Kipling’s Upper Case

Abstract

Capital letters had a powerful attraction for Kipling and he used them liberally throughout his writing career. Many of them are perfectly orthodox in so far as they follow the convention of heralding proper names with initial capital letters, a convention the modern limits of which were well established by Kipling’s time and have not in principle undergone significant change since then.* In practice, however, the decision whether or not to capitalise may not be straightforward. Capital letters can be seen but not heard, and it makes a difference whether one writes ‘god’ or ‘God’, ‘death’ or ‘Death’, ‘the party’ or ‘the Party’ and so on. There is room for dispute as to whether a particular name is always proper or only sometimes and, if so, when.