There have been a lot of articles online of late concerning the release of Pokemon Go. Across different articles, there are different patterns for capitalising the 'p' in pokemon.
I have been taught to use capitalisation when it is a name, but constant use when referring to pokemon as a collective term (I.e. when being used to refer to a group pf pokemon) has made me unsure.
When referring to a group, I have aleays been taught to use lower case, as in
"A group of pokemon"
What is the correct use of capitalisation, when talking about a made-up species, such as in Pokemon?
I would think a more concrete rule applies to created names than "whatever the creator uses", and given that anybody can edit the Wikipedia, I do not trust its use of capitalisation. I feel that this might be right, but a good answer should tell my the global rule to follow, not "This is what the wikipedia says".
There is not going to always be a "wikipedia page" or "homepage" to check these sort of things, in future cases.
Best Answer
It depends.
iT d-pENdZ
People can write and spell and capitalize/capitalise anyway and anyhow they please.
If you want to get to the nitty-gritty, you need to decide the purpose and audience of your writing.
If you are writing informally about Pokémon (note well, the e in the word has an acute accent on it, thus é), then you can capitalize it as you please. I don't know who told you not to capitalize the word when it refers to a group of pokemon/pokémon, but there is nothing wrong or illegal about either capitalizing or not capitalizing it in this case.
On the official U.S. website for Pokémon, the Legal Page says
The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) (online version) says
CMOS continues
Examples of trademarks from CMOS include Bufferin (buffered aspirin), Coca-Cola (cola), Jacuzzi (whirlpool bath), Kleenex (facial tissue), Levi's (jeans) and Xerox (photocopier).
So, following CMOS, one wouldn't say
but
By analogy, I guess one would say
The APA Style Guide (aka the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association) says to capitalize trade names and brand names. I don't own an APASG, so I got that from the APA Style Blog article "Do I capitalize this word?" (link). The blog contains a chart of "noun types", amongst which is Product and that seems what Pokémon falls under, given that that type includes Advil, Xerox, and Prozac (brand names).
Neither source discusses the plural of a trade mark or brand name. Probably for a reason. There is no official, legal plural of a trademark unless that trademark is registered in a plural form.
Pokémon, as far as I can find, has only ever been registered as a trademark in the singular. When I go to the United States Patent and Trademark Office's Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) and enter search string POKEMON, I get 97 to 100ish results, all in the singular. The search result times out after a while, so you will have to do your own search to verify my results. And if the above link to TESS doesn't work, you can access it through the page Trademark Database.
The International Trademark Association (INTA) supplies a pdf called "A Guide to Proper Trademark Use for Media, Internet and Publishing Professionals", which you can get at their Trademark Basics page. This handy publication provides "a few easy-to-follow rules concerning proper mark use," namely
The A in ACID stands for ADJECTIVE. And the publication goes into a lot of blah-blah about why a trademark is a "proper adjective" and not a noun:
This advice to the media is actually meant to help a company such as The Pokémon Company protect its legal registered trademark. Because if people start nouning it and verbing it, the company risks its trademark/brand name becoming so generic that it becomes difficult for the company to maintain its trademark. Trademarks that have suffered "genericide" include Aspirin, Zipper, Kerosine, Corn Flakes, Elevator, Escolator, Heroin, Thermos, and Yo-Yo.
Xerox put out an ad basically begging people not to use xerox as a verb: If a trademark is misused it could become undone. See Legal Blog Watch's Xerox Ad Pretends We Care About Its Trademark Rights to Term 'Xerox' and also BBC News Google calls in the 'language police'.
So, I suppose that is why the official sites of Pokémon always (as far as I can see) use it just like that: Pokémon, which is the legal trademark, as a "proper adjective" and not a "proper noun," although The Pokémon Company is not always so careful, straying from the registered trademark in such a use as
It's ironic the next two words are "Brand management."
If you wanna be nice to the company, and also go by the CMOS, always always use only Pokémon and never pokemon. If you don't give a rip, spell it and capitalise it anyway you pleez.