Pet Peeve with a capital B

In my general writing, I have to admit that I am not a grammar, spelling, or punctuation queen. I know the rules - but when I am just typing something off I fall into the pitfalls of the over-computerized, text message and e-mail generation in which we live - no caps, no spell check, no complete sentences. Still - there is a time and a place for properly punctuated and extrapolated thought.

One of those places should be online articles. I write occasionally for Helium, when I have time and either feel strongly about a particular subject, know enough about it to write a decent article in a short amount of time, or think I know enough about the subject to earn money for it.

In this way, I've ended up with quite a few articles in the Religion and Spirituality Channel. Helium is like a writers co-op - you provide feedback on articles rating them good or bad and the more you rate the more profit share you get. It's in their interest to have you rate articles and so they refer you to articles in channels you have written for - so I see a wide breadth of "Religion and Spirituality"

Which brings me to my Pet Peeve with a capital B

A growing number of people are failing to capitalize Bible.

While it is true that the Bible, when used adjectivally (such as biblical or Julia Child's cookbook is the bible of for French cooking in America) whenever it is used as a noun referring to the Word of God - it should under ALL circumstances be capitalized.

Says who?

Any style guide you refer to

http://www.libraryonline.com/default.asp?pID=48

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/592/1/

More disturbingly, I have also been seeing this trend in some online magazines and newspapers.

I believe this directly reflects society's opinion that the Bible is not the Word of God - in fact, in some feminist theological writing I was recently reviewing to help Alister with his paper - the Author deliberately began using the term Bible as a lowercase word in her later writings, reflecting her own progression in view the Bible as a non-sacred text.

But guess what - no matter what your opinion of the Bible is - to not capitalize it is wrong because it refers to the name of a book, thus making it a proper noun. It would be just as wrong to talk about reading the catcher in the rye, war and peace, or horton hears a who (which, by the way is doubly wrong because not only is it the title of a book, but also contains a 1st name which must be capitalized as well).

So it's Bible - with a capital B