On Capitalization

A hallmark of amateur writing that will quickly cause most editors to lose interest in a manuscript is improper capitalization. This includes both capitalizing letters that shouldn’t be capitalized and not capitalizing letters that should have been capitalized.

On the surface, this is a simple issue—we all know to capitalize proper nouns (names) and the first word of a sentence. But there are all sorts of unusual or complicated situations that can arise when you’re composing something as substantial as a novel. For instance, I have often seen sentences like this:

     “I’m an English Major, but my girlfriend is a Chemistry Major.”

There are two things wrong with that sentence. First, the word major should not be capitalized—many people simply feel like it’s supposed to be capitalized since it’s paired with the capitalized subject of the major (English and Chemistry in this case), but it should be lowercase. But wait! That’s not all. Chemistry shouldn’t be capitalized in that example, either.  The only school subjects that should be capitalized are languages—English, Spanish, Russian, etcetera—because they are adjectives derived from proper nouns (England, Spain, Russia, etcetera). So the above example should be written like this:

     “I’m an English major, but my girlfriend is a chemistry major.”

Thank you to xkcd for almost always having a relevant comic for my needs.

Now, I could fill pages and pages with all the little rules of which words should be capitalized and which words shouldn’t. I’m not going to, however, because Jane Straus has already done a fantastic job of that over at GrammarBook.com. If I were to write a full post on capitalization, it would basically be a near-word-for-word copy of hers, so I’m not going to waste the energy. I’ll just recommend that you go check out her post on capitalization—read the article, bookmark the page, and reference it often.

That post will also be a handy guide for helping you decide whether or not to capitalize words that you make up—if you’re writing science fiction or fantasy, for instance. Check back here in the next week or two for additional guidelines on that particular subject.

And don't forget to check out my post on capitalization in dialog tags.

Calm Down About Naming Your Characters

The process of naming characters is one that writers tend to over-complicate, just like they do with writing cover letters or the first lines of their stories. There is plenty of advice out there on how to come up with realistic-sounding names for science fiction and fantasy or where to look for names in the real world. Whatever your method for coming up with character names, just remember to watch out for these common pitfalls:

Try to avoid names that are difficult to pronounce. Even if your audience isn’t reading your story out loud, they’ll usually attempt to decipher the pronunciation of any names they come across. For their sake, it might be easier to shorten or change complicated names. A character named Vyacheslav might go by the easier-to-read nickname of Slava, for instance. This will make the name easier for your readers to remember.

Avoid choosing too many names that all begin with the same letter. I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s useful advice. The first letter of a name is always what will stand out most to the reader; in the case of difficult-to-pronounce names, the first letter might be the only thing your readers understand! Sean, Saladin, and Soo-mi are going to be harder for your readers to keep separate than Mike, Saladin, and Bo-yeon.

This problem gets even worse with names that share several common letters. If you have four main characters and three of them are named Tiala, Tahi, and Tolai, your readers will probably have trouble remembering who is who. It doesn’t matter if the letters are in a different order—our minds take in the whole word at once, and an h looks a lot like an l when we’re reading quickly. Remember: at the beginning of the story, your readers are already having to remember whole waterfalls’ worth of new information. Don’t make it harder for them by giving them several names that are virtually similar.

This is a problem that I often see crop up with twin characters. Naming your twins Tyler and Taylor might seem fun, but it will make it all sorts of difficult for your audience to keep them separate. Now, if you don’t want your readers to keep the twins separate—if you want them to essentially function as one unit at all times—then matching names shouldn’t be a problem. But there’s no need for your twins to have matching names, otherwise.

Hesitate before picking a name with special meaning. This is a temptation that I understand all too well. An easy way to name characters is to simply pick an important aspect of their personality or their role and to then find a name with that meaning. For instance, Darth Vader’s name literally means “father” in German, while Mufasa means “king.” This isn’t always a bad thing—we all love Vader and Mufasa, after all—but it is over-done and, in this age of the internet, potentially spoiler-riffic. You’ll often be better off choosing a meaningless-but-original name over a meaningful-but-heavy-handed name. If Star Wars had been released now, how long do you think it would have taken for the internet to figure out Vader’s identity based on his name? Not long. Too many villains have the root “mal” shoehorned into their name; quite a few protagonists have been named some variant of "Hiro" . . . and how many demons out there are named some version of “Crowley?”

I can think of three off the top of my head.

Make sure you have the correct era and nationality. This is simply a matter of taking the time to do your research. Don’t name your Russian character Kowalski—that’s a Polish name. Don’t name a woman in 1800s England Carly—that name didn’t really become common until the 1980s. If you’re not familiar with the naming conventions of the place or time, then do some research or ask someone who is familiar with them.

Don’t worry. Here’s the thing about character names—if you do a good job creating a deep, realistic, and engaging character, then it won’t matter what you name them. A good character will make just about any name seem to fit them; they will redefine people’s conceptions of what the name means. For instance:

When I first began watching How I Met Your Mother, I was completely thrown off by the fact that they named one of their characters “Barney.” I mean, come on—Barney? We all know what comes to mind when people hear that name.

But after a few episodes, Barney’s name ceased to bother me. After a few seasons, my mental picture of the name had been completely and permanently altered. That’s what a good, strong character can do.

So don’t worry about picking the perfect name for your character. Write a good character, and they will be able to make just about any name work for them.

Perspective Errors: Parents' Names

 First-person perspective and third-person limited perspective are probably the two most commonly-used perspectives in fiction. First-person is narrated by a character in their own words, while third-person limited places the audience directly inside the mind of the perspective character. In both cases, the language of the prose and what the narrative focuses on should be filtered through that character, as we’ve discussed before. We’ve also discussed perspective in relation to the name placeholders that you use to refer to characters. Today, we’ll look at a specific name-related perspective problem that writers encounter again and again.

The problem is this: perspective characters often have parents. That’s a good thing—not every protagonist should be an orphan. 

"One would think that Fiction's entire collection of protagonists had been recruited solely from her orphan asylums. Which we know is not the case."

But parents create a rather unique problem when it comes to names and name placeholders. Take a look at this example:

     Teri crouched on the top of the tall brick wall, watching for danger. There was no movement on the grounds below or in the manor ahead, and the narrow street behind her was clear of people in her direction.

     From her left, she heard a soft whistle. “Johanna, Luis,” Alina called to Teri’s parents, “we’re all clear. Come on up.”

     Teri gave a thumbs-up to her parents, and they silently scuttled out of the shadows across the street and up the rough face of the wall. They crouched beside her; Johanna bore a long rope coiled over her shoulder, and Luis carried a bag of thieves’ tools on his back.

     “Good job, you two,” Johanna whispered. “If you see anyone headed our way, signal us in the usual way.”

     “If we’re not back in twenty minutes, head back to the hideout,” Luis added. “We’ll catch up to you there.”

     Teri nodded. “Be careful on the skylight, dad.”

     Luis ruffled her hair with a smile and climbed down into the manor gardens.

     “I love you, my little girl,” Johanna whispered, giving Teri a quick hug.

     “I love you too, mom,” Teri whispered back as Johanna followed after Luis.

Do you see the problem? This passage is written in third-person limited perspective, and we’re inside Teri’s head. Now, Teri calls her parents “mom” and “dad” when she speaks. It is therefore logical to assume that she thinks of them that way, too—most children do. Most people do, for that matter. No matter how old we get, most of us think of our parents as “mom” and “dad.”  But in the passage above, Teri’s parents are referred to by name in the prose, even though we’re in Teri’s head.

Now, this is a very common difficulty, especially if your protagonist’s parents are prominent characters in the story. It can be very awkward and clunky to refer to them as “so-and-so’s mother” over and over again in the prose. For example:

     Teri handed her mother the bag. Her mother began to dig through it, frowning. “I want the two of you to stay here until I get back,” she said.

     Teri and Alina glanced at one another. “But you’ll need spotters,” Alina said. “It’s too dangerous for you to go alone.”

     Teri’s mother shook her head. “No. The two of you aren’t ready for this kind of job. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

     Teri placed her hand over her mother’s where she was holding the bag open. “Mom, please. Let us help.”

     Her mother sighed and hung her head for a moment. “Not this time, little girl,” she said. When she looked up, Teri was shocked to see that there were tears in her eyes. She’d never seen her mother cry.

That gets a little awkward, doesn’t it? Besides “her mother” being a bit of a long name placeholder, we're forced to repeat it more than we would her name (to avoid confusion between all of the instances of she and her that get thrown around with three female characters in the scene). We’re also forced to repeat Teri’s name a little more than looks good (otherwise, we’d create situations where the her in her mother would seem to be referring to Alina and not Teri—hence we say “Teri’s mother” in the third paragraph instead of “her mother.).

This problem is kind of a Catch-22. There tend to be problems whichever way you go.

Referring to the parents as “her mother” and “her father” thoughout the prose will be more true to life. But the larger the parents’ parts are, the more difficult this will make the writing.

Choosing to refer to the perspective’s characters by their names in the prose is an acceptable option, even if it is technically a small perspective error. Plenty of authors have done this in the past—for instance, if you read the first chapter of The Eye of the World (the first book of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series), you will see that Robert Jordan chose this method of dealing with the problem. Even though the perspective is third-person limited from Rand’s viewpoint, Rand’s father is referred to by name (Tam) in the prose. Most people don’t even notice anything unusual about it—and those who do notice the perspective error will quickly get used to it.

The problem with this approach is that it can create a subtle, unconscious distance between the perspective character and their parent. In the case of Rand and Tam, for instance (minor spoilers ahead), I was completely unsurprised when it was revealed that Tam was not Rand’s biological father. Rand was completely shocked by the revelation, but for years I could not figure out why it didn’t surprise me. Eventually, I pinpointed this as the reason—it is not uncommon for children or grown adults to refer to their adopted parents or step-parents by name, for a variety of reasons. The fact that the prose referred to Rand’s father by his first name even though we were in Rand’s head caused me to unconsciously label their relationship as an adoptive one rather than a biological one.

(This is in no way meant to disparage the relationships between children and their adoptive parents, of course. It is simply an observation of common patterns of speech and the situations in which they tend to appear.)

Now, is that a minor problem? Yes, probably. However, it is a problem that you ought to consider when approaching the problem of how to refer to your perspective character’s parents in the prose. 

Next time, we’ll discuss a few tips and possible alternate solutions to this problem.

Characters With Multiple Names: Keeping It Consistent

Let's say that your main character has a friend named “James T. Mitchell, Jr.” His family calls him Jimmy, his mother calls him James, his grandparents call him Junior, and his friends call him Mitch.

Now, your audience probably has enough to do keeping track of the names of several different characters; if you try to make them remember more than one name for a single character, they’re going to have trouble. So if you have a character like this, consider pruning down the number of names you’ve given them. Ask yourself why this character has so many names and whether or not it actually adds anything to the plot or the character. If the answer is no, just cut down to one name.

But if you absolutely must have all of these names for James T. Mitchell, Jr., than you need to be consistent. Here's an example of too many names being handled poorly, patterned off of stories I've edited:

     Dan waved as Mitch came running out of the house.

     “James, you can’t leave until you finish your chores,” James’s mother shouted from the kitchen window.

     Mitch winced. “I can do them tonight, mom!” he shouted back. He grinned at Dan and gestured to the hole in the fence. Dan smiled and climbed through into the neighbor’s yard.

     “James Mitchell, don’t you dare leave!” James’s mother screamed. James ignored her. “James!”

     “Let’s go see if Sally is home,” Mitch said.

In the dialog of this example, Mitch was called by three different names—James, James Mitchell, and Mitch—and that's okay. What makes the passage confusing is that his name also alternates in the prose (that is, in the text that isn't dialog): he's Mitch in the first, third, and fifth paragraphs, but he's James in the second and fourth. This makes it seem as though two different characters are being referred to. Sure, your reader would probably figure out what was going on, but they shouldn't have to “figure out” something as simple as what character you're talking about.

The answer to this problem is to only refer to the character by one name in the prose. In our example above, Dan is our viewpoint character; and Dan thinks of James T. Mitchell, Jr. as "Mitch," just like the rest of their friends. So James T. Mitchell, Jr. will always be "Mitch" in the prose, even if his mother and family call him by other names in the dialog.

Done well:

     Dan waved as Mitch came running out of the house.

     “James, you can’t leave until you finish your chores,” Mitch’s mother shouted from the kitchen window.

      Mitch winced. “I can do them tonight, mom!” he shouted back. He grinned at Dan and gestured to the hole in the fence. Dan smiled and climbed through into the neighbor’s yard.

     “James Mitchell, don’t you dare leave!” Mitch’s mother screamed. Mitch ignored her. “James!”

     “Let’s go see if Sally is home,” Mitch said.

Note that this scene will still be confusing if we haven't already made it clear to our readers that people call Mitch by many different names; you can't just drop a character into the story and have everyone call him something different without explaining what's going on. If it seems like it would be difficult to fit in an explanation about Mitch's name before we introduce him, that's because it would be! That is one reason why I recommend against giving one character multiple names.

Now, if this story had multiple viewpoint characters, then we might be able to refer to Mitch by a different name in the prose. In sections written from Dan’s viewpoint, Mitch would always be “Mitch,” as we've discussed. But if you had sections written from Mitch’s mother’s point of view, you might switch to calling him "James," because that is how his mother thinks of him. But remember that you would be running the risk of needlessly confusing your readers. And either way, you must always be sure to keep each viewpoint consistent—when we’re in Dan’s head, Mitch is always “Mitch,” and when we’re in the mother’s view, Mitch is always “James.” Always.

Proper Nouns and Information Overload

A proper noun is a title given to a specific item or entity in order to distinguish that item from others of the same class. Essentially, a proper noun is a name. (There is a whole, deep linguistics debate about the exact difference between proper nouns and proper names, but we don’t need to go into that. For our purposes, the simplified definition proper noun = name is adequate.)

So, for instance, Canada is a proper noun that is used to distinguish one country from all others. To Kill a Mockingbird is a proper noun that identifies a single book out of all others. If you were describing a group of girls, you could distinguish them by their names; Elizabeth, Meghan, and Catherine, for instance—all proper nouns.

Every story contains proper nouns: names of characters or places, titles of companies or ships or official positions, or even just names of ideas and theories. Some will have more than others, of course; the number will depend on the size and needs of the story. A short story that takes place in one location with only two characters will need far fewer pronouns than a trilogy of novels that visits a dozen locations with fifty characters.

The important thing to remember about proper nouns is this: they are difficult to remember. The more you give to your reader at once, the more confusing the story will become. This doesn’t mean you can’t have a story full of all sorts of interesting pronouns—it just means that you need to learn to pace yourself. Arrange your story so that you can start with just a few new pronouns; once the reader has those down, you can give them a few more, and then a few more.

Here are some things to keep in mind regarding pronouns:

Avoid using pronouns where a common noun will do: If the main character of your novel will only speak with Brian Elmson the security guard once, then Brian probably doesn’t need a name. He can simply be “the security guard.” If your character loves guns, it might be good to describe their handgun as a “Glock 30SF”; otherwise, you can just call it a handgun.

This is a particular problem in fantasy and science fiction, in which authors often have to come up with numerous pronouns to describe the various non-existent magics, technologies, and alien races that they’ve created. Don’t add any more then you have to—for instance, don’t call your character’s knife a Dalkirk when it could just be a dagger.

Common names are easier to remember than unfamiliar names: Again, this tends to be a problem in fantasy and science fiction, but it is not limited to those genres. If you’re writing in English, most readers will remember “Matt Davidson” and “Tyler Smith” more easily than “Yeon Gaesomun” or “Vyachislav Dimitrovitch.” That doesn’t mean all of your characters should have common English names—it just means that if your readers are already trying to remember “Yeon” and “Vyachislav,” it might be a good idea to name the next character “Matt” to give your readers a break.

Short, easily-pronounced names are easier to remember than long, tongue-twisting names: Even if your reader is not reading out loud, they’ll still have an easier time if they can hear the word in their head. So if you’ve got a Russian character, it might be a better idea to name him “Dima” than “Vyachislav.”

First letters of pronouns can be used to help readers remember: If you have several characters whose names all start with the same letter, it will be harder for the reader to keep track of them. Sean, Saladin, and Soo-mi are going to be harder to keep separate than Mike, Saladin, and Bo-yeon.

When creating new terms, incorporating familiar words can help your reader remember what the new term refers to: When Brandon Sanderson put magical swords into his Stormlight Archive series, he called them “Shardblades.” He could have called them “Trevinoagiki” or some other completely-made-up term, but it would have been harder to remember. Even if the reader forgets how Shardblades work, they’ll never forget that they’re swords, because the word “blade” is right there in the name.  

This can also be used in non-fantasy works. Say your story takes place in the fictional town of Oakdell and the fictional city of Davis. If readers are having trouble remembering which place is the town and which is the city, just change the name of Davis to “Davis City.” Bam. Problem solved.