Orthographic payback is a bitch.<\/p>\n
For years–starting when I wrote for Gnosis<\/em><\/a> in the 1980s–I was one of those pushing for the capitalization of the words Witch and Pagan when used to describe first, the followers of the new, self-consciously created polytheistic mystery religion and, second, Pagan as a more general term for both old and new polytheism.<\/p>\n When I wrote The Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics<\/a> in the early 1990s, I won the capitalization battle over “Paganism,” but lost on changing BC\/AD to BCE\/CE.<\/p>\n It should be noted that some Pagan scholars prefer “pagan,” either because they are English or because they see “paganism” as a way of being religion in which people of all faiths participate. For instance, making a pilgrimage to a saint’s tomb is “pagan” in Michael York’s view.<\/a><\/p>\n But now I am editing and laying out an anthology intended as a college textbook on world religions. And almost everyone<\/em> has their capitalization quirks.<\/p>\n The writer on Judaism wants write not merely “Israel” but its full diplomatic name: “State of Israel.” Oddly enough, she does not insist on “Federal Republic of Germany.”<\/p>\n The writer on Mormonism wants to capitalize priesthood, as in Aaronic Priesthood, while all the other contributors lowercase it, e.g., Zoroastrian priesthood.<\/p>\n The writer on Islam has a whole capitalization list for me too. The Baha’i wants Baha’i Faith capitalized–which is fine–but also “faith” when it stands alone. And of course the expert on Christianity wants Church to be “up,” even though that runs contrary to the stylebook, which specifies, for instance, “the early church.”<\/p>\n And so on.<\/p>\n Unfortunately the The Chicago Manual of Style<\/a> does not pronounce on all these issues (except “church”), sending me to other sources, such as the The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion<\/a>, in order to try to keep the book consistent.<\/p>\n Wouldn’t it be easier to handle these issues in German, with its capitalization of all nouns<\/a>, or in Spanish, which is, as we editors say, very “down style<\/a>“?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Orthographic payback is a bitch. For years–starting when I wrote for Gnosis in the 1980s–I was one of those pushing for the capitalization of the words Witch and Pagan when used to describe first, the followers of the new, self-consciously created polytheistic mystery religion and, second, Pagan as a more general term for both old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[24,15,12],"class_list":["post-1113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-christianity","tag-islam","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-hX","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6128,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6128","url_meta":{"origin":1113,"position":0},"title":"Orthography and the Modern Pagan","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 2, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"One thing I did at the recent American Academy of Religion annual meeting was stop by the University of Chicago Press booth and get the name of the managing editor of the press's Manual of Style, which is the holy book, all 1,028 pages of it, for editors of academic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7995,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7995","url_meta":{"origin":1113,"position":1},"title":"A Small Victory in the Struggle for the Capital P","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 29, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I was contacted some time ago to write an article on contemporary Paganism for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion, now in production. After the usual writerly procrastination, I cranked out my 8,000 words (or whatever it was) and sent it in. Then, in April, the copyedited version arrived for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"scholarship\"","block_context":{"text":"scholarship","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=scholarship"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10938,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10938","url_meta":{"origin":1113,"position":2},"title":"How Do You Write to a Pagan Author?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 7, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"I got this email last week from a publishing firm that I had never heard of. I did my due diligence \u2014 I looked at their website and read an article about them from Publishers Weekly. Apparently their nonfiction business model is to do deep data analysis and see what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"publishing\"","block_context":{"text":"publishing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=publishing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":285,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=285","url_meta":{"origin":1113,"position":3},"title":"Pomegranate updates I spent a\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 17, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Pomegranate updates I spent a few minutes yesterday on updating the old Pomegranate Web site. SInce all the activity is at Equinox Publishing's new site, the old one exists mainly to sell back issues. The first five volumes of quarterly issues, less one--19 issues all together--are available on CD-ROM in\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2371,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2371","url_meta":{"origin":1113,"position":4},"title":"Seeking AAR Pagan Studies Papers","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"After reading the Call for Papers, now is the time to submit proposals for the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group's sessions at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting. We have two topics this year: What does Pagan studies offer to academic analysis and critique? How do historical constructions of \u201cpaganism\u201d\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":676,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=676","url_meta":{"origin":1113,"position":5},"title":"Let's drop 'Neopagan'Back in the\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 11, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Let's drop 'Neopagan'Back in the 1970s, when Tim (now Oberon) Zell was editing Green Egg (America's leading Pagan zine at the time), \"Neopagan\" or \"Neo-Pagan\" was a cutting-edge term for a collection of religious movements from Wicca to Egyptian Reconstructionism.More recently, the British Pagan scholar Graham Harvey has suggested dropping\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}