Capitalization of job titles
David
right and wrong?
Personally, I prefer "General Dogsbody" to "general dogsbody", as the former
is clearly a title, whereas the latter may just be adjectives.
Thanks
MC
"David" <nos...@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote:
It's a matter of... well I don't know what it's a matter of, but here's
how it works in practice.
The battle was won by General Joe Blow. Later in his career, the general
turned to drink.
nem2o
MC <co...@ca.inter.net> wrote in message
news:cope-1F09DF.0...@newsfeeder.total.net...
Absolutly!
A was taught that one should capitalise professional job titles such as
Surgeon, Barrister, Engineer etc. but not job titles such as coalman,
assembler, postman etc. It's the Great British Class system at work and at
work again!
That was RSA English in the 60s.
Nemo
meirman
<ne...@naughtyl1ass.wet> posted:
Interesting. FWIW, in the US, none of those would be capitalized.
Of course Dr. is or even I guess Doctor (which is almost never used
except for Doctor Dolittle (who apparently does very little. I wonder
if Jimmy Dolittle had that habit.)
Another exception, but only in Lehigh County Pennsylvania and maybe
around there is Attorney Jones. They use that as a title there. Is
that true anywhere else in the US. I get the feeling one guy started
the practice and it caught on. And it's probably not even correct,
because I learned in law school that iirc anyone admitted to the bar
was a lawyer, but only someone with a client was an attorney. That
doesn't seem to make sense. Maybe I learned it in the bathroom at law
school.
Another exception are military titles, and then even Private Ryan gets
a capital Private. And high-ranking corporate titles like Chairman of
the Board John Waters. but not the chairman of the mailroom. :)
>Nemo
>
s/ meirman If you are emailing me please
say if you are posting the same response.
Born west of Pittsburgh Pa. 10 years
Indianapolis, 7 years
Chicago, 6 years
Brooklyn NY 12 years
Baltimore 17 years
Shane Glaseman
This is how we do it here at work (I work with the military), and how
AP does it -- capitalize the title when used in conjunction with the
name, lower-case the rest of the time.
Don Phillipson
news:1026987889.16996....@news.demon.co.uk...
> Is this simply a matter of common practice and corporate culture, or of
> right and wrong?
This is local in time, place, and organization. A
couple of Centuries ago, some people used to capitalize
All the Important Words in their writing, but hardly
anyone does this nowadays.
> Personally, I prefer . . .
Preference is a real enough value, but not usually
a safe basis to generalize about usage, which is
best documented by either statistics or intrinsic
reasons.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs (Ottawa, Canada)
dphil...@trytel.com.com.com.less2