Capitalization of made-up terms in Fantasy/SF

I treat it the same as non-made up things. A generic term that identifies a piece of technology or a concept - like "smartphone" or "television" - stays uncapitalised. Names of brands or companies get a capital letter.

I'm personally not in love with capitalising as in the Sanderson example - outside of a fantasy context I wouldn't use caps to describe a skillset, e.g. Gymnast, Boxer, or profession, e.g. Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker. But I would always capitalise Jedi or Sith, as they are the name of organisations/races. I'd also write "Jedi Knight", because "Knight" there is an honorific like "Doctor" or "Professor".

Go with whatever your preference is; my preference is to find an equivalent term in standard English and use the same capitalisation practices.

Alden said:

So I made up an organization of assassins called the Wardens. Would I always capitalize this even in the singular form like for example: "She is a Warden."?

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If Warden is the official name for an organization member.

My opinion would be yes, capitalize it even in singular form given it is referring to a specific group that you capitalize. Plus, this will help the readers differentiate between her being part of this specific group and just being a general warden for a jailhouse or something.

In general, I think it's very much up to personal preference, but my rule of thumb is based on reading clarity. If it's a made up organization, species, etc, especially one that is going to show up often, then I usually capitalize it. Even though we don't capitalize things like firefighters in real life, it can be helpful to capitalize occupations and organizations in fantasy, especially if it's a term that already exists in real life. Like your organization of Wardens, or for example an organization called the Guardians.

Do what feels right for you and the story

In the event of Fantasy or Science Fiction, where you create the words and terms, you can create the rules. Sometimes if it's a new term capitalizing it brings it to our attention faster. Also gets us to ignore not recognizing the term if it's treated as a name. Then again, if it is a term for a group you want to have repeatedly discriminated against, you can even have them lower-cased automatically for a literary point. It's your book, you create the rules. Just remember that, once you create a rule, you must stick to it. So don't go back and forth between capitalizing and not, unless you have a very good point to do so.

Alden said:

So I made up an organization of assassins called the Wardens. Would I always capitalize this even in the singular form like for example: "She is a Warden."?

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I wouldn't, no. Substitute it for something in the real world and see whether it would be capitalised:

She is a police officer.
She is a princess.
She is a bodyguard.

If unsure, I would always err on the side of lowercase. Mid-sentence capital letters do break the flow and make text ever-so-slightly harder to read.

Like others have said, try to find analogies that make sense. It's an imperfect process.

I have Founders, I cap that like one might cap Americans.
I have tressers, owners, villagers, and a few other groups. I don't cap those like one wouldn't cap immigrants and frat boys.

Some of the names can go either way but mostly I've assigned them to informal groups.

How about names for alien species? I lean towards not capitalising these, because 'human' is never capitalised. But I don't think I'm always consistent even within one story.

Albedo said:

How about names for alien species? I lean towards not capitalising these, because 'human' is never capitalised. But I don't think I'm always consistent even within one story.

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There are naming conventions for species.

[Deleted confusing quote.]

Oh yeah, all my aliens have binomial names. I'm that kind of nerd. But it's their common names I can't figure out a convention for. I'm leaning towards not capitalising ever, but I've got a feeling that's going to aggravate some readers.

But that naming convention only applies when you're using scientific names. Fine if you're discussing Panthera leo, Panthera tigris, and Ursus arctos. Not really relevant when you're talking about lions and tigers and bears...

I would say that, when species names are functioning as generic terms (lions, tigers, humans, jovians, alphacentaurians), go ahead and lower-case them. If the names are used in the same way as nationalities (Americans, Chinese, Martians, Romulans) capitalize them. For consistency if you capitalize the names of alien species you should capitalize Human too; and if that looks too weird in context, you should probably consider striking the capitals on other terms too.

Albedo said:

Oh yeah, all my aliens have binomial names. I'm that kind of nerd. But it's their common names I can't figure out a convention for. I'm leaning towards not capitalising ever, but I've got a feeling that's going to aggravate some readers.

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That was the point, and there's more in the article besides the paragraph I quoted. When you get down to species, it's no caps. It shouldn't aggravate the reader if you are referring to species.

But keep in mind, we are often not referring to species when referring to extraterrestrials.

For example Romulens and Vulcans are peoples that come from their respective planets. But they are not being referred to using species names, those are formal names of a people from those planets the same way we give people names from their respective countries here. Vulcans may or may not name themselves as being of the vulcan species.

benbenberi said:

But that naming convention only applies when you're using scientific names. Fine if you're discussing Panthera leo, Panthera tigris, and Ursus arctos. Not really relevant when you're talking about lions and tigers and bears...

I would say that, when species names are functioning as generic terms (lions, tigers, humans, jovians, alphacentaurians), go ahead and lower-case them. If the names are used in the same way as nationalities (Americans, Chinese, Martians, Romulans) capitalize them. For consistency if you capitalize the names of alien species you should capitalize Human too; and if that looks too weird in context, you should probably consider striking the capitals on other terms too.

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I was only trying to point out there are rules in species nomenclature.

The levels from highest to lowest classification are as follows:

Kingdom
Phylum
Class
Order
Suborder
Family
Genus
Species
Subspecies
Using this system, the gray wolf, for example, would be identified as follows:

Kingdom: Animalia.
Phylum: Chordata.
Class: Mammalia.
Order: Carnivora.
Suborder: Caniformia.
Family: Canidae.
Genus:
Species: lupus.

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In other words, species is not capitalized.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to make it harder than it needed to be.

Albedo said:

How about names for alien species? I lean towards not capitalising these, because 'human' is never capitalised. But I don't think I'm always consistent even within one story.

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Oh yeah, all my aliens have binomial names. I'm that kind of nerd. But it's their common names I can't figure out a convention for. I'm leaning towards not capitalising ever, but I've got a feeling that's going to aggravate some readers.

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They're only capitalised if they're named after proper nouns. For example:

Neandertal - this is capitalised because they were named after a place in Germany: Neandertal. Only the common name is capitalised, the binomial name Homo neanderthalensis is capitalised the same way as every other binomial name. And the common name can be spelled either Neandertal or Neanderthal however the species name has to be spelled neanderthalensis.

Not many species of humans have a common name and those that do it's named after a proper noun, however for the Flores Island hobbit (Homo floresiensis) I wouldn't capitalise hobbit. Other common names for great apes are not capitalised, e.g. bonobo, gorilla, chimpanzee, orangutan, human.

Ebola virus is capitalised because it's named after a place in Africa (IIRC a river). The flu virus doesn't get a capital because flu (or influenza) are not proper nouns.

So for aliens, I would say that unless it's in the worldbuilding of your alien world that the species is named after a proper noun then the common name for the alien should be in lower case.

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Not particularly related to the question above but vaguely related... I've seen T. rex written all kinds of ways in literature like t-rex etc, but as Tyrannosaurus rex is the actual binomial name and it's convention to abbreviate the genus name to its initial, e.g. A. afarensis, H. sapiens, the correct way to write T. rex is either Tyrannosaurus rex or T. rex and it should be in italics. Or is this a weird case where both the common and binomial names are the same?

ETA: it actually does my head in that I have to capitalise Neandertal all the time, seeing as it crops up all the time in my story whose MC is a cloned Neandertal. It feels a lot more natural to not capitalise common names, but if the common name comes from a proper noun, it should be capitalised.

MaeZe said:

That was the point, and there's more in the article besides the paragraph I quoted. When you get down to species, it's no caps. It shouldn't aggravate the reader if you are referring to species.

But keep in mind, we are often not referring to species when referring to extraterrestrials.

For example Romulens and Vulcans are peoples that come from their respective planets. But they are not being referred to using species names, those are formal names of a people from those planets the same way we give people names from their respective countries here. Vulcans may or may not name themselves as being of the vulcan species.

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This is a good point. How often are we talking about a biological grouping when we talk about aliens (or fantasy creatures), versus a cultural grouping? Why are aliens always so monolithic (okay, there are exceptions)? Is this problematic?

For me, it depends on whether the invented word is a proper noun, as in a name or title of some kind. If it's just a simple noun, I wouldn't capitalize. If it's an actual made up word (word in a made up language), it could be italicized, the way words in foreign languages are often capitalized in every day usage.

https://twitter.com/dystopianya/status/587460242331557888?lang=en

It often feels like ^that to me.

Folks editing my work always call me out for over-capitalizing. Like others have said in their replies, I think it's important to consider WHY you're capitalizing something (ie is it a proper noun?) and then keep that consistent throughout the story