Something that consistently annoys me is the random capitalization of words. Granted, copywriting is my profession, but we’re talking about a basic grammar rule here. Just to review, proper nouns should be capitalized—specific people, places and things like Joe, New York, Prius…you get the idea. But I often see people spitting in the eye of case sensitivity rules either because they “want to make a word stand out” or they are operating under some random pattern of composition that’s beyond me (and wrong). I’m not referring to E.E. Cummings or any other author who uses an offbeat written style as art. I’m talking about the work colleague who sends emails titled “Stop stealing my Lunch out of the fridge” or the business that put up a sign advertising “Half off our Stuff that nobody wants.”
The other day I was told by someone on our sales team that he thought we should capitalize the word “association” because “it just looks right.” So, this is the type of sentence that “looked right” to him: “We help hockey Associations all over the world be better than everyone else. These Associations are really cool.” He’s a nice guy, but if you’re going to send edits to a writing team, make sure they are based on some tenuous grasp of grammar rules rather than on pure gut instinct. We all know that most people are relying on US Magazine and Twitter feeds for their daily reading material, so just be aware that your instincts are most likely contaminated with OMGs and gross exaggerations of commonplace occurrences.
So Stop writing with random and Wrong uses of case sensitivity—stick to only capitalizing Proper Nouns.
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