>William S. Lear wrote: > >>I have one final question. I'm not very consistent in my treatment of >>the words "black", "blacks", "white", "whites", etc. when referring to >>black persons, black "culture" (I still don't know what this is exactly), >>etc. Is it the accepted practice to capitalize these words? > >For some reason, it's popular in PC copyediting circles to capitalize Black >but not white. I've never understood the reason for this. I asked editors >at two now-defunct publications, the Guardian and CrossRoads, why they did >this, and neither could explain it. > >And another style issue: why is African American generally not hyphenated >but Italian-American is? > >Doug > >PS: LBO house style is to capitalize neither and hyphenate both. My AP stylebook is 17 years old and when it was published they hyphenated Afro-American (apparently African American was not in use at that time), lower-cased black as a synonym for Negro and white as a synonym for Caucasian and did not address ethnic groups such as Italian Americans. I lower-case black and white when referring to races and only hyphenate ethnic groups when the term modifies something else, such as Italian-American businessman. Otherwise the person is an Italian American, African American and so on. But I think one should be consistent in the use of these terms. So what do you call people of Latin American descent? Latino, Hispanic, Latin American? Or do you try to break it down to where they came from? And what do you call "Anglos," which I've always found a little offensive, being of Irish descent? European Americans? -- Jim Cullen ---------------------------------------- THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST James M. Cullen, Editor P.O. Box 150517, Austin, Texas 78715-0517 Phone: 512-447-0455 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page: http://www.eden.com/~reporter ----------------------------------------
