Nelson & His World

I'm sure I started a thread on this subject once before but cannot for the life of me find it.

I was questioning why certain words would be capitalised in letters written by Nelson and most others of his era.

I don't think we came to any firm conclusion on the subject - but I have just come across a little pointer.

In a review of a new book "The Language Wars - A History of Proper English" the reviewer asks the rhetorical question - "And what of the 17th- and 18th-century fashion for capitalising all Emphatical or Remarkable words?"

It doesn't answer my question - i.e. why? - but it is interesting to see someone at least acknowledging the phenomenon.

I will try to track down a copy of the book and see if it expands on the subject in any way.

MB

Mark: was that a review of Henry Hitching's new book that I knew was coming out round about now? I'm surprised he hasn't got an answer to the capitalisation question as he's a great authority on 18th century English and wrote an enthralling book on Johnson's dictionary the title of which escapes me but it's lurking somewhere on my shelves.

I Googled various sites on writing and came across this site http://www.suite101.com/content/english ... ns-a207190 which seems to be fairly authoritative. Capitalisation was always a rather haphazard affair, it seems. This quote might go some way to answering your question, though that penultimate sentence seems to me to be very clumsily constructed:


Capitalization expanded by the early 17th century to titles, forms of address (example: Father) and personified nouns (example: Nature) as well as emphasized words. With the introduction of continental books, even more concepts were being capitalized (e.g. names of branches of knowledge). Soon many writers capitalized every noun they found important. Consequently, in some books all or most nouns were being capitalized, caused by aesthetic reasons or because compositors were unsure which words to capitalize and in case of doubt, capitalized them all. This extensive capitalization continued until the 18th century until grammarians decided for it to be unnecessary while showing a lack of order in the system. Their rules changed capitalization principles of English dramatically.

Anna

Yes, the book is by Henry Hitchings. Sorry if I didn't explain myself properly. What I meant was that the reviewer asks the question, in a rhetorical manner, but doesn't answer it. I am hoping that the book itself does indeed have a further explanation/answer. Hopefully one of the local libraries will buy a copy to save me shelling out on the offchance.



That is definitely the best explanation I have seen. i.e. the very fact that it is somewhat haphazard probably explains why it is hard to see any firm rules.

Thanks - and if I do manage to track down a copy of the book I will report back.

MB

I too have pondered on this problem especially as one of my many fields was as a Compositor.

With some 12-1500 letters so far transcribed for the Tome from the period 1757-1811, the majority of writers kept to the as-then form of Capitalizing but a lot of the duplicates rewritten by the Letter Book scribes &c, seemed to have chosen their own interpretation of the Capitalization rule.
I have chosen to transcribe as-written although I find it a nuisance – even the words Letter and Copy are inconsistent; there again in those days a letter and even a copy of a letter could be deemed important enough to capitalise, or should I write Capitalize.