In a recent Grammarly Pop Quiz email, we asked readers how they would correct this sentence: I’m looking forward to purchasing tickets for the 2018 winter Olympics.
A: Capitalize the “W” in winter. B: Make “O” in Olympics lowercase. C: Accept the sentence as is.
44 percent of these readers gave the correct answer, A. Did you choose correctly?
Seasons are only capitalized when they’re used as proper nouns, as in the sentence above: The movie will debut in the spring of 2016. (Spring is not used as a proper noun and doesn’t need to be capitalized.) The Springfield Autumn Harvest Festival is my favorite event of the year. (Autumn is part of a proper noun in this sentence as needs to be capitalized.) This winter, I want to learn how to ski. (Winter is not used as a proper noun and doesn’t need to be capitalized.)
In poetry, the names of the seasons are capitalized when they’re personified. For example: It’s that time of year again, when Winter blankets all creatures with somniferous snow and whispers to them, “Rest, children, rest.”
If you’d like to receive our pop quiz emails and other fun emails about grammar and language, sign up for our mailing list in the sidebar!
No comments:
Post a Comment