Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

Pedants' corner

Flip

Original poster

Incorrect use of capitals in son's SAT's homework - please help

17 replies

23balloons · 03/02/2008 17:33

Hi - I want to write a note to the teacher about ds's SATs literacy homework. He has come home with some comprehension work and one story involves a prince, princess and king. Now I am not expert and have probably already made a few grammatical (1 m or 2?) but please tell me if my thinking is correct in the following examples.

Prince Conor the King's son. Should king have a captial in this context?

There it met a Princess should this be a capital P?

The King and his men? I was under the impression if you use the king's full name eg King Henry you use captials but if you are refering to the king, princess or prince then you use a small letter - am I wrong or is my son's story full of errors? I am trying to teach him to answer questions with full sentences so if the question has the Princess with a capital P should he follow or switch to a small p.

TIA for anyone who can answer this with some certainty as it is making me doubt myself even though I think I am correct.

OP posts:

bookwormmum · 03/02/2008 17:39

I would capitalise the title regardless of whether it had a name on the end of it or not. If you think of the title as a proper noun it might help.

King Henry said.....

Prince Conor said to the King....

MrsBadger · 03/02/2008 17:40

iirc the King has a capital, a king does not.

A good guide is to use the style from the original piece in your answers, so in this case I'd capitalise.

bookwormmum · 03/02/2008 17:40

Mind you in that case you would be writing to your dc's Teacher .

SheikYerbouti · 03/02/2008 17:40

If it's used as a title, ie the King or King Henry etc, then I would say a capital

When talking about generic royals, ie a prince, a queen etc, I would use lower-case

Bink · 03/02/2008 17:42

Once the king has appeared & been identified in the story (by name is easiest here), it would be fine to say, eg "The next day the King woke early." - as it is entirely clear you are referring to a specific person.

However, if you have not yet introduced the King's daughter (apart from ref. in title), it should be generic - ie not capitalised: thus "That afternoon, the dragon met a princess in the forest." Again, once she has become a recognisable character in the story she can become capitalised: "Suddenly the Princess roared and the dragon fled howling into its lair."

Bink · 03/02/2008 17:43

MrsBadger has neatly put my illustrations into a user-friendly rule

Eliza2 · 03/02/2008 17:43

I think you are certainly right on the second point. There is an argument for saying in the first and second that the King is a shortening of King John or whatever.

My FT style guide says:...the fewer capital letters we use the better. Places and organisations begin with a capital, personal titles generally don't.

To be honest, I wouldn't worry too much, though. Save your letter for the misuse of the apostrophe! We always get some of those from school.

Original poster

23balloons · 03/02/2008 17:44

Thanks for the answers so far what is confusing is the prince is in the text with a small p but the Princess has a capital. Why capitalise Princess but not prince? Also in other sentences (the princess is Princess Diana btw) the pricess is referred to as just Diana without Princess in front?

OP posts:

Bink · 03/02/2008 17:47

Can you copy in the text? It's a bit difficult to see what the problems are without context. (But it does sound sloppily written from what you've said. Which is depressing.)

Original poster

23balloons · 03/02/2008 17:51

Here are a few extracts :-

The Prince could not escape from the high tower. The King and his men were afraid to come near the castle to help him. One morning, the prince saw a little, white cat....

Quickly the cat ran until it came to the Palace of the Silver River. There it met a Princess named Diana and told her about the prince in the high tower. Diana promised to help free the prince ........

OP posts:

Eliza2 · 03/02/2008 17:52

This has some sensible advice:

www.editors.co.uk/page1/capital.html

Eliza2 · 03/02/2008 17:53

Definitely the Princess in the second para should be lower case. The first two are moot and could be upper case. To be honest, I'd still save your breath.

Wisteria · 03/02/2008 17:54

the King refers to a specific royal bean so has a capital

a king or a princess is any old pretender!

Don't get me started on SATs and pedantic twattery - I wrote a letter of complaint the other day about

"No, the scarf was her's" and that was in comprehension text on the SAM learning website

Eliza2 · 03/02/2008 17:57

You are JOKING, Wisteria!

My son used to call apostrophes catastrophes and in many cases that's exactly what they seem to be.

Original poster

23balloons · 03/02/2008 18:01

Thanks for all of the advice, I suppose there is no definite rule in this case. I think it is the inconsistency that is bothering me i.e Princess vs prince. Also the questions that follow, some again use the Princess, some use she and others just Diana. I just feel that if I am confused at the best way to answer them then ds must be confused too.

OP posts:

bookwormmum · 03/02/2008 18:02

My dd(7) is like me - she doesn't 'do' apostrophes and prefers to write the word out in full rather than wrestle with them. I was exactly the same at her age.

Probably not helped by my constantly re-iterating 'there is no such word as can't,' to her .

Wisteria · 03/02/2008 18:20

unfortunately not.......

I told the English teacher at the school and he was suitably appalled.

(They must hate me at that school I once sent a school report back, corrected in red pen )

Flip