Warren,
I grew up in the news business and have working in it on-and-off for 30
years. I think you're misremembering some of what you were told. ALL
PARTS OF A PROPER NAME ARE CAPITALIZED.
Picking up on Malcolm's example, there is no Mississippi River versus
Mississippi river. The reason why: The Yazoo River is a Mississippi river.
The Mississippi River originates in Minnesota and empties into the Gulf
of Mexico in Louisiana. A Mississippi river is a river that is located,
in whole or in part, in Mississippi. Referring to mississippi river is
plain incorrect, as Mississippi is a proper name.
An exception would be Yazoo River/yazoo river. Yazoo River is a named
river, whereas yazoo river describes a river with a particular type of
floodplain structure.
Dave
malcolm McCallum wrote:
Ornithologists, and a growing majority of herpetologists are using all capitals.
American Robin
American Toad.
However, grammatically these are NOT proper nouns.
Proper nouns by definition both identify and individualize.
Fred, the american toad, is a good example.
Here, Fred is the proper noun as we have individualized the specific
american toad.
However, common names lists are now capitalizing the common names, and
I usually do this as well. Frankly, I just think it looks better.
As for rivers, I have never heard of someone calling it the
"Mississippi river" as river is part of the proper name of this
specific river and this proper noun should be entirely capitalized as
Mississippi River. However, if you were talking about the rivers of
Mississippi, you might state the Mississippi rivers, in which case the
river would be in lower case. Furthermore, the Mississippi river
would use Mississippi as the modifier of river such that you are
referring to some river in Mississippi. For example, the Alabama
river was more polluted than the Mississippi river. This would be
better written, though, as: The river in Alabama was more polluted
than the one in Mississippi.
I hope this helps!!! :)
malcolm
On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 7:15 PM, Warren W. Aney <[email protected]> wrote:
In my journalism and technical writing classes I learned there are two
accepted styles for capitalization: An "up" style and a "down" style. In
the "up" style you would capitalize river, lake, stream, county, etc. if
it's part of the proper name, e.g., Penobscot River, Penobscot County. Many
"up" style adherents would also capitalize the proper names of species,
e.g., Mule Deer.
In the "down" style you would be very stingy with capitalizations. So you
would write Narraguagus river and mule deer.
And then ornithologists have a policy of always capitalizing bird species
names, but since I always write in the "down" style I tend to ignore that
policy for the sake of consistency, e.g., Canada geese and pileated
woodpecker.
Some newspapers write in the "down" style but most in the "up" style -- and
as you've probably noted, MSWord spellcheck keeps nagging you to use the
"up" style.
You can also mix styles, e.g., write about Atlantic salmon in the Penobscot
River. That's part of the frustration (or beauty) of writing -- it's an art
and not a science.
Warren W. Aney
Senior Wildlife Ecologist
9403 SW 74th Ave
Tigard, OR 97223
(503) 246-8613 phone
(503) 246-2605 fax
(503) 539-1009 mobile
[email protected]
-----Original Message-----
From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael Cooperman
Sent: Wednesday, 30 September, 2009 11:19
To: [email protected]
Subject: [ECOLOG-L] to Capitalize or not to capitalize
In the following statement: ....the Narraguagus and Penobscot
rivers....should the word "rivers" be capitalized? I have my opinion,
but in the spirit of not biasing responses I'll keep it to myself; my
office as a whole is split 50/50. One way or the other, half the people
in my office are wrong!
Michael
--
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Michael Cooperman, PhD
National Research Council - Research Fellow
in residence at NOAA-Fisheries, NE Fisheries Science Center - Maine Field
Station
Atlantic Salmon Research and Conservation Task
17 Godfrey DR., Suite 1
Orono, ME 04473
(work) 207-866-7409
(cell) 207-974-9846
(fax) 207-866-7342 (pls call before faxing)
email: [email protected]
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