"Earth"

[Zetetic]

Tedious orthographic prescriptivism thread, apologies, but I don't know who else to subject this to.

Has there been a trend towards referring to the planet on which live as "the earth" rather than "the Earth"?

A particular blight of subtitles, it seems to me. I suppose there's some slight ambiguity in phrases like "where on Earth", in that you might suppose the idiom is referring to actual mud and soil rather than the planet (as a metonym for the universe, perhaps).

Can't get at this through most sources (Google Trends, most corpuses?) since they tend to obliterate capitalisation as part of a standardisation.

Can't deny I said this would be tedious.

[Buelligan]

[tag]The Shamen Enter Thread And Give Everyone A Little e[/tag]

[Replies From View]

Has there been a trend towards referring to the planet on which live as "the earth" rather than "the Earth"?

Hard to tell.  Are they pronounced differently?

[Buelligan]

[Zetetic]

Hard to tell.  Are they pronounced differently?

Hard to tell.

[Squink]

The job of copyeditor is now null and void, so yeah, things like this are almost certainly happening more.

[QDRPHNC]

I think Earth is a stupid name for a planet. Like, just naming something for the thing it's made from. Oh where's the next space mission going, it's going to The Gas. Stupid.

[alan nagsworth]

I think Earth is a stupid name for a planet. Like, just naming something for the thing it's made from. Oh where's the next space mission going, it's going to The Gas. Stupid.

Hang on, if this is true, then why the fuck has it taken us so long to figure out the specific structural makeup of a certain neighbouring planet, when it's blatant as fuck that it's made of chocolate with a caramel and nougat core? All I'm saying is I can't wait till we colonise that, if you know what I mean!! Heh heh!!

[biggytitbo]

I think Earth is a stupid name for a planet. Like, just naming something for the thing it's made from. Oh where's the next space mission going, it's going to The Gas. Stupid.

What is Uranus made of?

[king_tubby]

[Buelligan]

Weird how its parents chose an English name really.

[machotrouts]

I've been having vague doubts for a while that "Earth" exists as a proper noun at all, and I've been refusing to confront this with myself. Every time I came to type "Earth" in a text, I'd think "is it Earth, or earth, is Earth even a thing, you know what I'll just rewrite it" and that was that. I'd not considered it for more than 3 seconds until this thread forced me to reflect. I think this was not an issue I had in my past, and it's very plausible that it derives from a wider increase in miscapitalisation, a subconscious infiltration of ambient earth usage in my environment. Glad I could help

[pancreas]

Have to hand it to you, if I'd started a thread on my latest maths paper it would have been more interesting, at least to me.

Nevertheless here's a thought to fuck everything right out of the water.

Earth in German in Erde which is also the name of the female personification of The Earth, something like a goddess but possibly more like a Titan. WOW.

[Dex Sawash]

St Eddie has let himself go old

[Johnny Yesno]

Nevertheless here's a thought to fuck everything right out of the water.

Which is actually what this planet should be called, when you think about it.

[garnish]

Has there been a trend towards referring to the planet on which live as "the earth" rather than "the Earth"?

Ever? No.

[Sin Agog]

Anyone who refuses to capitalise the e is a flagrant Gaia-basher.

[Zetetic]

Ever? No.

Every time I came to type "Earth" in a text, I'd think "is it Earth, or earth, is Earth even a thing, you know what I'll just rewrite it" and that was that. ...

Hmm.

[Cerys]

Middle Earth, shurely?

[JesusAndYourBush]

I think Earth is a stupid name for a planet. Like, just naming something for the thing it's made from. Oh where's the next space mission going, it's going to The Gas. Stupid.

You've got it the wrong way round, the planet was named first.

[QDRPHNC]

You've got it the wrong way round, the planet was named first.

I'm not sure that you're correct, there.

[colacentral]

Another shit thing is that our moon is just called the moon. Because it's made out of moon.

[Mister Six]

Slavoj Žižek's let himself go to a Russian prison.

[Cuellar]

EEaaaaaarrrrrth

[marquis_de_sad]

I dunno if it (de-capitalisation) is more common now. But I found a study that suggests that having a capital letter at the beginning of proper nouns helps with reading comprehension, at least when it comes to the ability to "preview" what one is about to read. So when people drop the capital they are not only being lazy, but actively unhelpful. mook, if he wasn't already, should be imprisoned.

Interestingly, one scholar has attempted to distinguish expressions like "the Earth" from non-descriptive proper names like "David" by calling them "capitalised descriptions".

[Zetetic]

Interesting, by the standards of the thread.

There are few things on earth

Hmm.

[garnish]

Interesting, by the standards of the thread.

Fuck

[touchingcloth]

The earth.

[touchingcloth]

The wind.

[touchingcloth]

The fire.