Do names of seasons get capitalized?

not capitalized, not in english anyways.

lower case.

if the seasons are being used in an allegorical way they would be capitalized.

Can you give an example of allegorical usage? Interesting..

First line of a Shelley poem gives an example of the allegorical:WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

Wonderful quote. Thanks, Dan'l.

Only capitalize the name of the season when the season is being personified (referred to as if a person, or given the attributes of a person).

Just noticed the characterization of Shelley's line "Wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being. . ." The correct literary term is not "allegorical," but rather "apostrophe," which is addressing a non-person, object, quality, or absent person as if it is a present person. An allegory is a literary device where words are used not just for their literal meaning, but for a cohesive scheme of figurative usage. Allegories are a sustained form of metaphor.

Capitalize this!

Proper nouns

Specific persons and things: George W. Bush, the White House, General Motors Corporation.

Specific geographical locations: Hartford, Connecticut, Africa, Forest Park Zoo, Lake Erie, the Northeast, the Southend. However, we do not capitalize compass directions or locations that aren’t being used as names: the north side of the city; we’re leaving the Northwest and heading south this winter. When we combine proper nouns, we capitalize attributive words when they precede place-names, as in Lakes Erie and Ontario, but the opposite happens when the order is reversed: the Appalachian and Adirondack mountains. When a term is used descriptively, as opposed to being an actual part of a proper noun, do not capitalize it, as in “The California deserts do not get as hot as the Sahara Desert.”

Names of celestial bodies: Mars, Saturn, the Milky Way. Do not, howver, capitalize earth, moon, sun, except when those names appear in a context in which other (capitalized) celestial bodies are mentioned. “I like it here on earth,” but “It is further
from Earth to Mars than it is from Mercury to the Sun.

Names of newspapers and journals. Do not, however, capitalize the word the, even when it is part of the newspaper’s title: the Hartford Courant.

Days of the week, months, holidays. Do not, however, capitalize the names of seasons (spring, summer, fall, autumn, winter). “Next winter, we’re traveling south; by spring, we’ll be back up north.”

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/capitals.htm

nop not in English or Spanish

is winter a proper noun

I just read Hossman’s last response here—I’m really glad you wrote this because it made me educate myself about “apostrophe”. That quote does contain apostrophe, but it’s not “Autumn,” it’s “Wind.” Now my question is, what is “Autumn” here? It’s certainly being anthropomorphised, but what figure of speech does that make it and why is it OK to capatilize it?

The non-capitalization of the names of the seasons makes no sense to me. Where did this rule come from? Why capitalize the names of days of the week and names of months yet not the seasons of the year? Did this capitalization practice change at some point? I was always taught that proper nouns were the names of particular (i.e. specific one of kind items) persons, places, or things, and that all proper nouns should be capitalized . The names of the seasons certainly meet this criteria and I, for one, will, as I always have throughtout my 60 yr life, capitlaize them. It bugs me to see the names of the seasons in print in lower case.

What about during the fall I raked leaves. ???? Were you falling while you raked? How confusing!

It is not an apostrophe. An apostrophe is a punctuation mark. It is an apositive – a noun or noun phrase that renames another noun and may include modifiers (adjectives, prepositional phrases). For ex: My mother, Mary Smith, is a nurse. “Mary Smith” is the apositive of “my mother,” a renaming of the noun phrase. As for capitalization, seasons are not capitalized unless they occur in a title – “Winter Catalogue 2010” or the like. As for the falling and raking above, a comma is optional after fall which would clarify, as is a dose of common sense which would also clarify the sentence.