I was always taught that proper nouns should be capitalized.?

Question

When did newspapers stop capitalizing the "P" in president when refering to the President of the United States. Is this now gramattically correct ?

Allow me to clarify my question. In an aritcle in Washington Post.Peter Baker wrote " The president used a White House appearance.....should that "P" have been capitalized ?

Answer 1

Although you did not write the whole sentence, from the beginning few words it does seem that the "p" should be capitalized because it refers to the actual president as a person. If you are referring to the position in general, without respect for who is currently in the role, you do not capitalize it. Of course, lines do get fuzzy sometimes on the last rule, but in your case, it should have been capitalized.

However, it's not the first time the Post has had some difficulty with grammar. I've seen several occasions of fragments that show lack of proofreading.

Good question though!

Answer 2

Grammatically, it's correct not to capitalize "p" in president when you are saying something in the third-person point of view like "He is the president of the company." As a sign of respect, personally I would capitalize the word President in most cases referring to the president of the United States as I am an American citizen. I would expect that if you are introducing the President at a publicized dinner or event where the President was the guest of honor, then the transcript of the event would capitalize the word in every instance as well. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we as active members would always refer to Gordon B. Hinckley, the president of our church, as President with a capital P, in any kind of church setting or publication that came through the Church, as a sign of respect. We understand that secular publications would probably use a lower-case p because those individuals are not Church members and are only considering that the word "president" is written with a lower-case p in most settings. Also, we have a tendency to capitalize "church" when we refer to it as "the Church."

Answer 3

It depends on whether you are referring to the man or the office. The President, the person, is capitalized. Running for president, the office, is not.

Answer 4

capitalize when saying "the President of the United States vetoed the law" but not capitalized when saying "the president vetoed the law".. at least i think so. thats what i was taught.

Answer 5

I think if you refer to a specific president you capitalize it, otherwise you keep it in lower case.

Answer 6

If you are referring to President Bush or President Clinton as a specific president, then yes it is...

Answer 7

Yes it is correct. If you just say the president you would capitalise it, but if you use it as part of a name you would as in President Bush.

Answer 8

The only time you should capitalized the P is when it is not followed by him name or when you are making an indirect statement about him.

Answer 9

If they are referring to Bush ,they probably don't think he deserves a capital.

Answer 10

yeppers. correct. but my constant non-usage of capitalization for the first word of a sentence is totally wrong. wrong wrong wrong. just call me lazy.