Persons are regarded as physically disabled if they always need an artificial aid to walk.
As you can see, sentences can be grammatical without making any sense. The linguist Noam Chomsky proved this by forming a chain of words that bore the least logical relationship with each other: Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. The words make no sense but it is a well-formed sentence complete with verb.
The Paragraph
The most quoted definition of a paragraph is that of Sir Ernest Gowers, who wrote in The Complete Plain Words that it is ‘a unit of thought, not of length … homogeneous in subject matter and sequential in treatment of it.’ The Times, in advising its journalists, adds: ‘Rarely should a paragraph in The Times be of only one sentence, least of all a short one, unless special emphasis is needed. Long paragraphs are tedious but short ones are jerky and can be equally hard to follow. The best advice is to remember Gowers and ask, before pressing the paragraph key, “Have I finished that thought?”.’
All very well, but of all the units of punctuation the paragraph is the least precise and the most resistant to rules. Sometimes they are indented, sometimes not. Quite often, the first paragraph under a heading is not indented, although all subsequent paragraphs are. Browse through a handful of books and you’ll note that paragraphs can consist of a single line or a single word; you’ll also see leviathan examples which take up a page or more.
Here are some practical pointers. Think of the end of a paragraph as a sort of breathing space for both writer and listener. The writer needs to gather his thoughts afresh, and the reader needs a momentary rest from concentration. In writing, a new paragraph marks a break or change in the flow of thought, which is as good a reason as any to begin on a fresh line.
Capitalisation
Capital letters are an important form of punctuation in that they help to guide the eye and mind through a text. Try this:
mi5 is the branch of the british intelligence organisation responsible for internal security and counter-espionage in the united kingdom. mi6 is the branch responsible for international espionage. the us has its fbi, south africa has its boss, israel its mossad and the republic of ireland its g2. spies love abbreviations. Then, in britain there’s mi1, mi8, mi9 and, ultimately, wx, the butlins of the spy world.
That’s a paragraph shorn of capital letters. It’s readable, with some effort, but how much easier would the eye glide through it were the beginnings of sentences and names guide-posted with capital letters – not to mention abbreviations!
Using capitals to flag the start of sentences is clear enough but confusion surrounds the capitalising of certain nouns and names. Try this Capital Quiz:
Capital Quiz
Of this dozen nouns and names, half are incorrect.
Which ones?
the Army, Spring and Autumn, bulldog, Great Dane, union jack, Vincent Van Gogh, jacuzzi, french fries, Renaissance, Venus, new testament, down under.
[Answers: the army, spring and autumn, Union Jack, Vincent van Gogh, Jacuzzi, New Testament, Down Under. The others are correct.]
Some capitalisations are logical but many are not. Some are consistent throughout the language while others are arbitrary, differing from country to country and even from one publisher or newspaper to another. Here, as a guideline, are the generally accepted capitalisations for a range of fairly common nouns and names.
A Guide to Capitalisation
| Sentences | Begin every sentence with a capital letter. |
| First Person | Always capitalised: I said I was going out. |
| Pronoun | Capitals do not follow commas, semicolons or colons except where the following word is a name or proper noun. |
| Aircraft | Concorde, Boeing 747, Fokker, etc. |
| Armed Forces | British Army, Italian Navy, Brazilian Air Force, but army, navy, air force. The Royal Marines, but marine. Ranks are capitalised: Sergeant, Admiral, Lieutenant, etc. |
| The Calendar | Monday, March, Good Friday, the Millennium Dome but the new millennium. |
| Compass Points | north-west, south-south-west, but mysterious East, deep South, frozen North. |
| Days | Christmas Day, Derby Day, New Year’s Day, etc, but happy new year. |
| The Deity | God, Father, Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit, Almighty, Jehovah, Supreme Being, Jesus Christ, Son of Man, Holy Trinity, Redeemer, Saviour, He, Him, Thee, Thou; Virgin Mary, the Virgin, Madonna, the Holy Mother, Our Lady; Allah, Buddha, Muhammad, the Prophet, etc; Holy Bible, New Testament, Book of Common Prayer, Ten Commandments; all names from the Bible. Hades, but hell; heaven but Heaven when referring to the Deity. |
| Diplomatic | Nicaraguan embassy (embassy is usually lower case) |
| Dog Breeds | Capitalised: Afghan hound, Airedale terrier, Basenji, Great Dane, Kerry blue, Labrador, Newfoundland, Pomeranian, Samoyed, Schnauzer, Cairns terrier, Scotch terrier. Lower case: basset hound, bulldog, bull terrier, cocker spaniel, golden retriever, lurcher, pug, poodle, rottweiler. Check a good dictionary for other breeds. |
| Exclamations | Oh! Ahrrgh! Wow! |
| Flora and Fauna | Arab horse, Shetland pony, Montague’s harrier, but hen harrier (caps where proper name is involved). Plants are lower case but with scientific names, orders, classes, families and genuses are capitalised; species and varieties are lc: Agaricus bisporus. |
| Geographical | the West, the East, the Orient, Northern Hemisphere, Third World, British Commonwealth, the Gulf, the Midlands, the Levant, the Continent, the Tropics, the Left Bank, etc, but eastern counties, facing north, oriental life, tropical fruit, northern Britain, western fashions. |
| Headlines | With cap and lc headlines, capitalise nouns, pronouns, verbs and words of four or more letters. Generally, capitalise No, Not, Off, Out, So and Up but not a, and, as, at, but, by, for, if, in, of, on, the, to – except when they begin headlines. Capitalise both parts of hyphenated compounds: Sit-In, Cease-Fire, Post-War. |
| Heavenly Bodies | Mars, Venus, Ursa Major, Halley’s Comet, Southern Cross, Milky Way, etc. |
| History and Historical Names | Cambrian Era, Middle Ages, Elizabethan, the Depression, Renaissance, Year of the Rat, Georgian, Victorian etc. |
| Law and Lords | Lord Chancellor, Black Rod, Master of the Rolls, Lord Privy Seal, Queen’s Counsel. |
| Local | |
| Government | council, but Kent County Council, Enfield Borough Council, Lord Mayor of Manchester. |
| Member of Parliament | member of parliament, but when abbreviated, MP. |
| Nations, Nationalities | Venezuela, Alaska, Brits, Estonians, Sudanese; Arabic, Latin, Hellenic, Parisian. Indian ink, Indian file, Indian clubs but indian summer. French polish, French stick, French kiss, French letter but french window. Morocco but morocco bound. Chinese but chinaware; Turkish bath, Turkish delight. |
| Personification | The family gods were Hope and Charity. |
| Political Parties, terms | Tory, Conservative Party, Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, Communist Party but communist, communism;
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