Grammar police - please help me!

[Ladyof2022]

Can anyone give an authoritative decision on these please? I assume they all follow the same rule, but I don't know what that rule is! Thanks.

Talking about places in history. In phrases where a place has a name, is the place capitalised or not? Examples:

Bow Street Police Court or Bow Street police court i.e. lower case
Vine Street Police Station or police station
King's Cross Station or station
St Paul's Church or church

I have of course searched extensively online but I cannot get a firm ruling.

I would go with Bow Street police court, etc, on the basis that the street name is capitalized, but a police court is not a proper noun. For example, if you were writing about a police court in general, you would not need capital letters.

I don’t think this is grammar but more a stylistic thing
proper names eg Bow Street, King’s Cross, Vine Street need capitalising, I don’t think the others do but if you’re writing you need to either consistently use them, or not.

I am a recruiter and we talk about job titles eg Account Manager, Chief Operating Officer etc all the time. We always capitalise in writing but know lots of other firms that actively don’t.

And yet on signs everywhere I see places capitalised like this

King's Heath Primary School

Paddington Station

St Jude's Church

which confuses the issue.

I would capitalise - proper nouns because you're talking about a specific police station/station.

You wouldn't write Buckingham palace, you'd write Buckingham Palace. But you might write 'everyone knows that princes live in palaces'.

The words police station and church, for example, aren't proper nouns so don't need to be capitalised.

But where it forms the name of somewhere, eg Kings Heath Primary School, or St Peter's Church, then Kings Heath Primary School or St Peters Church are the full names so you capitalise all words.

Also, someone might refer to the local butchers as the High Street butchers. Unless it was actually called, High Street Butchers, then the b wouldn't be capitalised.

Whataretheodds has it I think .Lovely explanation that even I can grasp.

This is a good example of why you would capitalise all of it

Yes capitalise if it’s the actual full name of the institution that you’re referring to as then they are proper nouns as opposed to nouns.

OK thanks everyone... not unanimous, but a rationale for capitalising it all has been presented!

As the answer is a little ambiguous, I would Google the name and see how newspapers write the name. Professional journalists’ grammar
is usually on point.

For example, The Guardian don’t use caps when referring to Bow Street police station, thus:

amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/27/bow-street-police-station-reopens-museum-london

Yes, capitalise the whole thing.

Definitely capitals all the way -
Buckingham Palace is a great example, likewise Dover Castle (not Dover castle) Kew Gardens, Wembley Stadium etc…. Autocorrect also agrees.

@Dotingmumandgranny
But you are not writing about police courts in general - you are referring to a specific one and that’s the key difference.

^This. You wouldn't capitalise the last two (descriptive) words in, 'King's Cross Railway (r) Station (s)', but you would in the title, 'King's Cross Station'.

It depends if Police Station was actually part of the name.
To take the primary school example; Fuller’s Green primary school is a primary school where the full title is Fuller’s Green. But St John Primary School has the Primary School bit in the name.