Capitalizing God

God is often miscapitalized.

Why this is, I can only surmise. My personal feeling is that it is done to try to pretend that one is participating in an argument on an entirely different plane than the opposition.

Please note that the only problems with the following sentences that I am pointing to here are grammatical. I also just made them up; any coincidence to real arguments is purely coincidental.

Incorrect capitalization of the noun "god"

: Well, you say that god exists, but I think Santa Claus is more plausible.

Here, the writer is showing his complete and utter disdain for God by demoting him below Santa Claus, not only with his sentence, but with his capitalization. This is just plain wrong. In this sentence, God is a proper noun, and needs to be capitalized to distinguish it from "a god" as seen in the following sentence (which is correct usage):

: I don't see proof that there is a god.

Incorrect capitalization of pronouns

: I know that God is alive because He shows himself to me.

Here, the writer is capitalizing a pronoun to try to convey the massive respect he has for his god above anything else that may be expressed with a proper noun. This is also bad grammar, though it does not introduce the confusion that not capitalizing "God" can (as noted above); it looks like he either has a sticky shift key or meant to break a sentence. Proper usage would be something to the effect of:

: I know that God is alive because he shows himself to me.

I urge everyone participating to show a little respect for their fellow wikizens and for the English language by avoiding this particular silliness. This isn't about respecting their beliefs, but rather respecting them as a person by not abusing capitalization to try to pretend your argument is on a totally different plane as theirs.

Discussion

This is a good start to showing respect, but it doesn't go far enough and I think shows a Christian bias. Some adherents of some faiths render the name of their god in print like "G-d," because spelling it out is apparently disrespectful. And others would find it offensive that you used the name "God" when their god has an actual name, such as "Yahweh" or "Allah". Speaking of Islamic traditions, I believe they typically add a prefix and suffix to "Allah", such as "The Most Beneficent Allah, Praise Be His Holy Name".

Whoops - that last one uses "His" and not all faiths assign gender to their god, or their god may be female. Hmmm, this is starting to get complex. How will we ever be able to accommodate the true diversity of Wiki's participants, and not just pretend Christian norms are okay for everyone?

Here's my suggestion. Ward should immediately define new Wiki markup that we can use to represent the name of the reader's god. So for example, we would write %god% and Ward's code would render that as appropriate for the viewer. This can be tied in to the domain name. So Christians would visit Wiki at "www.christian.c2.com/cgi/wiki" and see %god% as "God", Rastafarians can view Wiki at "www.rastafarian.c2.com/cgi/wiki" and see %god% rendered as "Haile Selassie", etc.

Then we can start to move to concepts like %heaven%, %hell%, %sin% and so on, each exquisitely rendered as appropriate.

-- JohnPassaniti

The logical conclusion of JohnPassaniti's excellent joke is to use the tag %whateveryoubelieve% - then nobody ever has to be exposed to any possibly upsetting thoughts.

I am happy to see us remove rancor: words intended to hurt are a weapon, best used for such serious matters as revolutions, not for day-to-day discussions.

But in writing about ordinary matters, my thoughts are surely another man's bias. If I remove all bias then I remove all expression, all thought, from my writing. If you don't like my writing, spit it out. But I won't reduce it to pabulum just because someone might not like its taste. I would rather my words are read and found distasteful than that they blend in with an undifferentiated sea of unbiased muck.

What if, instead of asking for "no bias," we were tolerant of the differences in thought - and capitalization - in each other?

By the way, I come from a background, aside from being immersed in Christian claptrap, where god is correctly spelt with a lower case 'g' in the particular faiths involved. Moreover, the phrase, "I don't think there is god," more fits their viewpoints than "I don't think there is a god." -- SunirShah

I don't understand what the difficulty is here. "god" is a common noun, meaning something like "an object of worship". It doesn't have a capital letter, because common nouns generally don't. "God" is a proper noun, naming a particular (alleged) being. (This applies even if in fact it fails to denote any actually existing being; consider "Bilbo Baggins".)

When you need to refer to "an object of worship", you say "god". When you need to refer to "the supreme being", you say "God". All this applies whether or not you believe that there are any gods, or any such entity as God.

The phrase "I don't think there is god" is ungrammatical unless "god" here is intended to name a substance rather than a thing. Which it does to some people.

If you're referring to the sector of the populace for which only atheism and monotheism are serious options, they can say "I don't think God exists" (rough translation: "I don't think there's any such thing as a 'Supreme Being'") or, making a stronger statement than that but one that's equivalent given their presuppositions, "I don't think there are any gods" (rough translation: "I don't think anything exists that any sane person would worship").

The common-noun "god" doesn't have to refer to "an atheistic philosophical 'god'". The deities worshipped by the ancient Greeks were gods. The deities worshipped by present-day Hindus are, as I understand it, gods. (This is a gross oversimplification, to be sure.)

"God", when it means something like "the creator of the universe", should be capitalized. Not out of respect (why should capitals denote respect, anyway?) but for the same reason as "Italy" should be. This may be pedantry, but it isn't bigotry. -- GarethMcCaughan

All this talk of respectful use of the word "god" does annoy me. No-one ever shows the due respect to The Tooth Fairy either.

Sarcasm noted, but I (for one), if talking about Ms Tooth Fairy herself, capitalize her properly. If I am talking about a tooth fairy, or one of many tooth fairies, I don't capitalize. It's a simple matter of proper English.

Hmm. I don't know if anyone here would consider this biased, blatantly religious expression of bootlicking appropriate, but the Holy Bible gives those of us who use that document certain guidelines. Well, at least as rendered by modern scholars. Since Greek and Hebrew didn't really have the same kind of construction, punctuation, or casing as our language we have to guess at it. My default is to use Mixed Case when referring to Him. (Since there is only one Him it is not too tough to figure out who I'm yapping about. [Doesn't really nail down which religion, sect, splinter, and interpretation you happen to go for, no.]) Hopefully y'all can put up with it. Eh? [Note: the HB doesn't (unnecessarily) capitalize pronouns referring to God.]

what about the ambiguity? One "God" vs many "gods", is perfectly understandable, but there is no agreement as to who the singular god may be, so we quickly end up back at square one. Perhaps the best approach is "Christian god", "Muslim god", etc., or further subdivisions if necessary for theological implications of a statement (e.g. "Catholic god" vs "Anglican god").

I think there will be agreement someday as to who the singular god is. "So that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." I've tried for a long time to find some shred of historical or archaeological evidence that would say that the Bible is bunk. I haven't found any. [Admittedly, it's written in the style of fiction, with fictional illustrations. Fiction is not bunk, however.]

On the other hand, there is no historical or archaeological evidence that it isn't bunk, either. Kinda makes your point moot.

On the contrary, archaeology continues to verify the Bible. But, hey, we're getting OffTopic! Gareth, above, got it right. In the USA, we don't have a name we use for the god of the Bible. Instead we use - God. When talking about gods, in general, the lower case is used. Anytime you see someone using upper case, they are using it as a proper noun, like "Gareth." -- BrucePennington

I think we should focus on really important topics, like where Braces are supposed to go in code.

Does this bring the page OnTopic?

We may remember that ancient teletypes, printers, and terminals would bang out their output in all upper case. When this technology was first being standardized, the researchers did usability studies and found that people read lowercase text more easily than uppercase. But management decided to use uppercase instead. The reason? If only lowercase was shown, then there would be no means for CapitalizingGod.

Or Italy.

CategoryWorldView (This page, recovered from the HistoryPages, has existed for some time - it is essentially about appropriate English, not God, and hence is just as OnTopic as other pages about English on this wiki.) (Which still doesn't make this one OnTopic, wanted or needed.)

A quick note on the capitalization of the pronouns referring to God. In the 1600's, it was common to capitalize pronouns referring to kings and other heads of state. This was naturally used in the 1611 King James Bible and is still found in many print Bibles today, including modern printings of the King James Version and is also used in the New King James Version. This is archaic usage, not bad grammar. See http://ebible.org/bible/biblefaq.htm

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