Things that make me go huh?

[gwyn]

Why do people always lowercase the h in human, but uppercase the C in Cylon? I would like to start a campaign to stamp out the indiscriminate title-casing of selective species. When I realized this discrepancy, I started lowercasing the c, but people like to gently "correct" me in posts. Cylon is neither a product/brand name nor an organization (Firefly-class ship, Nexus 6 replicant, the Alliance, the Mounties, Browncoats), nor a nationality/continental/planetary identity (Canadian, African, Bajoran, Betelgeusian, Vulcan), nor a religious identification (Jewish, Christian, Muslim) though admittedly, it could become that eventually. It's a classification no different than human in the series, yet across fandom, people treat it as more significant by uppercasing the c.

Comments

[voleuse.livejournal.com]

I've capitalized the word, but now that you bring it up, I have no idea why. Huh. Maybe something in the official show descriptions?

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Probably. And the thing is, those are written by people who have little understanding of the rules, and probably wouldn't know a style guide if it bit them in the ass. I don't think there's a production company around that employes copyeditors.