Using capital letter for Nouns in sentences.

[coolbeans]

Just received an email with lots of Nouns being given a capital letter.

I've noticed a rash of this particularly irritating habit, recently.

Why do it? Is it to provide emphasis in a sentence?

Are we all becoming German? (I'm on shaky ground there, but I think that's a characteristic of written German?)

Good Lord, I am getting old and pernickety.....

how do you mean ?

yes it is a characteristic of German writing and also Winnie the Pooh
I sometimes do it to be Arch and Funny

I am very delighted to discover Winnie the Pooh's Germanic side. Perhaps he can be allowed into the Spa Angst some day.

I blame advertising (as I do for so many of society's ills).

'very delighted' threadworm? Ungradeable adjective. Tut tut.

Message withdrawn

Advertisers do it a lot. They seem to think that Little Words don't Need Capitals but Big Words or Nouns do.

It's Annoying.

example

Why do we have capitals for "What" and "Expect but not "to" and "the first year"?

They might get away with arguing it on graphic grounds in this example but everyone does it and I'm not sure why.

Message withdrawn

Oh.

I call it Random Capitalising; I use it for Comedy purposes, as well as for Annoying ones.

In the States they capitalise almost everything in newspaper headlines - very quaint and old - fashioned looking irritating to read

Oh, but book titles do use capitals. That's normal.

A Tale of Two Cities

not

A tale of two cities

Lordy, the battles I have with my students about this. They fail to believe me when I say that Italian doesn't capitalise words in titles. I swear they think I'm making it up. The English way must be The Only Way.

Of course doing it for comic (or emphatic) purposes is also possible (v. sopra). But just doing it Randomly for no Reason is just plain Idiotic.

But why not

A Tale Of Two Cities?

I can see book titles might be different for graphic and space reasons but everyone does it these days.

It's just a convention, margo. Articles and prepositions don't get capitals.

But I agree that Everyone [sic] does it, and that it is Annoying.

i do it for comedy/emphasis/annoying reasons too.
soz!

We are all becomeing German - or TV news reporters. Have you NOTICED how they EMPHASISE LOTS of WORDS?

It's Aitch's Plan to Take Over The World...

Don't get me started on news rePORters and their MISplaced emPHASes, Lynette. Drives me up the wall.

Elbel, you did it much better than me.

Weather forecasters are the worst for doing that. They also use words and phrases that sound out of place in any other context - "mist and murk" springs to mind.

This is not the same, but this thread has reminded me that our local radio station tell us "It's 5pm across the north east"
What time is it in the rest of the country?