For those interested in (the English) language

[karohemd]

Fry's English Delight is back on Radio 4. The first episode, So Wrong It's Right is available on iplayer.

On the subject, shouldn't the "It's" in the title be spelt in lower case because it has only three letters (even two plus an appended and truncated "is")?

Comments

[oh-kimberley.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure when it comes to titles, it is acceptable to capitalise all beginning letters if one prefers. I don't understand it but, for myself, it keeps the perfectionist in me happy.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

It would certainly be easier. :)
I seem to remember a rule stating that only words longer than three letters should be capitalised in titles but I'm too lazy (and busy) to look it up.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I seem to remember a rule

This is one of those areas where are no universally-agreed rules of style, only individual publishers' preferences. Which sometimes they will try to give the force of rules, but they should probably be resisted ;-)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

There are two extremes of thought on this -- one is that all words that are not prepositions or conjunctions should be capitalized in titles, no matter how short. So "It" would always be, and so even would the auxiliary verb "To" in eg. "Learning To Fly". This was in place at the first publisher I worked at.

The other extreme is a system where all short words except "I" are uncapitalized, regardless of their syntactic function. This is sadly quite commonly seen, despite it being basically nonsense.

Most professional publishing houses have a style that's somewhere inbetween. The Oxford style I mostly worked with leaves a great deal up to the editor's discretion on what looks 'right', so the way the BBC have it there would be OK because the little i in the middle of "So Wrong it's Right" would look awkward.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. I figured it would be one of those.
Just for aesthetic reasons, I'd prefer the BBC example, too.

[mr-malk.livejournal.com]

Thanks for flagging that one Ozzy, I'd have missed it otherwise. Wonderful stuff!