Daily Archives: March 4, 2010

Theological capitalization

One of the things you really notice in copyediting theological works is different ways in which authors like to do their capitalizing. This is sometimes fine, like in a given book an author may just always capitalize “Gift” because of how the term is being used. However, for other terms it can get a little weird. Is it Triune God or triune God? And, foremost in my mind right now is the question of why almost everyone capitalizes Eucharist but leaves baptism lowercase. That one I really don’t get. Obviously they’re both proper nouns, but inevitably they are capitalized differently.

My conspiracy theory answer for this that may very well be true is that in much of theological discourse today there is excessive emphasis on eucharistic theology, especially in regard to ecumenism and an abysmal neglect of baptismal theology across the board. Thus we turn eucharist into a proper noun and leave baptism a generic category like “preaching” or “worship.”

Amazon revisited

Some of you may remember a couple years ago when I posted a tirade about Amazon and their attempt to strong arm print on demand publishers into using their own printing service. Well, I did some checking to see whatever happened with that and it turns out that an anti-trust suit was filed by rightfully upset publishers and, unable to get the suit dismissed Amazon ended up settling. Good on the publishers for standing up to them and not letting themselves be swatted around.

Now, this being said I should make a confession. Some months ago I quietly started buying used books, occasionally, from Amazon. It seems like there’s no escape from the beast. And, given that they’ve backed down in their attempt to fuck with the publishing industry, at least in this respect, I seem to have found a way to assuage my conscience a little.

So, with all this in mind I’ve decided that I will start linking back up to Amazon (and the publisher of course) when I review or write about books. The simple fact of the matter is that most readers will buy from Amazon and I’m not helping authors or publishers out by not linking to Amazon. So there you have it. I’ve sold out just a little bit more. But if people get more books because of it, then at least some good has been done.

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