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e.e. cummings would probably recommend "soft.WARE."
AFAIK, the general rule is that proper nouns are capitalized, which is
simply to point out that your marketing department *already* broke the
general rule when they came up with the dopey product name. It's similar
to the now common company names with capital letters stuck in the middle
-- PriceWaterhouseCooper, for example -- which are treated more like
trademarks or logos than as grammatical entities.
soft.WARE at the beginning of sentences will probably confuse and at
least irritate your customers, but hey, that's what Marketing's best at,
isn't it?
Stuart Rogers
Technical Communicator
Phoenix Geophysics Limited
Toronto, ON, Canada
+1 (416) 491-7340 x 325
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-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-techwr-l-88731 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
[mailto:bounce-techwr-l-88731 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com] On Behalf Of Ternes,
Andreas
Sent: November 8, 2002 7:59 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: capitalization of proper names
Is it soft.WARE or Soft.WARE?
I know that rewriting a sentence is the best option, but I want to know
the general rule. And I found nothing about capitalization of proper
names at the beginning of a sentence in the CMOS.
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