Comments on: Heaven or heaven? http://painintheenglish.com/?p=4246 Forum for the gray areas of the English language Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:26:56 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 hourly 1 By: neil http://painintheenglish.com/?p=4246&cpage=1#comment-10866 neil Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:14:17 +0000 http://painintheenglish.com/?p=4246#comment-10866 You should capitalize Heaven and Hell, just as you would capitalize the place names in other myths. You wouldn't capitalize heavenly and hellish though.<p class="top-comments">Current score: <span class="top-comments-karma" id="karma-10866">0</span> <small>(to vote for this comment, please visit the site)</small></p> You should capitalize Heaven and Hell, just as you would capitalize the place names in other myths.

You wouldn’t capitalize heavenly and hellish though.

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]]> By: Liv http://painintheenglish.com/?p=4246&cpage=1#comment-10795 Liv Sun, 04 Oct 2009 17:42:47 +0000 http://painintheenglish.com/?p=4246#comment-10795 Yes and yes. Heaven and Hell are 'places'. Whether or not they really exist is debatable and yet to be proven (I don't believe either place exists and am not of any denomination of Christianity), but they would still be capitalized as they are proper nouns. Make-believe places in story books are also capitalized, although they do no exist. That said, while I know this, I actually tend not to capitalize them most of the time. I wasn't raised Christian and I never have been Christian, and it feels strange to me to capitalize them. Like I'm giving them some sort of validation in my own life. If anything, I seem them as general ideas, a concept, an idea, a metaphor. It's never come naturally to me to capitalize them and I would have to think three times before doing so. I realize this can be seen as quite disrespectful. I guess I just don't use the words often enough to worry about it much.<p class="top-comments">Current score: <span class="top-comments-karma" id="karma-10795">1</span> <small>(to vote for this comment, please visit the site)</small></p> Yes and yes.
Heaven and Hell are ‘places’. Whether or not they really exist is debatable and yet to be proven (I don’t believe either place exists and am not of any denomination of Christianity), but they would still be capitalized as they are proper nouns. Make-believe places in story books are also capitalized, although they do no exist.

That said, while I know this, I actually tend not to capitalize them most of the time. I wasn’t raised Christian and I never have been Christian, and it feels strange to me to capitalize them. Like I’m giving them some sort of validation in my own life. If anything, I seem them as general ideas, a concept, an idea, a metaphor. It’s never come naturally to me to capitalize them and I would have to think three times before doing so. I realize this can be seen as quite disrespectful. I guess I just don’t use the words often enough to worry about it much.

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]]> By: GG http://painintheenglish.com/?p=4246&cpage=1#comment-10785 GG Sat, 03 Oct 2009 06:26:37 +0000 http://painintheenglish.com/?p=4246#comment-10785 Yes, they are both proper nouns--names of "real" places. In my experience this applies across all of Christianity.<p class="top-comments">Current score: <span class="top-comments-karma" id="karma-10785">2</span> <small>(to vote for this comment, please visit the site)</small></p> Yes, they are both proper nouns–names of “real” places. In my experience this applies across all of Christianity.

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