Capitalizations and Grammatical Rules

thewonder August 11, 2021 at 17:20 1300 views 4 comments

So, I keep changing my mind on what should or should not be capitalized and wonder if I shouldn't just lowercase everything. I also feel fairly conflicted about hyphens. They seem to apply at different times to different philosophies.

For instance:

Neo-Freudianism
nihilism
Existentialism
Anarcho-Pacifism
anarcha-feminism
Neo-Liberalism or neoliberalism
Postmodernity or postmodernity
etc, etc.

I'm also confused as to how to write a maxim within the middle of a sentence.

"Søren Kierkegaard is famous for the maxim, "Subjectivity is Truth.", which appears in Concluding Unscientific Postscript."

Should there be a period there? I like to put it there, but it doesn't seem like it. Why have we capitalized "Subjectivity", then?

It seems to make the most sense to lowercase everything and only hyphenate what are two distinct philosophies.

For instance, "anarcho-communism" should be hyphenated, whereas "neoliberalism" should not. I'm still not sure what to do about my first example, though.

I think that we can rule out "Neofreudianism" and "neoFreudianism". Should it be "Neo-Freudianism", "neo-Freudianism", "neo-freudianism", or "neofreudianism"?

Comments (4)

thewonder August 11, 2021 at 17:43 #578633 0 likes

I deleted this comment to make this all just one post.

Sir2u August 11, 2021 at 22:07 #578740 0 likes

don't stress out, If you are not sure, google it.

Hanover August 11, 2021 at 23:00 #578760 0 likes

Quoting thewonder

also confused as to how to write a maxim within the middle of a sentence.

"Søren Kierkegaard is famous for the maxim, "Subjectivity is Truth.", which appears in Concluding Unscientific Postscript.

If leave out the period in the quote, but in the US, the comma goes inside the quote, not sure of other country's conventions.

thewonder August 11, 2021 at 23:06 #578763 0 likes

Reply to Hanover
Heh, I always leave the comma outside of the quote and I live in the US. I never really paid too much attention to the grammatical aspects of English classes, though. Clearly, the period shouldn't be there, but I just kind of like it for some reason.

Assuming that we can place the comma outside of the quote and will eliminate the period, should it, then, be as follows:

"Søren Kierkegaard is famous for the maxim, "subjectivity is Truth", which appears in Concluding Unscientific Postscript."

Subjectivity was only capitalized because it was the first word of the sentence, whereas Kierkegaard, himself, who I am quoting, capitalized "Truth".

Forgoing Kierkegaard's capitalization and just writing, "subjectivity is truth", seems to make the most sense to me. I don't like the comma on the inside and, so, will not change my way of writing them unless docked for doing so.