This will be the most interesting pastime and will enlarge the content of the words which you use.
Yours for Education,
THE PEOPLE'S COLLEGE.
CAPITAL LETTERS
464. In our written speech we often display our lack of education by our use of capital letters and punctuation. We may understand the use of words and be able to speak fairly well, but if we do not understand the proper use of capitals and of punctuation marks, our written language readily betrays our ignorance.
465. There are a number of rules for the use of capitals which we must observe. Some of the writers in our magazines defy these rules of capitalization, in an effort to seem different from other people, perhaps. These rules for the use of capital letters, like all other rules, are not arbitrary rules laid down by any body of men, but are simply a statement of accepted usage among people. We should not feel that we should say this or that or we are violating a rule of grammar. We should feel rather that the majority of the people who speak and write good English do thus, and so, for this reason, I shall do it also.
This is simply obeying the standard of majority rule. If there is any good and sufficient reason why we feel this should not be a rule, we may be justified in breaking it and making a new rule. Many people feel that our spelling should be simplified and so they insist upon spelling certain words in a more simple way. They feel that they have good and sufficient reason for insisting upon this change and gradually if these reasons appeal to the majority as being good and sufficient reasons, then this simplified mode of spelling will become the accepted usage.
But there seems no good reason why any writer should scatter capital letters with a lavish hand throughout his writing. One feels as though a writer in so doing is expressing his desire to be different, in a very superficial manner. Let us be unique and individual in our thought. If this forces us to a different mode of living or of expression from the rest of the world, then we are justified in being different from the rest. We have thought and reason behind our action. This is far different from the attitude of one who poses as a radical and whose only protest is in the superficial external things. So let us learn and observe these rules for the use of capital letters.
RULES FOR THE USE OF CAPITAL LETTERS
466. Use a capital for the first word of every sentence.