2d ago

Petty pedantry

It's common to the point of mootness, but: when describing the planet, Earth is a proper noun and should be capitalized. Otherwise you are referring to soil.

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61 comments

While we're on the topic, that's not how colons work.
- When you can smell his colon on your pillow 🥰
  
  You want pink eye? Cause that's how you get pink eye
  
  Omg pink is such a pretty colour I'd lovvvvvve that
  
  Even a pink sock?
  
  😏
  
  Sounds like true love to me
  
  Hot take I know, but I don't think he should be shitting on your pillows.
  
  😌
- not how colons work
  You had me scanning the image (of text without alt text: bad, OP! BAD!) for a : pretty hard until I settled on The New York Times message
  Breaking News: Susan[…]
  for a while. Had me wondering how else The New York Times is supposed to write that, because it looks correct.
  This is why quoting exists.
  
  Did you finally find the culprit?
  
  After a while, thus achieving another mild infuriation. 💯
  
  Sure, but: it was right there all along.
  Separately, Elon might be on Earth, but he's also sometimes on earth. Although he's more of an indoors boy.
- How would you write that, then?
  
  Pretty much the same, but without a colon.
  
  So, "Breaking News Susan Crawford"?
  
  The complaint isn’t about the colon in OP’s image, it’s the colon in OP’s explanation.
  OP complaining about an insignificant capitalization mistake in a Twitter post, while making a far more egregious grammatical error in their explanation is just...chef's kiss
  
  It isn't even an error, though. It's just wrong. "Earth" should be lowercase. I can understand being pedantic, but pedantic and wrong is super irritating.
  
  The original post is technically correct on the topic of capitalization for "Earth". When referring to the planet, it is a proper noun, thus capitalized. source
  However, that is a pretty egregious use of a colon XD
  
  Keep in mind that idioms follow their own rules. Down to earth, what on earth, and move heaven and earth do not capitalize the planet, and four corners of the earth or salt of the earth take the definite article.
  "On earth" (e.g. "richest man on earth") is one of those idioms, so the E is lowercase. See here.
  on earth
  used for emphasis. What on earth are you doing?; the stupidest man on earth.
  It's a bit confusing, but they aren't literally referring to "the planet Earth" in an astronomical sense. If you were writing a sci-fi story and comparing the wealth of the richest man on Earth to, say, the richest man on Mars, then it would be capitalized.
  
  Keep looking
  
  but,
- Yeah. Never managed to properly get the hand of punctuation.
  
  For a person complaining about pedantic language stuff you’re really falling apart 😂
  
  I know precious few rules and when even those don't matter, I know even less.
  
  ‘Kay
  
  Then why make this post in the first place?
  
  ┐(￣ヘ￣)┌
  
  Hang of, not hand of.
  
  I don’t know what kind of thread I stumbled into, but I love it.
  
  It's ok, my colon doesn't work very well either.
  
  Too much cream in one place, not enough in another.

61 comments