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Capital Letters Are Magic: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"The door was the way to... to...''
''The Door was The Way.''
''Good.''
''Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn't have a good answer to."''|'''The Electric Monk''', ''[[Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency]]''}}
One of the hardest parts of making a fantasy or science fiction world can be names. Not just for people, but for metaphysical concepts, alien races or awe-inspiring devices/weapons. When writers don't want to make up a new word, they'll often take a short, evocative term and capitalize it. The practice is still so commonplace that [[J. R. R. Tolkien|JRR Tolkien]] (who was a language professor at a respected university) decided to use a trick of combining
In universe, a character may comment on how they can "hear" the Capital Letters. Of course, this is easily explained as proper nouns have inflections, pauses, and emphasis that normal speech does not.
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* [[Young Wizards|The Speech]], [[Young Wizards|The Powers That Be]], [[Young Wizards|The Lone Power]]
* [[DC Comics|The Source, The Blue, The Red, and The Green]]
* [[Warhammer
* [[Final Fantasy|The Crystal(s)]]
* '''[[GaoGaiGar|THE POWER]]'''
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** Also the Grunts, Jackals, Drones, Hunters, Engineers, Brutes, Elites, and Prophets, which all have non-English species names anyway
*** Unggoy, Kig-Yar, Yanme'e, Mgalekgolo (Lekgolo being colonies not integrated into suits or machines), Huragok, Jiralhanae, Sangheili, and San 'Shyuum if you're curious.
* The Forsaken from [[Warcraft]]
** Likewise, the Scourge.
* The Eternals from [[Marvel Comics]]
* The Neverborn and the Primordials from ''[[Exalted]]'', as well as the titular Exalted. Lunar and Solar castes also get a rather negative form of this treatment from the Immaculate Order, with titles such as the Deceivers, the Blasphemous, the Frenzied, etc...
* [[Older Than Print]]: [[The Fair Folk]] being from medieval European folklore.
* Gregory Maguire's ''[[Wicked (novel)|Wicked]]'' makes an important distinction between animals and [[Funny Animal|Animals]].
** Likewise, capitalization serves to distinguish sentient hominids of [[Ringworld]], such as Hanging People or Grass Giants, from non-sentient ones such as vampires. Subverted in that, while this convention is used in the (English) text of the last two novels, it's stated in-character that the trade-language of Ringworlders actually uses a ''prefix'' to tell them apart.
* The [[Fish People|Forevers]] from [[Ayreon]]
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* And, in possibly the least creative example ever: [[Worldwar|The Race]].
* [[The Seventh Tower|The Chosen]]
* Originally, [[
* ''[[Mass Effect]]'': not most species, but the Protheans, the Collectors, and ''especially'' {{smallcaps|the Reapers}}.
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* White Wolf seems to be in love with this trope, and any RPG they publish will have multiple instances of this. Aside from the ''[[Exalted]]'' examples already listed above, we have the Beast and Vitae from Vampire, the Wyrm, the Weaver, and the Wyld from Werewolf, the Second Breath and the Wyld again from Exalted, Legend, Fate, Knacks, Birthrights, and Scions from Scion, and numerous other examples.
** Lampshaded in the nWoD ''[[Mage: The Awakening]]'' rulebook intro:
{{quote|
* From a Naruto [[Fanfic]]: "Capital letters were very useful when dealing with Gaara. They helped to distinguish between sand, which got in your shorts, and [[Calling Your Attacks|Sand]], which could kill you."
* ''[[Geneforge]]'': the Shapers create and modify living organisms by Shaping.
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** This is still the custom in a number of languages, most notably German.
** Also seen in works attempting to [[Antiquated Linguistics|imitate their style.]]
* Used frequently by Katherine Kurtz in her [[Deryni]] works to distinguish magically-enhanced things/processes from analogous ordinary ones (healing vs. Healing, veil vs. Veil). Also used in particular phrases coined to describe magical objects and processes, such as Mind Seeing, Truth Reading, Truth Saying, Transfer Portal.
* More 'official' than 'magic, but ''Cryptonomicon'', by [[Neal Stephenson]], has a passage in which the main character navigated a small island. It is so small, in fact, that there is only one of most things-hence titles such as 'the Car', 'the Street', and 'the Squeegee'.
* [[Terry Pratchett]] also uses this, for example in [[
** This could have been the name of the forest, though, in which case it would have been justified.
* The [[Sci Fi]] Channel's miniseries ''[[The Lost Room]]'' is based around a series of about one hundred items called Objects that possess strange properties. Objects featured include The Key, The Pen, The Glass Eye and The Bus Ticket.
* [[Wiki Words]].
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** The Front Door, Nothing, The House, The Will... he murders it.
* The Fence of [[The Amory Wars]] is another name for Heaven, where the Prise hang out (another name for angels).
* In ''[[
* The <<Sword>>, The <<Blood>>, and to <<See>> in [[Girls Love]] [[Visual Novel]] ''[[Akai Ito]]'' and its sort-of sequel ''[[Aoi Shiro]]''. {{spoiler|The <<Sword>> [[Subverted Trope|has a proper name]] though, it's [[Orochi|Ame-no-Murakumo]].}}
* Doesn't enter the above category for being a group instead of a race: ''[[Lost]]'' has the Others.
* ''[[Oracle of Tao]]'' does a combination of science and magic, and pre-existing scientific terms are lowercase while that of Magic are uppercase. A magical portal joining two worlds is a Gate, the world of nonbeing is the Void, and Light and Darkness refer to balance of the two (and since it is Taoism-based, they are normally coupled). Then we have various scientific processes like cloning, which are lowercase for the mundane science, and capitalized for Cloning magic. Likewise, when referring to a light or dark room, these two are lowercase. There seem to [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief|some inconsistencies in this though]]...
* Supreme Commander has a fictional religion called, "The Way."
** So does (Gene Roddenberry's) Andromeda, though it seems like theirs is based on/inspired by Taoism.
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* Storyteller Mark Lewis sometimes remarks that when he first read [[Winnie the Pooh]] he noticed that some words were capitalized even though they weren't proper nouns. Much later he asked a British friend why these words were capitalized, and said friend responded "Because they are Important."
* The [[Super Mario Bros.]] powerups are always capitalized. It's not a mushroom, it's a Super Mushroom, it's not a fire flower, it's a Fire Flower, etc.
* ''[[
* '''Magykal''' words in ''[[Septimus Heap]]'' are always capitalized.
* [[Discworld]]'s Death {{smallcaps|always speaks in small caps.}}
* "The Change" in ''[[The Last Dove]]'' to refer to the ability of all the characters to shapeshift.
* [[Christianity|Christians]], and some editions of [[The Bible]], often capitalize pronouns that refer to [[God]] or [[Jesus]] to show reverence to Him. Other editions of the Bible drop the practice except to distinguish between God or Jesus and another male character in the same scene.
* People draw a distinction between ideologies and the political parties that have appropriated the names of the ideologies. For example, there are "small-l libertarians" and "big-L Libertarians".
* In ''[[Who Moved My Cheese?]]'', "Cheese" and "New Cheese" are written with initial caps when referring to the littlepeople because "Cheese" represents what people desire in life.
* In ''[[Who Cut the Cheese?]]'' by Stilton Jarlsberg, the first pages of the story lampshade the practice of writing "Cheese" with initial caps for extra symbolism.
* There's a conspiracy theory about the [http://activistnyc.wordpress.com/2007/12/24/united-states-corporation-and-the-district-of-columbia-organic-act-of-1871-more-anti-banker-misinfo-disinfo/ DC Organic Act of 1871], a law passed soon after the Fourteenth Amendment that reorganized the government of [[Washington, DC]], claiming that the United States has been [http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/us_corporation.htm transformed into a corporation] called "THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT" under control of foreign bankers, which is somehow distinct from the "united States of America" under the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
** This particular conspiracy theory gets more hilarious if you're aware of the sovereign citizens movement and "freeman on the land". These domestic terrorists (as they are considered by the FBI) attempt to use the above theory in legal situations by claiming because their name is in all caps on a document, claiming this is their "legal" person, and that it does not apply to their actual person (spelled normally), as is there is an actual difference or that this even has legal weight. Needless to say, this has yet to be taken seriously anywhere, and is considered contempt of court.
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[[Category:Text Tropes]]
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:Painting the Medium]]
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