8 Ways to Sunday

Is “Google” still capitalized when it’s something you do, not something you use? Even the authorities can’t seem to agree on a consistent rule.

The Q & A on registered trademarks at the web site of the Chicago Manual of Style comes down on the side of capitalization. Meanwhile WordWizard answers the Google-verb capitalization question with a quote from the very same famous style manual, this time declaring the answer to be a very firm “it depends”:

Nouns, adjectives and verbs derived from personal, national or geographical names are often lowercased when used with a specialized meaning. According to some authorities, however, certain of these ought to be capitalized. Authors and editors must decide for themselves, but whatever choice is made should be followed consistently throughout a work.

— Chicago Manual of Style, 14th Ed. 7.49

Well, glad we’ve gotten that all settled.

For the purposes of clarity and readability, this weblog will not be capitalizing the verb form of “google.” Verbs are not traditionally capitalized, and doing so breaks with reader expectations of what a sentence should look like. This decreases readability and may cause re-reading. It’s also a sign of the creeping trademark fascism that corporations are trying to impose upon the natural evolution of the English language, but that’s a rant for another time.

As noted in a comment to an earlier post, a Textpattern user named “Greenrift” replied to my announcement of Jim Riggs’s TextilePHP with instructions on how to hack the new code into the Textpattern CMS.

TextilePHP is a direct port of Brad Choate’s Textile 2 Perl module. It adds several features and enhancements not included in Dean Allen’s original Textile implementation. With the release of Textpattern γ1.19, I felt that Greenrift’s hack warranted promotion to a full post. I hope that this will both promote awareness of Textpattern and encourage the eventual inclusion of the TextilePHP code into the official release.