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If I understood the original question, he wasn't asking about
capitalizing for emphasis. If assembly is the 'name' of the area, then
it needs to be capitalized. If assembly areas is generic, then no
capitalization is needed.
Bill Burns writes (edited):
>I have a question about capitalization of proper nouns used as
>adjectives.
> EXAMPLE: The MSDS book is kept in the assembly areas in the
> Employee Right-to-Know stations.
>
>I have been treating "assembly" strictly as an adjective here.
>Although using initial lowercase here could be viewed as consistent
>grammatically (it's no longer a proper noun), it appears inconsistent
>visually. Also, the term itself creates problems. Are these areas
>in Assembly, or they areas in which >product assembly takes place?
>
>_The_Gregg_Reference_Manual_ and the _Handbook_of_Technical_Writing_
>are unclear on this issue.
Visually, your sentence is readable. If you put in one more
capitalized word, it would slow down the reader. Besides, if the
reference guides are unclear, you have the freedom to set your own
conventions before things become "standard".
I'd go with lower case every time. After editing work written by
engineers in which every other word was capitalized for emphasis, I
don't capitalizing anything (unless I have to follow standards.)
