Is southern capitalized in this sentence?
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ZoeDecker (
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December 10th, 2014
from iPhone
“He made a speech in front of the southern white men”. Is white or men capitalized?
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8 Answers
If you are talking about the American South, then yes, Southern is probably capitalized. “White” and “men” should not be capitalized.
I am going to say that yes, southern should be capitalized because it is referring to a definite region of a country. No, white men is not capitalized.
“Southern” is capitalized if you mean a man from the U.S. South. Man is lower case.
No. None of those words are proper nouns or proper adjectives in that sentence.
Here’s a good clear explanation about when and when not to capitalize any or all of the
compass points.
Response moderated (Spam)
Southern is a proper noun if it refers to a specific place, such as the South of the USA (or “the Southern United States”, which is used to mean not just the states in the south of the USA, as it doesn’t include California, for instance), and in that case it does get capitalized. (If the sentence were about some place where the South is not a named thing, such as meaning the men come from some place to the south of someplace else, but that place in the south is not called “the South” like it is in the USA, then it wouldn’t be capitalized.)
The words white and men would not be capitalized.
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