Trump raises an an issue of Capital Importance

U.S. President Donald Trump boasted this week on Twitter about his ability to write.

“After having written many best selling books, and somewhat priding myself on my ability to write, it should be noted that the Fake News constantly likes to pour over my tweets looking for a mistake. I capitalize certain words only for emphasis, not b/c they should be capitalized!”

(That tweet, which was later deleted and reposted, also used an incorrect homophone — “pour” instead of “pore” — and contained a dangling modifier. But that’s a story for another day.)

Trump’s distinctive philosophy of capitalization has brought us Witch Hunt and Fake News, a big-B Border and Crime with a capital C.

But what are the actual rules of capitalization? And, in an era of tweeting, texting and Trump, when is it OK to break them?

Experts say overcapitalization can be traced to the 17th and 18th centuries, when it was common to uppercase many significant words.

In line with the times, the Founding Fathers used this style in the U.S. Constitution, said Kory Stamper, a lexicographer and the author of Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries. Over the past several years, Stamper said, she has noticed that some people with conservative viewpoints have increasingly used frequent capitalization. “There is definitely a heavy tie to wanting to mimic the Founding Fathers,” she said.

So, is it kosher to capitalize for emphasis?

It depends, said Bryan A. Garner, a grammarian who is the author of Garner’s Modern English Usage.

Some acclaimed writers have used capitalization for emphasis in a way that many consider literary, he said; but, the rules are there for a reason — and you have to know them in order to break them. “If you want to come across as a literate writer, you should adhere to those standards,” he said.

“But if you don’t care about how you look to others, then you just capitalize according to your own feelings.”