Thursday, September 7, 2017

Capitalization: Your dog's name is Dog?


 Even in the most professional of settings, over-capitalization sneaks into our writing.  Unless you're Karl Marx, you generally don't do business with the State... you do business with the state.  You could do business with the State of California, since that's the full proper name of that state. The sentence, "I just became a Grandpa," just isn't right.  "I just became a grandpa, so everyone in the family is calling me Grandpa Les," is better. It lets nouns be nouns and proper nouns be proper nouns.

  
When I was teaching basic programming, students could come up with some pretty impressive code.  The real test was whether or not they could repeat it.  Did they stumble onto their solution, or did they really understand what they were coding?  Were they throwing pasta against the wall to see if it sticks, or were they cooking pasta with purpose?  "Whatever you do, do it intentionally, not by accident."

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