Grammar queen

[ciphergoth]

English usage question arising out of a discussion on a wiki. I have my own opinion, but I don't want to bias the poll, so here it is...

[Poll #681358]

Comments

[mskala.livejournal.com]

Capitalization is for the starts of sentences, and for proper nouns. There might be a few other cases, but none relevant - in the sample sentence, "pilot" isn't a proper noun or the start of a sentence, and "the" certainly isn't, so there you go.

Possible exception: if being a "Pilot" indicates some special status such as membership in the Worshipful Brotherhood of Pilots; then it's not just a job description but a title. Just like you'd say that England is ruled by a queen (common noun - it means female monarch) but the Queen rules England (proper noun - it's her job title and is used like a name).

If "The Pilot" were an actual name, it could conceivably get caps on both words. For instance, in Read Or Die there's a character who uses the name "The Paper"; both "The" and "Paper" get caps.

[mskala.livejournal.com]

...and I wrote that before consciously noticing taimatsu's icon, too!