pokermind wrote:Proper Nouns (Names of people places religions Etc.) should always be capitalized in English for proper grammar. It's not new but old
We rarely get to catch you in such a mistake
Poker
Yes, NAMES of people and religions, direct and indirect, but not nonspecific referrals that are not names. Followers are not the religion, nor are they specific persons.
Moslem/muslim is not the name of either people or religion. It´s what you call followers of a religion.
Nor is it a specific church or branch that would need it, nor is it a title.
Ie if i refer to "christians" in general, capitalisation is not required. It is however still common because the word derives directly from "Christianity".
It is however proper to capitalise when it refers to a specific person(or group ), so if i point at a group and write they are Christians, that should be correct, but if referring to nonspecific persons, then it´s more proper not to use capitalisation.
You could write that "Sunni and Shia have many moslem worshippers". And it should be correct.
Would you capitalise "captains"?
I´ll borrow an example from the wiki link:
Military ranks follow the same capitalization guidelines as given under titles of people above. For example, Brigadier General John Smith, but John Smith was a brigadier general.It´s only the last 3-4 years that i´ve seen dictionaries and other places starting to add that capitalising what followers of a religion are called is also correct. Previously, that was specifically mentioned as incorrect in several places. Except when it is used instead of or referring a
specific person, group or denomination.