62. Choices with Capital Letters

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Some kinds of noun in the middle of a sentence can be used either with or without an initial capital letter

VARIABILITY IN THE USE OF CAPITAL LETTERS

The question of whether or not to use a capital letter at the start of a word is one of those elementary ones that can still cause uncertainty for advanced users of English (rather like comma usage, subject-verb agreement and paragraph length).

One area where the use of starting capital letters can be problematic is in headings and titles – considered elsewhere within these pages in 178. How to Write a Heading and 197. The Language of Bibliographies. Another area is words that reference books like Collins Cobuild Grammar say have an “optional” need for a starting capital: words referring to compass positions (e.g. North / north – see 151. Ways of Using Compass Words), seasons (Summer / summer), decades (The Eighties / the eighties), sectors (the Army / the army), and roles (Minister / minister).

In this post I wish to examine three kinds of expression that have an optional need for a starting capital – names of high-status roles, names of sectors, and descriptive names – and to suggest some guidelines for choosing or rejecting the capital letter.

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CAPITALS IN THE NAMES OF HIGH-STATUS ROLES & SECTORS

High-status role names include minister, president, manager, head teacher, rector, bishop and chair, while high-status sector names include government, army, church, management, high court and senate. All of these names may or may not begin with a capital letter, depending on how important the role or sector is to the writer. Consider this example: 

(a) The Government have passed a new motoring law. 

The use of the capital G here probably means that the writer is saying something about his/her own government, or at least is showing unusual respect for someone else’s. For example, in an American newspaper the sentence would probably be referring to the American government. A small g, on the other hand, would indicate that the government in question was not the writer’s own. In the same way, the use of Church would suggest that the writer either belonged to the religious institution in question or at least thought it deserved special respect; while church would distance the writer from it.

The choice between God and god is a particularly interesting one. Is the usage with a capital letter a standard proper name like Mary or a respect-showing role name like The President? In fact it could be either. As a proper name, it is likely to be used by people who believe in only one god – without, of course, the/a(n) or equivalent: 

(b) God is the Supreme Being. 

Interesting here is the additional use of capital letters in Supreme Being. This expression is not a proper name (the name is God). One reason for its capitals could be that it is felt to be a respect-deserving high-status role name, but more probably the reason is just a tendency among believers in God to capitalise the first letter of any word (even pronouns and adjectives) that describes or represents Him.

Using God not as an ordinary name but as a role name with implied respect would be common among people who believed in more than one god (or by writers who wanted to show respect for such people). In this case, there would normally be an article or a plural ending: 

(c) The Ancient Greeks worshipped Poseidon, the God of the sea.

(d) Poseidon was one of the Greek Gods. 

The god here is named Poseidon, not God, so that God is surely a status expression (and could be written with a small g). For more about religious influences on English, see 137. Words that Reflect English Culture.

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CAPITALS IN DESCRIPTIVE NAMES

A name is a standard way of referring to something. Ordinary names, such as Britain or chair, only refer, while descriptive names, such as East Africa and wallpaper, both refer and describe (see 206. Ways of Conveying a Name). Expressions that only refer tend automatically to be names too. However, descriptive expressions are less definitely names because they are not always the standard way of referring to what they describe. For example, a large island south of India is a non-naming description because it refers to somewhere with a different standard name (Sri Lanka – see 77. Apposition).

Some names start with a capital letter and some do not. It all depends on what the name refers to. Most names of people and places, for example, need a capital (see 47. Article Errors with Proper Nouns), while most other names do not. Yet doubts about whether or not to use a capital letter when referring to a person or place can still arise with a descriptive expression. The reason is that there can be doubt about whether or not it is a name at all – whether or not, in other words, it is the standard way of referring to the idea in question.

One of the visitors to the Home page of this blog provided a good example of such doubt when enquiring whether a corner of a playground known as the wild garden should have capital letters. The answer I gave was that it depended on whether the phrase was being used as a name or as a non-naming description. It would certainly be the latter if there was another expression that was recognised as its name (e.g. Wonderland), but it would probably be a name (The Wild Garden) if there was no other way of identifying it.

To give another example, my daughter’s family acquired a cat some years ago and did not bother to give it a name. Sometimes they referred to it as bad cat, sometimes miaow, and sometimes bird killer. However, a child in the family made such a habit of using miaow that the rest of the family started to follow suit, until eventually the constancy of the use caused the description to be considered the cat’s name (with a capital).

An example of a different sort is provided by the contrast between Earth (or The Earth) and earth. The former of course refers to the world, a place, while the latter just means “soil”. Perhaps this is not strictly a difference between a name and a description – more one between two different but related meanings of the same word (see 7. Metaphorical Meanings) – but it seems worth mentioning in this context.

There is an interesting usage in a prayer that Roman Catholic Christians say in order to demonstrate and reinforce their belief. Generally, Catholics call their church The Catholic Church – a descriptive name. However, in the prayer (whose wording is carefully controlled by the church’s authorities), the phrase is the catholic Church, with only Church capitalised. The authorities are unlikely to have made a mistake with their English here (despite my word processor suggesting they have, and hence proving again the weaknesses of computer grammar checking – see 68. How Computers Get Grammar Wrong 1).

Removing the capital from Catholic, so that this word ceases to be part of the name, forces more attention to be given to its ordinary meaning of “universal”, and at the same time changes the role of Church from part of a descriptive name to a name of a wider sector (see 283. Lesser-Known Features of Adjectives, #4). The changed spelling seems to reflect a wish to refer to all Christians rather than just those called The Catholic Church. The fact that non-Catholic Christians use these words in the same way in their version of the prayer offers support for this interpretation. 

Another familiar descriptive name that can also be used as an ordinary description (despite computer underlining) is New Year. Here are examples of the two uses: 

(e) A fireworks display was put on for (the) New Year.

(f) The new year will begin in January. 

The name use, illustrated by (e), refers to an event, just like Ramadan, Thanksgiving or The Olympics, while the ordinary description is implied not to be an event. Use as a name is often indicated by the ability of the noun to be used without the/a(n) or similar.

61. “Since” versus “Because”

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Pressure is often lowest at the Equator since the sun is hottest there

“Since” is sometimes a preposition showing time, and sometimes a conjunction showing time or reason

DISPUTE ABOUT THE USES OF “Since” AND “Because”

The difference between since and because is slightly controversial among English writing experts. I have read pieces arguing that since is an acceptable alternative to because, and also that it is not. Some assert that formal “rules” do not exist regarding this question. My own belief is that rules certainly do exist: since can replace because in some cases and not others, and because can replace since in some cases and not others. In this post I wish to elaborate on that. 

First it might be helpful to give my understanding of language “rules”. Within a “descriptive” approach to grammar analysis, they are essentially what most lifelong users of a language do or do not do with a word, word-part or word group. Hence they reflect common use, or frequency: if everybody who speaks English from an early age says something in a particular way, then it is correct; if nobody does it, it is incorrect (or at least strange); and if some do it and some do not, then it is either “variable” or controversial.

This view means that the absence of a rule from a grammar book does not mean it does not exist. Language practices have their frequencies regardless of whether or not they have been recognised and written about. As a result, rather than saying that no rule exists for separating since and because, it may be more accurate to say that few systematic objective analyses of their actual use have yet been carried out and written up – or at least that the differences have not been sufficiently or accurately described. 

Most words and structures have rules of both combination (linkage with other words) and meaning (see 100. What is a Grammar Error?). To distinguish between because and since, it will be necessary to give rules of both kinds. Some are in standard reference books, but others will be based on my own extensive experience of reading and analysing academic and professional English.

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COMBINATION RULES FOR “Since” AND “Because”

The combination rules are fairly simple. Both words can act as conjunctions, i.e. with a following subject + verb in a sentence with another verb (see 174. Eight Things to Know about Conjunctions, #1), like this (verbs in capitals): 

(a) Low pressure EXISTS at the Equator since / because the sun IS hottest there.

More precisely, the two words used like this are conjunctions of the “subordinating” kind, which means they can come before the two verbs that they combine as well as between them (see 25. Conjunction Positioning).

Alternatively, since can be used as a preposition (i.e. without any following verb): 

(b) The true size of the earth HAS BEEN KNOWN since the voyages of Columbus. 

A preposition use is also possible with because, but only if of is added (see 72. Causal Prepositions): 

(c) Low pressure EXISTS at the Equator because of the heat of the sun. 

A third use of since is as an adverb (see “Duration Adverbs” in 227. Time Adverbs).

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MEANINGS OF “Since” AND “Because”

There are two meaning distinctions to be made.

1. Causal vs Non-Causal

Because is always causal; in other words, both its conjunction and its preposition uses help to say  why something happens or exists, sometimes introducing a cause, sometimes a reason (for the difference, see 306. Ways of Giving a Reason). Note, though, that just because… does not mean… denies a cause (see 88. Exotic Grammar Structures 1, #2).

On the other hand, since is sometimes causal (usually introducing a reason) and sometimes not. Sentence (a) shows a causal use, while sentence (b) shows a non-causal (“temporal”) one, meaning “from … up to now” and showing how long something happens or exists (see 258. Saying How Long Something Lasts, #2). Note how the idea of “up to now (and possibly afterwards)” is included in this meaning so does not need to be made clear with separate words (see 48. Tricky Word Contrasts 1, #1).

Given that since in (a) is a conjunction and in (b) a preposition, one might think that the meaning depends on these variations. However, things are more complicated. It is true that the preposition use always expresses temporal meaning, but the conjunction use is sometimes causal, as in (a), and sometimes temporal. Here is an example of it with temporal meaning: 

(d) It HAS BEEN the coldest winter since records BEGAN. 

This is clearly non-causal because records began is not the reason for the coldness of the winter; we could not replace since with because. The meaning of since is definitely “from… up to now”.

Notice the verb tenses that are typical with this meaning. The verb with since (began) must be past (simple or continuous), while the main verb (has been) must be present perfect (with HAVE), the normal tense for indicating “up to now” (see 171. Aspects of the Past Perfect Tense). This is different from the needs of causal since, where both verbs can be in other tenses. Here is another example of temporal usage:

(e) Funds HAVE not BEEN WITHDRAWN since the account WAS OPENED. 

Not everyone thinks the conjunction use of since can be non-causal. The reason, I suspect, is that sentences like (d) and (e), where a solely temporal meaning is clear, are not very common. In many other cases, temporal and causal meanings exist together. Consider this:

(f) Since the university LOWERED its entry requirements, many more students HAVE BEEN FAILING.

We can “feel” the presence of both meanings here: the underlined words are temporal in being the starting point of the higher failure rate and causal in being its trigger. Yet even in cases like this we can sometimes be sure that one of the two since meanings is present rather than the other. The clue in (f) is the past simple tense of the since verb lowered.

As indicated above, the past simple tense is always right after temporal since but only sometimes right after causal since. The alternative after causal since is the present perfect tense (with HAVE), the choice depending on the standard factors that differentiate these two tenses. The fact is that since with causal meaning in (f) would necessitate the present perfect tense have lowered, so that the actual use of the past simple lowered makes the causal meaning of since unlikely.

The reason why the present perfect have lowered would be necessary after a causal use of since in (f) is that there is no stated or understood time of occurrence like last year or after the review. The standard rule is that such information is normally necessary for the past simple tense to be used. Note that if such information were available, so that the past simple tense was necessary, there would be no formal difference between the causal and temporal uses of since – sentences like (f) would be ambiguous.

The meaning shown by (f) might be called “temporal with a hint of causality”, and could be worth recognising as a category alongside “purely temporal” and “purely causal”.

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2. Different Kinds of Purely Causal Meaning

Despite the argument above that both since and because can have a purely causal meaning, they may still be slightly different. Consider the following examples. Both could have either because or since in the blank space, but which one is more likely to have the latter?

(g) … the sun is hottest at the Equator, pressure is lowest there.

(h) … the defendants were provoked at that time, they used violence.

I feel (g) is more likely to have since than (h). I would suggest this is because the outcome (low pressure) is a logical and predictable consequence of the cause. The outcome in (h) is neither of these – violent reaction does not automatically result from provocation. This variability of outcome types is reflected elsewhere in English too, being the probable difference between the connectors as a result and therefore (see  20. Problem Connectors) and between the conjunctions so and so that (see 32. Expressing Consequences).

If this observation is correct, there seems to be a good probability of since occurring more frequently in academic and professional writing than elsewhere, since logical reasoning is so necessary and commonplace there (see 167. Ways of Arguing 1). I cannot say for sure that academic and professional writing uses since more often than other kinds do, but my extensive exposure to it gives me the strong intuition that it does.

The use of since with a logical cause in formal writing is worth comparing to the use of if with a hypothetical cause in sentences like the following:

(i) The patient is cured since the test is negative.

(j) The patient is cured if the test is negative.

Both sentences have the same evidence-like reason. However, the first states it as actually existing, while the second says only that it is a possibility (see 179. Deeper Meanings of “if”).