe), plaster of paris, Pre-Raphaelite, the Post Office (but post office services), roman type, Russian roulette, Southerner, southern hemisphere, Spanish omelette (spanish in US), transatlantic, Trans-Siberian Railway, Union Jack.

Pride and Prejudice and Punctuation

When Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813 our system of punctuation had developed to the stage where few further changes would be made.

But one patch of inconsistency lingered: the practice of not always treating question and exclamation marks as doing the job of full stops:

“And poor Mr Darcy! dear Lizzie, only consider what he must have suffered. Such a disappointment! and with the knowledge of your ill opinion too! and having to relate such a thing to his sister! It is really too distressing, I am sure you must feel it so.”

“What say you, Mary? for you are a lady of deep reflection, I know, and read great books …” “It is unaccountable! in every view it is unaccountable!”

Today, of course, question marks and exclamation marks are almost always followed by capitals.