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Capital Letters Are Magic: Difference between revisions
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''The Door was The Way.''<br />
''Good.''<br />
''Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn't have a good answer to."''|'''The Electric Monk''', ''[[Dirk
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 [[
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.
Ideally, this will give the concept a simple, descriptive name that doesn't sound too dopey. Unfortunately, this can cause [[Who's
Alongside ordinary words that take on special new meanings, neologisms are frequently capitalized as well. If fantasy characters talk about smeerps instead of Smeerps, then it may throw the reader off. (Even if these characters are Smeerp farmers who wouldn't think of the animals as "special", and who also ride horses instead of Horses.) Well-established fantasy concepts, such as dragons and vampires, don't get this treatment. It seems that lowercase words feel more orthodox and "official", and it's therefore incorrect for a fictional world to have a "new" one without the characters somehow noticing that something is different.
[[Brand Names Are Better]] is another example of the effect. After the "magic" has gone away, you get [[Stuck
Compare [[The Trope Without a Title]] and [[We Will Use Wiki Words in
{{examples}}
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* [[Exalted|Essence]]
* [[Star Wars|The Force]]
* [[The Wheel of Time
* [[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 40000|The Warp]]
* [[Final Fantasy|The Crystal(s)]]
* '''[[
* [[Myst|The Art]]
* [[His Dark Materials|Dust]]
* [[
* [[Highlander
* [[In Nomine
* [[Belgariad|The Will and The Word]]
* [[The Bible
* [[Fine Structure
* [[God]]
* [[Keys to
* [[Realm of the Elderlings
* [[Useful Notes/Taoism|The Way]]
* [[Seekers of the Sky|The Word]]
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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 [[
** 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 (
** Likewise, capitalization serves to distinguish sentient hominids of [[Ring World]], 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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* [[Powers That Be|The Powers That Be]]
* [[Nodwick|The Powers What Is]]
* ''[[Keys to
* [[Dan and
* [[The Sandman|The Endless]]
* And, in possibly the least creative example ever: [[Worldwar
* [[The Seventh Tower|The Chosen]]
* Originally, [[Starcraft|the Zerg and the Protoss]], although they were knocked down to lowercase letters later on, because real-life species names aren't capitalized.
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* 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 [[Discworld
** 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]].
* ''[[Keys to
** 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).
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* Used quite a bit in the ''[[Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms]]'' series. The Tradition is, like the Force, always capitalized, as are many roles and patterns.
* 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.
* ''[[LIS_DEAD]]'' has a fair list of these, from Him to the Agents of the Organization
* '''Magykal''' words in ''[[
* [[Discworld]]'s Death {{smallcaps|always speaks in small caps.}}
* "The Change" in ''[[
* [[Useful Notes/Christianity|Christians]], and some editions of [[
{{reflist}}
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