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Capitalization for thoughts

Forums: English, Grammar, Thoughts, Capitalization
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Bonniede
 
Reply Tue 10 Jun, 2014 08:44 pm
In the following three sentences, is the first word of the thought supposed to be capitalized?
I have one copyeditor and two proofreaders. The copyeditor and one proofreader capitalized the first word. The last proofreader changed the capital to lowercase. So far I haven't been able to find the rule that fits this type of sentence. The two questions are, should the underlined letter in each of these sentences be capitalized? What is the rule?
1) This has to stop. Jessie tried to reason with herself. Pull your hand away now, she instructed herself forcefully. Now! Her inner voice screamed.
2) Jessie stared after his retreating back and thought, if my life is a rom com, shouldn’t he turn around and ask me to marry him?
3) Like they were thinking, this is it. Jessie has finally found the one.
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dalehileman
 
  1  
Reply Wed 11 Jun, 2014 11:33 am
@Bonniede,
1) Lc but Bonn, merely upon technicality. In order to avoid gthe awkwardness we'd probably reword, eg,

Now! screamed her inner voice. or…forcefully, her inner voice screaming, "Now!"

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Bazza6
 
  1  
Reply Wed 11 Jun, 2014 02:30 pm
@Bonniede,
... Pull your hand away now, she instructed herself forcefully.
Note the comma; so 'she' is not capitalized.

Now! Her inner voice screamed. : here, it is as if we have:
Now!, her inner voice screamed.
The use of ' ! ' supplants the comma, and we continue into the main clause without capitalising the 'her'.
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InfraBlue
 
  1  
Reply Wed 11 Jun, 2014 03:35 pm
@Bonniede,
Thought has nothing to do with the capitalization of the words in question.
Quote:
1) This has to stop. Jessie tried to reason with herself. Pull your hand away now, she instructed herself forcefully. Now! Her inner voice screamed.

Here, "her" is capitalized because it starts a sentence.
Quote:
2) Jessie stared after his retreating back and thought, if my life is a rom com, shouldn’t he turn around and ask me to marry him?

"If" isn't capitalized here because it's in the middle of a sentence.
Quote:
3) Like they were thinking, this is it. Jessie has finally found the one.

Here, the same convention applies as in the second sentence above in regard to the word "this."
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Roberta
 
  2  
Reply Sat 14 Jun, 2014 12:12 am
@Bonniede,
The punctuation would be easier to figure out if you used quotation marks for speech and thoughts.

1) "This has to stop." Jessie tried to reason with herself. "Pull your hand away now," she instructed herself forcefully. "Now!" her inner voice screamed.
2) Jessie stared after his retreating back and thought, "If my life is a rom com, shouldn’t he turn around and ask me to marry him?"
3) Like they were thinking, "This is it. Jessie has finally found the one."
contrex
 
  1  
Reply Sun 15 Jun, 2014 03:43 am
@Roberta,
Roberta wrote:
The punctuation would be easier to figure out if you used quotation marks for speech and thoughts.


Absolutely.
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