Why do we capitalize name of people and places, like proper nouns, but not things?

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United States of America, Nebraska, John. Those are always to be capitalized, including when their possession. But why not the name of other things, specifically living? “That trees Apple is ripe.” That bushes leaf is brown.” Why do we capital the name of an area of land but not the living plants?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Until around 250 years ago this was common in English, and it still is the rule in modern German. Danish had it too until the mid-20th century.

Frankly until the era of printing and mass literacy, the rules of spelling and grammar were quite lax and practices varied widely between times, places, and individual people. It’s likely that a lot of the “rules” we follow today, like capitalization, just happened to be stylistically popular at the time when literacy became common.

Even between languages that share the same alphabet there is remarkably little consistency in capitalization. For example, English is in a minority of languages which capitalize the days of the week (Monday, Tuesday, etc.). English also capitalizes most nouns which derive from a proper noun, but not all languages do; e.g. in both English and Spanish “Venezuela” is capitalized, and so is “Venezuelan” in English, but not the Spanish “venezolano.”

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