Answer: Capitalizing People's Titles in a Sentence

[chomiji]

level_head asks "How should this sentence be capitalized: 'The Colonel should be here in a moment'?" Our old friends from Star Trek (the original series) will do their best to help us out.

Comments

[campylobacter]

This topic will ALWAYS BE RELEVANT.

(Especially for the Stargate fandom.)

Thanks! :D

[chomiji]

I had a moment of panic on this one ... military stuff again! I like it, but my example fandoms are so obscure! Then I realized that the topic was narrow enough that I could get away with memories of long ago TV.

[xpaperplanex]

This is really helpful, thank you!

[chomiji]

I'm glad it's useful! Thanks for reading!

[pronker]

lets the plot and the characters shine.

Very much a propos to the Star Wars fandom, too, with its General Grievous and Admiral Ackbar, but also to the unique SW bits: Master, and Padawan, usually capitalized whenever used. Perhaps the jury is still out on the Force, as in, is it an entity with will, or not? 'Will of the Force' seems to make it sentient.

[pathology_doc]

Then again, the Force is treated by its followers (on both sides) with an essentially religious level of reverence, so it makes sense to capitalise it the way believers do when referring to God.

[pronker]

Yes, the respect given to Deity shows up in the GFFA's fandom writings and also, the Dark Side is uncapitalized according to Wookiepedia, though I just can't do that. It simply sets up the dichotomy so well, ha. Sometimes stories have 'Gods!' as an ejaculation, or even 'Ghods!', but since it is an ejaculation and thus one-word as a sentence, it doesn't add to any capitalization knowledge.

[chomiji]

My own feeling would be that the Force, as a unique power, would indeed be treated as a god or similar conceptual construct for capitalization. The Force is also its proper name, not its title, so that also argues for capitalization: the Colossus of Rhodes, the Matterhorn, the Milky Way, etc.