Capitalisation

Just out of curiousity, has anyone else thought it a little odd that 'human' is the only species that doesn't get to be capitalised? Chiss, Bothan, Shistavenen, human. Speciesism? I cry foul.

 

As do I. The Star Trek novels do the same thing; I haven't taken their editors to task for it yet, but I think I will later today.

(In fact, I can only think of one series of books I've read that's gotten it right: the Babylon 5 novels, or at least the Del Rey ones.)

 

How do they do it in Babylon 5? Capitalised Human, or lower case everyone else? Not sure which I'm shooting for here.

 

the term "droids" isn't capitalized either!

 

How do they do it in Babylon 5? Capitalised Human, or lower case everyone else? Not sure which I'm shooting for here.

Capitalized Human. I think that the general dividing line is nonsentient = lowercase, sentient = uppercase, regardless of planet of origin (Centauri, but spoo). As long as it's consistent, I'm fine. But the SW way isn't consistent.

 

the term "droids" isn't capitalized either!

Yay? Personally, I don't think that "droids" should be capitalized for the same reason that "sentient beings" and "snubfighter" aren't--it's not a race-name, but just another noun.

 

I always thought that human wasn't capitalized because there are so many different groups of humans, with subtle variations. When a specific group of humans is refered to, such as Corellians, it is alweays capitalized. I think the term human could be related to the way we use, for example, the word monkey. It can be used to various species, such as Chimpanzees, Apes, etc. Since it is a general term and not used as actually describe a certain species it would not be capitalized.

 

We are Terrans, obviously that won't work in the GFFA.

However there are other races in the GFFA that are on many other worlds in the galaxy yet their common species name is "capitalized", and for some of the species their name doesn't match the name of the world they originally came from.

For example, "Wookiee", doesn't match with Kashyyyk for instance, and Wookiees even those who may not have been born on Kashyyyk, but one of the other colonies are still called "Wookies", capitalized.

On earth there is no such thing as "near-human". Just human species. Homo Sapien Sapien and Homo Sapien neanderthalis (at least to those anthropologists that consider them to be part of the same branch of the evolutionary chain) are both human species, despite being different species, and having different physical traits..

 

Uh, neither apes nor chimpanzees are monkeys. But I see your point.

 

On earth there is no such thing as "near-human".

heh... there's Michael Jackson (or [insert random individual or group such as lawyers/Texans/sci-fi convention attendees/people of abnormal genetic defects)

so, how does speciation work for artificial life forms? at what point would droids become Droids?
i recall in CoPL that there were some Droids Rights Activists mentioned.

 

i recall in CoPL that there were some Droids Rights Activists mentioned.

Dude, let's not talk about that book except at gunpoint. Please.

 

And what is wrong with CoPL? It's a good book worth talking about.

 

Not entirely correct, there. The Tales of the ... anthologies capitalised Human.

Also, you don't need to capitalise human as you don't for alien. They are broad headings, nothing more, like human, alien and animal.

 

Browsing through CatCW last night I noticed Human is capitalised in that too. I assume the case is the same for all WotC material.

 

Yes, 'Human' is capitalized in the RPG sourcebooks. The non-capital spelling is a less formal version -- it's a normal English word, after all.

 

I can't think of any examples off the top of my head but I seem to remember it was the stats that capitalized Human (almost everything is capitalized in the stats), while on the rare occasion that the articles themselves used human, the word wasn't capitalized. It may be different with each sourcebook and author of course though.