October 02, 2004

The stet offensive, pt. 3

Yesterday at Cargo, we had occasion to discuss a fellow known as "Mordechai the Jeweler". The question was: Should that J really be capitalized? I had previously asked the article's editor, "So...is 'jeweler' just a description of what he does for a living, or is 'Mordechai the Jeweler' his actual preferred cognomen?" I was assured that the latter was the case. But someone else asked the same question, so it seemed prudent to ask Research if they had checked on it.

A Lexis/Nexis search turned up inconclusive results, so Research called Mordechai directly, learning that not only did he capitalize the J, but he also capitalized the T, H, and E in "the". That's right, Mordechai THE Jeweler.

So we capped the J. But we left "the" in lowercase. We have limits, after all.

Posted by Francis at 11:58 AM
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