Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Stupid Question

This is topic Stupid Question in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by dspellweaver (Member # 2133) on :

I probably should aready know this but I don't. So I'm going to ask anyway. :P

I'm writing a short story in which one of the main characters is noting the race of three other characters she comes in contact with. She is not from Earth, so when she describes them, she uses the official government terms i.e. Caucasian, Hispanic.

My question is, when I type the titles into MSword, spellcheck automatically changes them so that they are capitalized. Is this correct? It looks weird and I think it draws more attention to their race than the casual observation I'm going for. I tried to change them to lowercase but the computer yells at me and tells me I'm wrong.

Any grammarians out there that can help me out?

Posted by Heresy (Member # 1629) on :

It is correct to capitalize it. It's a proper name, so it should be capitalized. Also, just to be sure, I checked my copy of a caps and spelling guide, and it lists Caucasian as being captalized.

Heresy

Posted by mikemunsil (Member # 2109) on :

There are no stupid questions.

This doesn't directly answer your question, but in the case where you want to keep MSWord from auto-correcting your capitalization, you can force Word to behave.

quote:
Prevent AutoCorrect from making specific capitalization and spelling corrections
On the Tools menu, click AutoCorrect.
Show Me
Click Exceptions.

Do one or more of the following to prevent AutoCorrect from:
Capitalizing a word you type after a specific abbreviation. Click the First Letter tab, and then type the abbreviation (including the period) in the Don't capitalize after box.

Correcting a word that contains mixed uppercase and lowercase letters. Click the INitial CAps tab, and then type the word in the Don't correct box.

Correcting a spelling error. Click the Other Corrections tab, and then type the misspelled word in the Don't correct box.
Click Add, and then click Close.

[This message has been edited by mikemunsil (edited February 26, 2005).]

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

What Heresy said. Also, you can just check a dictionary (that's a good idea anyway).

On a different note, you can go ahead and show that a person from a different planet might have a bit of trouble getting used to the process of discerning our ideas of racial distinctions, or might even find it impossible. Two examples, I sometimes have a lot of trouble figuring out race just from the looks of a person (it's one reason that I'm leery about describing people in terms of race, I've just gotten it wrong too many times--sometimes with results that were not hilarious at the time). And in some stories you have aliens that don't see in the visible spectrum, an alien that saw in ultraviolet or infrared would have a heck of a time making out skin colors that are obvious to us (not to mention the difficulty for an alien that didn't have light based vision at all). Okay, that wasn't an example as such

Posted by dspellweaver (Member # 2133) on :

Thanks for your input, I really appreciate it especially the info on how make MSword bend to my will. Bwahahahaha...

Survivor, that's not a bad idea. These aliens have been around humans before on different planets but none quite like the ones they find on Earth. Hmmmmm....I can definitely play with that.

Thanks