this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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I’m right with you on “Negative Reactions don’t Inspire Discussion” If someone doesn’t like my post, I want to know why. Hearing opposing viewpoints is my favorite way to learn.
A simple downvote doesn’t tell me anything. Are they mad because I raised a sensitive subject, made a bad joke, used an Oxford comma, or do they actually have a relevant disagreement? This isn’t reddit. I won’t bite your head off. If I’m full of shit, make a comment of your own and tell me why! Don’t just hit a down arrow!
Constructive criticism: words like “and”, “of”, and “the” aren’t capitalized in titles, but “don’t” should be. I don’t know the exact rule offhand, but I’m sure you can find it in a Manual of Style or something.
The rule is that you don’t capitalize prepositions (“of”, “in”, etc.), conjunctions (“and”, “but”, “or”, etc.), or articles (“the”, “a”, “an”). There might be a couple odd cases but those should be enough to keep you out of trouble with the people that get mad about Oxford commas. :-)
Careful, you only capitalize prepositions of three letters or shorter by default. Though different style guides might say otherwise: Chicago style doesn't capitalize any prepositions, while MLA doesn't capitalize any words 3 letters or fewer (which presumably could lead to the odd lowercase "i"). And AP doesn't capitalize any words 3 letters or fewer unless they happen to be verbs.
https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/capitalization/rules-for-capitalization-in-titles.html
Interesting, and thanks for clarifying that! I was completely unaware of this nuance.
Depending on the style guide, some prepositions are capitalized. For example, AMA says to capitalize prepositions that are 4 or more letters long (then, after, etc).