I was always taught to capitalize the first letter of the first word in a sentence, and also the first letter of proper nouns. In the last few years it's been common for certain firms to name their brands something that is always spelled with a small first letter and a capital second letter. It is almost as if they demand the rules of usage are changed. What do you do about this? Where is the inquisition when you need it? Should you start a sentence with "IPhone"? Should you use "iphone" in the middle of a sentence?
Capitalization – How to Capitalize ‘iPhone’ as a Proper Noun
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Related Solutions
There are only two kinds of documents in current usage that spell out the year -- legal documents, and wedding invitations.
Legal documents normally spell the year in lowercase, such as in this numbing bit of prose from West Virginia:
For any tax imposed under the provisions of this article with respect to any taxable year prior to the first day of January, one thousand nine hundred eighty-three, a resident individual shall be allowed a West Virginia exemption of six hundred dollars for each exemption for which he is entitled to a deduction for the taxable year for federal income tax purposes.
Some legal documents capitalize everything for extra pomp, but it's uncommon:
In testimony whereof, I hereunto subscribe my hand and affix the seal of said Court, at Office, in Nashville, the 6th day of December in the Year One Thousand Nine Hundred Eighty-Four and in the 209th Year of American Independence.
Wedding invitations, as noted, tend to capitalize the first letter only; however, this seems to be the only justification I can find:
The “T” in Two thousand doesn’t have to be capitalized but everyone does it so it would probably look incorrect if it wasn’t and it will look more polished if it is capitalized.
So, in modern usage, it appears that the rules for capitalization are:
- Spell the year out in lowercase.
- Except in wedding invitations, where the first letter is capitalized because everyone does it.
It is One-Sided
The rules you quoted from the Chicago Manual of Style essentially tell you to capitalize everything except:
- "articles, prepositions, coordinating conjunctions (and, but, for, or, nor) or such modifiers as flat or sharp following musical key symbols"
- compound words where "the first element is merely a prefix or combining form that could not stand by itself as a word"
- "the second element in a hyphenated spelled-out number"
"Sided" is not an article, preposition, etc. "One" is not a prefix that could not stand by itself, because it is a word. Finally, "One-Sided" is not a spelled-out number.
In addition, you can find a few papers on Google Scholar that confirm this usage:
Best Answer
Brand names
You should never change a brand name. 'iPhone' should always be spelled as 'iPhone,' no matter where in the sentence it is. 'IPhone,' 'iphone,' 'I-phone,' 'i-phone' or 'I phone' are always wrong. 'iPhone' is the only good one:
Good
Wrong
Terrible
This is the same for all brand names, but this can also be for other (nick)names invented by people, for example 'rms' which should always be spelled lowercase.
Exception
There could be, however, one exception, when the sentence is spelled in all caps, usually for styling purposes:
Good
Acceptable