Re: the grammar of photographic writers

[Richard Knoppow <dickburk@ix.netcom.com>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ryuji Suzuki" <rs@silvergrain.org>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca>
Sent: Saturday, October 13, 2007 11:05 AM
Subject: the grammar of photographic writers


> However, the spam quoted below reminds me of unnecessary
> capitalization. This is actually a very common mistake 
> among
> writers of photographic processes. Some people 
> unnecessarily
> capitalize names of elements and compounds, e.g., Silver
> Nitrate and Hydroquinone (these should not be 
> capitalized). On
> the other hand, some people fail to capitalize, e.g., 
> metol,
> phenidone and dimezone (these should be capitalized as 
> they
> are trade names).
Lots of snipping...

    I think this may be a modern change. I was taught to 
capitalize the names of both elements and compounds but some 
practice seems to be not to capitalize the compound names, 
as in Sodium carbonate.  If current practice in chemistry is 
not to capitalize chemical names that are not trade names I 
will follow this in the future, its a lot less trouble:-)

---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@ix.netcom.com