Line Capitalisation – the final solution

Line Capitalisation – the final solution

Seeing as questions regarding the practice of capitalising the first letter of every verse are a regular occurrence, and that any critique relating to such practice is a constant bone of contention – I went in search for an absolute answer. I was less active than usual last night on-forum because I was busy digging out my old study and reference books from the attic.

One argument against line-caps is the supposition that such practice (unlike everything else in poetry) has no official term related to it. To combat this, a term has been invented in the last few years by those who believe it is and should remain common-place, majusculation. This word seems to fit, almost as if it were correct. It struck a chord with me, and still does – and now I know why.

The term itself is derived from the word 'majuscule' which is one of the names granted to the decorated capital letters in ancient manuscripts and scriptures, and dates back to central European writings from the third to sixth century. However, my sense of familiarity for the word stems from a more paronomastic source. There is an old bardic tradition known as ‘majestic verse’. This intends poetry written explicitly for the Church (think non-hymnal measure hymns and psalms, prayers etc), Monarch or higher-nobility. Majestic verse is just like any other poetry, but is distinguished from regular/common verse by a few key factors. Each line is coroneted (= capitalised) and the first syllable receives added emphasis. In metrical terms this intends a headless iamb or trochee to begin each line/verse and any unstressed syllable therefore belong to the preceding verse or not be there (elided or assimilated). Further to this, each verse is end-stopped as a complete phrase/sentence or an independent clause. The last point here also goes to explain why comprehensive schools (incorrectly) teach to end each verse with a comma or period/full-stop. In this way, majestic verse cannot make use of drastic enjambment, indeed any enjambment that makes use of natural pauses (caesura) or any other break that is not caused by an injected new clause or new phrase/sentence as doing so would cause the coroneted word to no longer be capitalised. In reviewing coroneted verses and how they work, we can also understand that their use can therefore also do away with correct punctuation as no line/verse actually runs over into the next one because the consistent end-stop would dictate (in terms of pace and reading) a short pause at the end of each line/verse.

Not really a matter of personal preference, line-caps = a bastardised tradition, taught and implemented incorrectly. However, the bastardised nature of the technique/practice could be considered to still make it a matter of personal preference (or ignorance).

An argument for the use of line-caps is that poetry often appears in print formatted this way. This style of 'majestic' denotation may have found its way into common print, but that doesn’t make it any more the absolute way to do things.

Capitalisation became convention in print in the late fifteenth century. The only press for publicly available books at that time was William Caxton's. The ‘majestic’ use of coroneted verses became seen as the standard for quality and highly polished presentation (much in the vein of commoner kitchen staff wanting to taste the caviar) and so became the printed standard with total disregard for the original intention or purpose. Further to this ideal was also concluded that the word ‘verse’ should be representative of its origin, a rural term referring to the furrows of a ploughed field (Latin ‘versus’) – and therefore a uniform presentation was deemed to be even more true to form.

In this way line-caps in publication = a (pretentious) misinterpretation and greater bastardisation.

Further to the extreme, out of context bastardisation of coroneted verses by Caxton – his use of the line-cap as a 'uniform' method of 'highly polished presentation' went in hand with the convention that poetry should only be aligned to the left for that same ideal; not centred, and indents only to indicate (non-clausal) enjambments or heroic couplets (a heroic couplet is a couplet that functions as a stand-alone piece but also complements the whole of the poem; rhymed aa in an equal measure of both verses). You could argue therefore that Caxton's line-caps are no longer coroneted verses and thus also no longer related to majestic verse. Opting to view line-caps in this way would suggest their use by anyone else to follow suit, i.e. only to start a verse that is aligned to the left or indented as a result of enjambment (ergo, no other alignment/formatting).

The next time you’re writing a poem, ask yourself 'Am I writing majestic verse?' If you are, make sure you follow the methods required and your line-caps (coroneted verses) are perfectly suitable. If you stray from the method/tradition, or if you’re not writing majestic verse, drop the caps.

On the other hand, if you want to follow/adhere to Caxton's line-caps, don't centralise your poems and align consistently to the left – indent when enjambed or heroic. Otherwise, drop the caps...

...alternatively, continue the bastardisation and do as you please. There is no definitive reason why you shouldn't after all the centuries now gone by, but perhaps the best way to determine an answer is to consider the practice itself and decide on the basis of purpose, authenticity or your own imagination?

Of the poets that are still in contemporary reference, Cummings was the most outspokenly opposed to what he deemed a pointless practice and much of his messing with fonts and letter sizes was a direct reflection of that pointlessness.

I'm not saying not to do it because we're not in the 15th century any more. I'm saying to consider the fact that it was never supposed to be done in the first place and that Caxton created a false ideal purely through being pretentious; 500+ years of this codswollop based on one man's false assumption of what 'looked posh'.

Further to that, just saying that it's a better idea to decide what and why you do anything, and to base that decision on factors that aren't structured around the perception of convention... do what you like, but do it with purpose -- actual purpose.

Thanks all for reading, I hope someone gets something out of it – more info added to OP.

SaronaNalia said:

Just a thought here - regardless of the fact that no one ever should have done it, someone did.

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And that person who did (William Caxton) was not a poet, but someone who decided his public press books needed it for a highly polished published presentation. So it was decided by someone with no regard or want to appreciate any other purpose for the poem or reader than aesthetics (and thus also without realizing any valid or reasonable usage to the poet)... hmm, interesting that line-caps still serve no purpose then, isn't it?

SaronaNalia said:

And now it's been done in countless poems, and is taught in schools as the correct way. It seems to me that at this point, it is a tradition of its own.

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This is true, and equally true is that this tradition follows Caxton's caps and should therefore be done in the Caxton way... The 'tradition' is flawed because it has no basis other than what people 'think' is correct due to what they've seen. What's the harm in revising that or founding its use by some degree of creativity?

Put it this way. If the 'conventions' surrounding line-measures, metre, form, poetic language, spelling, and the English language on the whole can be bent if not broken, experimented with limitlessly, then why does the same not go for line-caps? I'm not saying not to; I am saying to do it either properly as the original intention, to take your lead from Caxton (if we view his line-caps as a separate entity, and the origin of the school model), or do something new and creative with them. Why follow 'convention' when convention is consistently riled against through how people write poetry. If you're writing free verse, you're breaking metric and formal conventions (not playing with them or experimenting with them, breaking them), so why the conviction that the same can't be done with line-caps?

SaronaNalia said:

In any case, I am considering whether or not I should leave the caps in some of my poems. It's a bit difficult to switch though. I've been writing this way for so long that I do it automatically. I wrote a little something just today, and only when trying to revise it did I realize that the capital letters were even there.

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This is why I don't use Word. There are other word processors that don't assume your formatting or choose it for you. Personally I use McGill, because it counts my verses and line-measures, checks my spelling (not grammar, yay!) and has additional tabs for thesaurus and hyperbolic expansion (and a rhyming dictionary side-bar). I also use white room on my laptop or Darkroom on my Mac.

I mention purpose -- think about this, when I've brought up line-caps in a critique, the poster usually retorts with some statement along the lines of "you're supposed to read the poem and ignore the line-caps". So, unlike line-breaks, affectations, punctuation and spacing, I'm supposed to ignore such an 'important' (as in, cannot be left away, is conventional/traditional) aspect? What point is there to them then? Further to this, if you were to submit your poetry, the publisher reserves the right to format your poetry how they like and to their preference. I've submitted poetry that had line-caps put in when it met publication - and I've read for and edited several publications where line-caps would be removed for publication. Why? Because they are pointless and serve no purpose to the reader or poem.

I stress 'purpose' for line-caps because if you do want them there, then the poem should need them there. If not, what are they doing there? What's the point in them? Why not find purpose, create purpose -- if there's an issue, defeat it by granting purpose that cannot be denied.

CChampeau said:

Purpose! I like that. What do you think of using lowercase to begin all lines except those you want to emphasize with uppercase? Anyone else have opinions?

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This is interesting, why not demo it?

CChampeau said:

One of my favorite poets, the young Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), used capitalization of all lines, as well as full punctuation.

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Did he? Or was it the publisher/press at the time that decided the formatting (as is/would be commonly the case then and now) or one of the many latter-day publishers for each new edition?

Nice handwriting he had too.

I don't know French, so I can't say for sure, but if the translation is anything to go by, all verses are either end-stopped or broken by clausal punctuation or a weighted caesura that could be punctuated and would be correct if it were done (aside from verses 5 through 8 which feature soft caesura-enjambments). This fits the Caxton model, but not for the enjambed lines, they would have been indented if the poem was published 300 years earlier. So we see a shift from the indenting in the poet's handwriting. This dropped formatting is also seen in Victorian publications, the end-stopped verses and weighted ceasura breaks didn't though. It's always interesting to see soft-ceasuras used to break lines in poetry that is 100 years (or more) old, as many think it's a modern practice. The best classical example of such enjambment is Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale -- extremely drastic enjambments, some by soft-caesura, others for the sake of disruption and discord; masses and masses of internal phrases and sometimes a few cheeky taboos or naughty statements hidden in the line-breaks... ooh-er missus.

Thanks for sharing the image.