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Hey,

I know this English grammar site that shows a lot of rules concerning capitalization: Klick

On of the rules is the following:

grammarbook.com wrote:Rule 5.
Capitalize the titles of high-ranking government officials when used with or before their names. Do not capitalize the civil title if it is used instead of the name.
Examples: The president will address Congress.
All senators are expected to attend.
The governors, lieutenant governors, and attorneys general called for a special task force.
Governor Fortinbrass, Lieutenant Governor Poppins, Attorney General Dalloway, and Senators James and Twain will attend.

Now I have taken two pictures from a "The Wire" episode, including the English subtitles that are included on the DVD.


"Which brings me back to what I was just discussing with the Lieutenant."
How come "Lieutenant" is capitalized here? As far as I understand the rule, it shouldn't be..

"And then roll the lieutenant up?"
Now why is it now according to the rule, I'm a bit confused?

I know I can't be 100% sure about this, but I don't see mistakes like that happening on a DVD produced in the USA...

I hope you can help me with this...
Thanks

googleearth wrote: "Which brings me back to what I was just discussing with the Lieutenant."
How come "Lieutenant" is capitalized here? As far as I understand the rule, it shouldn't be..

"And then roll the lieutenant up?"
Now why is it now according to the rule, I'm a bit confused?

I know I can't be 100% sure about this, but I don't see mistakes like that happening on a DVD produced in the USA...

Looks like the first one is a typo.

c-square wrote: Looks like the first one is a typo.

Can't be, I've found a lot of instances, where they made a mistake (at least according to grammarbook) and not just throughout "The Wire"...

Sometimes typos get repeated. Or sometimes people just forget the rules.
Yes, in the USA we speak English (or at least an Americanized version of it, the English you hear in the US is not quite the same language you'll hear in, say, the UK)  but just because we speak and write in the language doesn't always mean we do a good job.

aside from typos, another possible explanation (which I'm not 100% sure about) is if the title is being used to refer to someone rather than using their name, it might be capitalized. Although the site said to not capitalize it if it's being used in place of their name, there's a slight difference in the two cases based on your familiarity with them. So it might go like this:

Calling to Lieutentant George, but omitting his name: "Hey Lieutenant! Look at this!"
talking about a lieutenant you don't actually know: "Send the squad away, but bring the lieutenant here."

But as I said, I don't actually know this and I'm just saying something that might explain the discrepancies in the subtitles.

you can say it's just nobody cares about this rule, it ain't gonna affect anything if you miss out a capital letter in these cases, probably only people that study english literature in university would know the answer to that (and care about it), and that's like 5% of all english speakers?

my explanation would be you put 'Lieutenant' with capital as a sign of respect and honor - which i know is true to some extent, but in the second scene it seems like he was being offensive? hence i think the capital isn't needed since he isn't showing respect or anything like that.

So all of you are saying that this is a typo, and that grammarbook's rule is correct, for me that's kinda hard to believe.

googleearth wrote: So all of you are saying that this is a typo, and that grammarbook's rule is correct, for me that's kinda hard to believe.

I'm not exactly saying it's 100% a typo, I'm just not confident enough in my knowledge of my own language's grammar to say a site that claims to know is wrong.

The First Picture (at least to me) makes sense. It follows the rules of example: The president will address Congress. The 'the' in that case is understood.  In the First picture he is talking about a particular person and so the Capital letter.

As for Picture two I need to know more as I have a feeling that one was not capitalize either because it was not That Lieutenant or maybe an unknown officer is being referenced. To know what happened there ,I would needed more about what happened and the context.

You want context?

First picture:

"I watched that motherfucker Cheese take re-ups, move weight all day, and not once did he go near a hyping telephone. Closest it comes is a call to a hanger-on's cell phone ten feet away."
"Which brings me back to what I was just discussing with the Lieutenant. So far, we've been up on some of these cell phones for nearly six months. The only drug talk we have is from street-level small fry."


Second picture:

"At these prices, I can't afford more phone surveillance."
"I'm aware of that. And right now, the plan is to go for a hand-to-hand on one lieutenant a couple rungs down from Proposition Joe."
"And then roll the lieutenant up?"
"We don't think he'll have much roll to him. Joe's people are pretty schooled. The hope is that they promote this mid-level dealer, who's a fool to replace him. Name of Drac. And we're on his cell phone. If he gets promoted, maybe he talks to Joe or Joe's top people. We get that far, maybe we start to see Stringer Bell."
"What makes you think they'll promote the wrong man?"
"We do it all the time."

That does clear it up. The second picture they are talking in general not about just one lieutenant. So in that case as it is not a particular one the Capital is not used.

Does that help you at all?

ITS THE SATS ALL OVER AGAIN NOOOO

The rule for capitalization is that only proper nouns and the beginnings of sentances should be capitalized. Proper nouns are names of people and places and the like. This rule is widely disregarded, however. It's one of the ones people seem to have most difficulty with.

sstimson wrote: That does clear it up. The second picture they are talking in general not about just one lieutenant. So in that case as it is not a particular one the Capital is not used.

Does that help you at all?

I'm not sure that it does. You're saying that in both cases the capitalization is correct and the rule is wrong? Can you please elaborate on that?

mangaluva wrote: [...] This rule is widely disregarded, however. It's one of the ones people seem to have most difficulty with.

As much as that surprises me, you'd think that at least on official DVDs they'd make sure that even those rules aren't disregarded.

mangaluva wrote: The rule for capitalization is that only proper nouns and the beginnings of sentances should be capitalized. Proper nouns are names of people and places and the like. This rule is widely disregarded, however. It's one of the ones people seem to have most difficulty with.

I wouldn't quite say it's being disregarded and instead say that the language is evolving. Like how "alright" and "awhile" are taking over, the language is gonna look like German soon with all the capitals.