An Easy Way to Keep Me from Reading Your Story · 11:06pm Jan 29th, 2013
Don't capitalize your story's title.
There are many rules when it comes to writing English, some more hard-and-fast than others. The more fundamental a rule is, the more careful and thoughtful you have to be when you're preparing to break it, because rules are there to make you think, usually very hard, before you break them. Using the correct Title Case for your story and chapter titles is about as inviolate a rule there is, so you'd better have a damn good reason to break it, and I mean damn good. Because you're risking your first impression on it. The very first interaction or influence your story has with a new reader is seeing its title somewhere, and you do not want a potential reader's first thought to be, "Jeez, this guy can't even both to capitalize his titles correctly. If he can't be arsed to do something so basic, God knows what juvenile screwups are in the actual story? I'm not gonna waste my time on this."
No matter your noble or clever or thoughtful intentions, as far as I'm concerned, it just makes it look like a little kid who didn't know what he's doing wrote it.
You may now return to your Sparklecorn freakouts.
Yes sir!
"freakouts"
soundsaboutright.avi
Or people glaring errors in their description
I agree with this blog
Gee thanks for ruining my idea asshole....
You troll.
Anyway, do you mean like what you did with this blog's title?
hmm. Did something instigate this? Or are you just tired of seeing cuncapped' titles?
Twilicorn seems much easier on an ear...
Just saying. Oh, and you are absolutely correct about that first impression.
Ugh, uncapitalized titles bug me too. I guess it's hard to find the "shift" key. I mean, it's not like keyboards have two of them or something
.
Oh, and, uh rabble rabble Sparklecorn rabble rabble.
Quick question—are you supposed to capitalise the small words in the title, "the" "and" "of", for example?
But what if my name is e. e. cummings?
768497
For serious.
768513
You had an idea for writing a story with an uncapitalized title?
768525
Yes, exactly that. Capitalizing none of them or only the first word is completely unacceptable; capitalizing every word at least makes it look like you tried, but there are actually rules about which words do and don't get capitalized in a title.
768531
I was recently talking to an author about what I perceived as flaws in their story, and the issue of title capitalization was one of them. I do also see it all over the place, and every time a little bit of me dies. This post is a reworking of my explanation of my feelings on the subject to them; I thought it might be an interesting discussion topic, and to see if anyone's as heartless as I am about it. Looks like I'm not alone!
768674
True story: when I was a (much) younger, more foolish typist, I didn't trust the Shift key and felt it was inefficient. I would hit Caps Lock instead. So my keypresses looked like: {capslock}{a}{capslock}{n}{space}{capslock}{e}{capslock}{a}{s}{y}{space}{capslock}{w}{capslock}{a}{y} ... and so on. I don't know what I was thinking.
768756
The short answer is, "Only if it's the first word in the title". The long answer is, well, longer. The Chicago Manual of Style says that "articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, for, nor), and prepositions, regardless of length," should be lowercased unless they're the first or last word of the title.
Of course, if you don't feel like remembering the rules yourself, you can always plug your title into an online title casing form, and let the magic of technology take care of it for you.
769355
Then you get a pass! (Though even he signed it E.E. Cummings.)
769470
I've seen some of his poems that were titled: "[insert title here] by e. e. cummings"
769470 no you killed the ENTIRE FUCKING STORY douche
769476
Apparently that was something the publishers often did, not necessarily under orders from the poet himself.
769490
Ahhhh, that makes sense.
769485
Well, I'm intrigued. I don't see how stating that I think authors should correctly capitalize their story titles could possibly raze an entire story to the ground, so maybe you're on to something really interesting.
I did note that rules are there to make you think, often very hard, before you break them - not that you should never break the rules. I then went on to point out a possible repercussion of an author breaking said rule, even if they felt they had just cause, as an example of why you should think very hard about breaking the rules that bind us all: it can and will and does lead to confusion between you and your readers.
This is also just my opinion, of course; I assume there are plenty of readers who don't give one whit about it, because the site is full of stories that break this rule to no apparent literary effect.
768536
Man, Twilicorn really does roll off the tongue. I like it.
The word, I mean. Not the erstwhile alicorn.
Just came in to check in on something different. Been having a blast passing drinks and dancing with alicorns all day. Anyone seen Dashacorn around? We need the princess of rainbows for the big Humans in Equestria shindig coming up! xD
Yeah, go go PRETTY CURE: EQUESTRIAN DRE-*barfs all over the floor*
*cough*
Sorry, I'll have Spike clean that up later. OH HEY IT'S PRINCESS MARA! I mean APPLEJACK!
Seeya, off to go back to the party, See ya laters broster!
Agreed. If the author can't be concerned, why should I?
769470 of course you're not alone. I used to be nice to bad fics. Now I just give them a skim and dislike them if I can see errors every paragraph that would be really easy to fix. Sure, if it's one thing if the error is one thing recurring, then I help them fix it. But I don't even bother when it looks like they never tried.
769722
Precisely.
I cackled at that last bit. Bronies can be so silly.
769470 I think i figured out another way, list too little or too many characters.
Along the same vein, if I notice obvious misspellings or grammar botches in the description, I won't read the story. This hundred-word (at most!) paragraph is your first impression with the readers; if you can't, or won't bother to, get it right, why would the story be any better?
(Now having said this, someone's going to come and point out an obvious misspelling or grammar botch in one of my own story descriptions...
)