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March 22, 2006

What Case god?

letter_G.jpg
I'm enough of an egalitarian to flinch when an announcer speaks of Joe or Derek but then Mr. Steinbrenner. And I'm sufficiently skeptical to rebel against the odd exception to the style rules that capitalizes words like Him, He, etc. only when they refer to the Supreme Being and His Offspring. While I haven't discussed the matter with my editor (Mr. Turner), I thought that this book might offer an opportunity to finally lower case god. However, a close reading of recent entries on this blog will reveal that I've been wavering (or, more precisely, surrendering). The opportunity to stick that capital letter in front of various and sundry pronouns and nouns has been too delicious to resist. It's less fun to wrestle with a mere "supreme being"?

Posted by Mitchell Stephens at March 22, 2006 4:56 AM

Comments

According to your banner, Nietzsche used a G...

Posted by: Joe at March 22, 2006 10:17 PM

I hate to point this out, but *all* nouns are capitalized in German.

Posted by: sort of buddhist at March 24, 2006 12:05 AM

By all means, remove the Capital.

No one has a problem with this:
Jupiter was the principle god of the Roman Empire.

So no one should object to:
The Christian god has no name, although some sects name it Jehovah, and inasmuch as the Christian faiths claim that their god is the same one worshipped by the Jews in the Old Testament, some Christians attribute the name Yahweh to their deity.

Posted by: Crosius at March 24, 2006 9:07 PM

I usually capitalise the G only when referring specifically to the Judeo-Christian god, treating it as a name.  I see this as no different (without any disrespect intended) from the case in which my father used to have a dog named Dog.  The pronouns, however, I will only capitalise as an act of sarcasm.  As far as I'm concerned, capital-H "him" is for the purpose of keeping the sycoph... faithful in their place.

Posted by: Dayv at March 25, 2006 11:17 PM

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