Of course there is intelligent extraterrestrial life. The clues are all around us. Hell, they even report the results of their Earth exploration on Wikipedia:
“Furthermore, humans have developed culture and technology (such as music, telephone and radio) that allows them to generate, record, transmit, and broadcast sound.”
Seen on Butterflies and Wheels: hilarious clbuttic shenanigans on the American Family Association web site:
What do you do when you start a sentence with a word that is conventionally written with a lower-case letter? Do you capitalize it, or not?
Sometimes the written convention that governs a particular word is so entrenched that it seems bizarre to deviate from it, such as in the case of names like iPod; “IPod” just doesn’t look right to me, ever. But then, starting a sentence with a capital letter is a pretty entrenched convention too (at least for those without computer science degrees ;)). Some argue that conventions for trademarks, for example, should be respected, whereas others argue that formal grammar conventions take priority over all other types of convention.
Some time back I emailed Michael Quinion (who runs the excellent World Wide Words site) and asked him his opinion about this, but I’ve yet to receive a reply (c’mon Michael, it’s an interesting question…)
If you have any thoughts on the matter that you’d like to share, please leave a comment below.