No reason to cap a season

4 comments October 17th, 2008

The previous week it was a medical issue. This past week I was on vacation. But now I’m back and raring to blog.

While I was away, a reader called to complain about a headline in which “fall,” the season, was not capitalized and said she was taught otherwise in school. Unfortunately, that’s probably ture.

Capitalization is an issue often determined by “house rules,” and in our own little worlds we tend to use uppercase for what we think is important. If a teacher wants you to capitalize the seasons, you probably should — while you’re in that classroom. In the big, bad outside world, however, “spring,” “summer,” “fall” or “autumn,” and “winter” are generally lowercase.

In fact, writing “the Fall” could be interpreted as referring to the concept in Christian theology of “the Fall of Man” — “Adam’s sin of yielding to temptation in eating the forbidden fruit, and his subsequent loss of grace.” Now that’s a term deserving of the big-letter treatment.