Starting a dialogue sentence with an apostrophe

Definitely the first one.

Unless you're trying to break basic syntactical rules (the way authors like Faulkner and Joyce sometimes did), I don't think there's any situation in which you wouldn't start a sentence with a capital letter. Slang, dialect, etc. included.

"'Tis true," she quipped illustratively.

satori said:

I don't think there's any situation in which you wouldn't start a sentence with a capital letter. Slang, dialect, etc. included.

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Hm, how about:

iPods are convenient.

Would that have to be:

IPods are conventient? (Yuk!)

I'm not saying that you can't start the sentence with a capital letter in this case. I'm just saying it wouldn't be my preference. (Similarly, I'd probably write: "e.e. cummings is my favourite poet," rather than "E.e. cummings is my favourite poet.")

I accept that other people may have other preferences, but to me propernames that start with lower case letters override the sentence initial rule; I like to preserve the original "rule violation" and pile another on top, rather than mess it up with "correctness".

***

But in the apostrophe case, I concur. Though I would accept the argument that the absent letter is capitalised: a capitalised apostrophe, so to speak. In other words, I wouldn't mind lower case too much, even though it's not my preference.

Dawnstorm said:

Hm, how about:

iPods are convenient.

Would that have to be:

IPods are conventient? (Yuk!)

I'm not saying that you can't start the sentence with a capital letter in this case. I'm just saying it wouldn't be my preference. (Similarly, I'd probably write: "e.e. cummings is my favourite poet," rather than "E.e. cummings is my favourite poet.")

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You are right. And I seriously thought of that exact e.e. cummings sentence this morning while I was drying my hair... and I decided to come here and make an addendum, only to find that you had beaten me to it.

But there are really very few lowercase-letter-proper-nouns. e.e. cummings, iPod, iPhone, iBook, iMac, the feminist author bell hooks, the dating service eHarmony (I think that's how they write it). Anything else?

'Tis all the rage with the technocrats "re-Englishing" products and tasks with lower-case i and e. Gets a bit much in the crossword game where one can find eTail, eMail, ePhone, eSell. Next we'll develop a verb from the iPod so that I can iPod you instead of texting. Won't that be grand?

Gawd.

Now I'm wondering how exactly you'd iPod someone, and why it sounds vaguely salacious/disturbing.

a_sharp said:

'Tis all the rage with the technocrats "re-Englishing" products and tasks with lower-case i and e. Gets a bit much in the crossword game where one can find eTail, eMail, ePhone, eSell. Next we'll develop a verb from the iPod so that I can iPod you instead of texting. Won't that be grand?

Gawd.

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No lie -- last week at work, I heard one of the IT guys tell his friend, "Let me iPhone that to you." I guess he meant, "I'm going to send this to you via my iPhone" (presumably to his friend's iPhone?). Whatever he meant, it made me wanna cry.

No lie -- last week at work, I heard one of the IT guys tell his friend, "Let me iPhone that to you." I guess he meant, "I'm going to send this to you via my iPhone" (presumably to his friend's iPhone?). Whatever he meant, it made me wanna cry.

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I just have to chime in here, and say how much I love that comic!! The level of covert genius it takes to say a thing just right, shines through in his comics. Why did he have to retire??

Dawnstorm said:

(Similarly, I'd probably write: "e.e. cummings is my favourite poet," rather than "E.e. cummings is my favourite poet.")

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E. E. Cummings capitalized his name in his own correspondence.

However, he did okay his publishers' decision to put his name in minuscules on his title pages.

Still, most Cummings scholars follow his practice rather than the publishers'.

IceCreamEmpress said:

E. E. Cummings capitalized his name in his own correspondence.

However, he did okay his publishers' decision to put his name in minuscules on his title pages.

Still, most Cummings scholars follow his practice rather than the publishers'.

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That's a pretty good argument capital E's. (Two of them, as above, I assume?)