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 Articles
Capital Idea on Capitalization
We recently received an emergency phone call from one of our more prominent clients. He was writing an important document to present to the board of trustees and was desperate for some aid. "Is it a matter of diction? Tone? Rhetorical implications?" I queried.
whose title gets one and when?" His confusion is something we all share. A perusal of business documents will convince you that English has returned to its Germanic roots. Our business prose is propped up by innumerable and imponderable capital letters. The effect of so many capitals, I presume, is to prompt readers into armchair salutes as the capped personages pass before their eyes. But we were taught differently. From our school days and Warriner's English Grammar and Composition, we learned that titles before a person's name are anointed with capital letters (as in Governor Rockefeller), but titles after a name or instead of a name are often not. Why, then, capitalize a chairman's title if he's not Mao? Or a chairwoman's? Or a chair's, for that matter? Well, because language and its conventions respond to nuance and are far more supple than the rules of grammar texts lead us to believe. Capitalization becomes a question of whom do we respect. This has caused arguments among managerial types and with good reason, because ramifications abound. For example, if the various Assistant Vice Presidents for Computer Services receive their due, what happens to the AVP's Administrative Assistants? And suppose the administrative assistants are known, in the culture of that company, as secretaries – do they then forfeit their caps? What about the Assistant Vice Presidents for General Services, who may be responsible for supplies for 5,000 or so employees? Must we capitalize the Supply Closet, certainly the cache of their power and dominion? Then what about the clerk who delivers the supplies? If you want them on time, need you address him or her as Clerk? To whom does one show respect? (Or, is the proper question, whom do you need the most? Try running your corporation without the uncapitalized masses for a while.) In the name of democracy, then, I suggest we adhere to the sound and reassuringly pragmatic comments of The Gregg Reference Manual:
In other words, "...use capitalization more sparingly – to give importance, distinction, or emphasis only when and where it is warranted."
Is this what I recommended to my client? Well, yes and no, considering who his audience was. "Give them all capitals – yourself included," was my advice. If anything, my experience has taught me that punctiliousness is one thing and capitalism (as in, an economic system based on competition) is another.
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