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HomeCommentaryAskAsk An Atheist: Why do you Sometimes Capitalize Atheist?

Ask An Atheist: Why do you Sometimes Capitalize Atheist?

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By Jim Downard 

The following is not meant to be read as a pedantic question. Why do you sometimes capitalize “atheist(s)”?

SPO_House-ad_Ask-an-atheist_0425133I don’t as a rule capitalize atheist(s), at least in my original draft texts. Atheism (we’re at the start of a sentence here, so it gets capitalized that way) is not a doctrine apart from lack of believe in supernatural entities. To what extent style manuals want to gussy it up with a capitalization, that’s not something that troubles me.  Everybody is an atheist regarding all the god(s) they never end up believing in.  Whether it changes much to say that everybody is an Atheist on that, is up to others to worry about.

Jim Downard
Jim Downard
Jim Downard is a Spokane native (with a sojourn in Southern California back in the early 1960s) who was raised in a secular family, so says had no personal faith to lose. He's always been a history and science buff (getting a bachelor's in the former area at what was then Eastern Washington University in the early 1970s).

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