Capitals for nouns

Billycourty · Dec 19, 2011

Hello everyone and Merry Christmas!

I am extremely bad at grammar and puntuation so please forgive the protential ignorance of my question.

I have Dragon Maidens in my book and I never know if I should capitalize these two words every time I use them?

Exp: The dragon maidens walked along. (Capitalize or not?)

Also what about King? Queen? Princess? Prince?
Do these have to always be capitalize even when non specific kings and queens?

Also there is a musical instrument in my book that is important to the plot, that just goes my its normal name. I.E guitar.

Would i write: The Guitar was over by the window or not capitalize?

I am editing to ask also with discriptions like: Soot black hair etc. Do you place a hypen: Soot-black hair or not?

Thankyou so much for your help, I keep changing how I am writing these words and I want to go with either capitals or lower case and be uniform.

Jaymee

BotByte · Dec 19, 2011

1. Learnz the grammerz. It's part of the reason I'm a writer, grammer comes naturally for me.

If it's a title, as Dragon Maiden Laura, it's fine.

When your talking about them as a group, like "she's part of the dragon maiden." you skip the capitalization.

And don't capitalize guitar.

Soot-black hair would be soot-black hair. If there is more than one adjective, you need to hyphenate them. (sorry is I get the terms wrong, I'm bad at which one is which)

Go out, buy and read Elements of Style. It'll help you.

Bufty · Dec 19, 2011

Read books, Billy, and it will all become clear.

SaronaNalia · Dec 19, 2011

King, queen, princess, and prince are capitalized when being used as a title. So, King Firstname would capitalized. But if someone says something like, "She's a princess," that doesn't get capitalized.

Do not capitalize guitar.

kimberlycreates · Dec 19, 2011

SaronaNalia's got it. Additionally, when you use a person's title instead of their name, it's capitalized. So "Yes, Princess, I will do this" but still "She's the princess."

If it helps, think of your mom. "Your mom" is not what you would call her to get her attention, so it doesn't stand in place of her name. But you would say "Hey, Mom!" In this case you're using it instead of her name, so it's capitalized.

brianjanuary · Dec 19, 2011

Inserting a hyphen in compound adjectives is very important. I see this mistake a lot in published works.

Bufty · Dec 19, 2011

I don't see that mistake very much at all.

brianjanuary said:
Inserting a hyphen in compound adjectives is very important. I see this mistake a lot in published works.

Billycourty · Dec 19, 2011

Thank you all for your responses.

Kindest Regards
Jaymee

BethS · Dec 19, 2011

BotByte said:
If there is more than one adjective, you need to hyphenate them.

Not always.

The big red balloon. Her long brown hair.

You only hyphenate when the first adjective modifies the second one. "Soot" describes "black," not hair, so those two would be hyphenated. In the example above, "long" does not describe "brown"; both adjectives describe "hair," so they are not hyphenated.

Kenra Daniels · Dec 19, 2011

You might find it helpful to subscribe to dailywritingtips.com. They send a short daily email with a clear explanation of things like hyphens and when to capitalize nouns. Since subscribing about a year ago, I've seen them cover most of the kinds of issues that trip writers up regularly.

Billycourty · Dec 19, 2011

Kenra Daniels said:
You might find it helpful to subscribe to dailywritingtips.com. They send a short daily email with a clear explanation of things like hyphens and when to capitalize nouns. Since subscribing about a year ago, I've seen them cover most of the kinds of issues that trip writers up regularly.

Amazingly helpful thank you. I will supscribe straight away. It feels really good to get grammatical rules down pat!

Thanks everyone else as well!

HapiSofi · Dec 19, 2011

Good news! There's an authoritative reference book on this subject. You can buy all the answers discussed here, and all the other answers like them.

The book is called the Chicago Manual of Style. Any large bookstore should have a copy. So should any large second-hand bookstore with a good reference section. It's an amazing trove of rules.

Chicago is one of two stylebooks that are standard in publishing. The other is Words into Type. It's very good, but it hasn't kept pace the way Chicago has, and it doesn't go into as much detail. It's still perfectly acceptable.

Buy one or the other. After that, all you need is a decent dictionary.

Capitals for nouns

Billycourty

BotByte

Not a Reader, a Writer

Bufty

Where have the last ten years gone?

SaronaNalia

kimberlycreates

insert witty title here

brianjanuary

Bufty

Where have the last ten years gone?

Billycourty

BethS

Kenra Daniels

Billycourty

HapiSofi

Hagiographically Advantaged