Showing posts with label Capital words and names. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Capital words and names. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

No english spoken here

While browsing Facebook the other day, I noticed an ad in the right column for an online college offering a masters degree program.  It was promoting "a degree in english."

So I called the school's help desk and explained that (1) it should be "English" in capital letters because it was a language; that "english" in lower case refers to the spin on something like a cue ball in pool, and (2) it looked pretty damn stupid to be advertised wrong, and (3) it's a country of origin.  There are exceptions, of course:  french and russian salad dressing, and french fries.

The guy on the other end of the phone sort of waffled back an answer that "it wasn't his job to fix it"--and two days later, it was still there, so I called the graduate office and alerted them. Some people need a stick of dynamite lit under their chairs....
To my dismay, it's STILL there...three days later.  I won't say which school, but it's in Maine....

Not for nothing, but I'll say it again:  I have a masters in education and taught college English for nine years--only to be told I needed a masters degree in THAT subject, so I am no longer in the classroom.  I don't care who tacks what credentials behind their name and tells ME I'm not qualified:  you'd better know HOW to teach, WHAT to teach, and WHY it matters, or else you're just stealing someone's time and money.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Capital words and names

•    People’s names
•    Nations, continents, planets (Earth), stars, galaxies
•    Public places and regions (the South; Southeast), but NOT as a direction (“Go south 10 miles.”)
•    Streets, buildings, monuments
•    Cities, states, and provinces
•    Days of the week and months
•    Holidays
•    Organizations, companies, search engines
•    Formal institutions: colleges, departments, schools, government offices, courts of law
•    Historical events, named historical times and documents
•    Religious deities, revered persons, sacred texts
•    Registered trademarks
•    Names of ships, planes, and spacecraft


•    Titles of courses as named/with code #: sociology, mathematics, science,
–    But Sociology 102; Math 274; Earth Science 300


•    A title before someone’s name: “Senator Stone” but
–    DO NOT capitalize when the job title itself is used without a person’s name: the mayor; the senator; the congressman; the judge, 


•    Capitalize major works in a title
•    Capitalize the first word of a full quoted sentence: “She lit up the room like a flare.”
•     Do NOT capitalize a fragment of a quoted sentence: “...herding cats.”


•    Relative’s titles unless possessive: Mother, Father, Grandmother;
•    my mother; his father