Capitalisation question

[Laura Corin]

Calvin wants to use the quotation "the eye of heaven" at the beginning of a sentence. I'm assuming he needs to capitalise the 't' even though it's lower case in the original. His sentence runs,

"the eye of heaven" is the sun.

Should he write it as,

"The eye of heaven" is the sun.

or,

"(T)he eye of heaven" is the sun.

Thank you

Laura

[angela in ohio]

The first, I believe. :)

[cajun.classical]

I was an editor at a publishing house for several years; here's my professional opinion, with the following caveats:

1. This would be the American way of doing it.
2. These rules, unfortunately, are not set in stone. A lot simply depends on which style book you are following.

That said, the sentence should read: "[T]he eyes of heaven..." Use brackets to indicate a change you have made to an original source quotation.
Hope that helps.

[Laura Corin]

That said, the sentence should read: "[T]he eyes of heaven..." Use brackets to indicate a change you have made to an original source quotation.
Hope that helps.

I know that round brackets are used more in the UK than in the US, but I'm going to have to find a UK authority for this particular case. My British grammar text doesn't cover this issue.

Thanks again,

Laura

[Lorna]

I do know that in England square brackets are used to indicate an editorial note. For example, if you need to add 'spelling in context' then one would write [sic] to show that the addition is that of the writer of the article and was not part of the original quote.

[Laura Corin]

That's good to know - I've only every used round brackets. Do people hand-write square brackets or are they just a printer's/word processing tool?

Laura

[Lorna]

I have used them in hand-written essays for university.

[Ellie]

That's good to know - I've only every used round brackets. Do people hand-write square brackets or are they just a printer's/word processing tool?

Laura

We write parenthesis (.) and brackets [.] as well as braces {.}

[Linda in NM]

nt