so you can stop now
January 19, 2005 12:36 AM   Subscribe

Newsflash! 'E.E. Cummings', not 'e.e. cummings' (via the inexorable LanguageLog)
posted by BuddhaInABucket (24 comments total)
 
Damn hipsters and their uncapitalizing of E.E. Cummings' name!
posted by TwelveTwo at 12:45 AM on January 19, 2005


This is atrociously pedantic and ironically antipodal to cummings' legacy of rule-breaking in favor of exuberant affirmations of linguistic play.
posted by ori at 1:11 AM on January 19, 2005


no It's
nOt -- i'LL
nEVER
Get useD
TO it!
posted by paladin at 1:15 AM on January 19, 2005


The shift keys dodge the bullet once again! Thank you for this, BIAB.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 1:18 AM on January 19, 2005


Oh, and ori, as TFA mentions, "...Cummings could do what he wanted to do about capitals, but that we should follow standard forms, since we are not poets in this. Lower case forms when used by the writer for his own name may imply humility, but when used by others for his name may imply condescension."
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 1:20 AM on January 19, 2005


e.e. cummings
Hung by His own Petard
Ha hA!
posted by seanyboy at 2:10 AM on January 19, 2005


I shall reconsider all further attempts at sarcasm.
posted by punilux at 2:22 AM on January 19, 2005


Yay!

(Not that I care so much about this in particular, but I like it when anything related to poetry gets talked about. And I think the all-lowercase style people use is goofy, so I'm also happy when proper caps regain some ground.)

Anyway: E.E. Cummings. But it isn't exactly news. This is from 1992, for example. Let's check a few and see who already knows about this and who doesn't. posted by pracowity at 2:30 AM on January 19, 2005


Of course it's E.E. Cummings. He may have liked his name set in lowercase when used as a byline for his poems, but his name gets normal capitalization treatment just like Adidas, Amazon, etc. The way those companies and others stylize their names is one thing, but a name is a name.
posted by emelenjr at 4:44 AM on January 19, 2005


ut his name gets normal capitalization treatment just like Adidas, Amazon, etc.
or eBay, Coca-Cola, etc.
posted by substrate at 5:15 AM on January 19, 2005


Wow. Amazon? Correct!
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 5:16 AM on January 19, 2005


He may have liked his name set in lowercase when used as a byline for his poems...

But that's not the case, I think, at least from reading this. He signed his name with normal capitalization.
posted by pracowity at 5:32 AM on January 19, 2005


Thank god we got that cleared up!
posted by OmieWise at 5:32 AM on January 19, 2005


allaboutbell,

allaboutgeorge...

Well, that explains another alias, methinks.
posted by y2karl at 5:42 AM on January 19, 2005


Despite the recent whining by William Safire wannabe's, I sometimes choose to use lowercase "i"'s when narrating informally- like one would in a journal. I don't do it here, because if everyone did it all the time, it would probably irritate even me. "I" seems so.... strong. Using lower-case is almost like an ego-dissolution thing.... Try to die a little everyday.
In poetry, all rules and convention go out the window. But Mr. Cummings only did it for his poetry.


posted by exlotuseater at 7:14 AM on January 19, 2005


Heh. Good to see a page I've linked to every time someone here uses the bogus lower-casing of his name suddenly turn up as an FPP. In the future I can link to this thread.

And emelenjr, I think you're missing the issue - it's not whether we should honor Cummings's own way of writing his name, a la k.d. lang, who does write hers lower-case. The whole point is that Cummings himself did NOT lower-case it, so that entire realm of inquiry is irrelevant.
posted by soyjoy at 7:35 AM on January 19, 2005


Inexorable?
posted by kenko at 8:10 AM on January 19, 2005


If a person can spell their name any way they want, why shouldn't they be allowed to capitalize it any way they want? It's THEIR name! (I understand that this argument doesn't apply here, but am responding to some of the comments that speak to the larger issue.)

but his name gets normal capitalization treatment just like Adidas, Amazon, etc.

And eBay, iPod, ad naseum?

"I" seems so.... strong.

"I" should be strong. Buck up that self-esteem, ol' Wilbur!
posted by rushmc at 8:56 AM on January 19, 2005


rush: Since he's dead, he doesn't get to pick anymore.
posted by Captaintripps at 9:27 AM on January 19, 2005


kenko: you got me. chalk that one up to a case of liking how a word sounds without quite knowing what it means.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 10:30 AM on January 19, 2005


I wonder how Cummings would have felt about this Friedman guy sticking a plaque on his house and trying to remove the one already there that Friedman didn't like the spelling of.

BuddhaInABucket: maybe you meant ineffable? :)
posted by fleacircus at 10:37 AM on January 19, 2005


In today's day and age, I think "ineffable" can just as easily be heard as "in-EFF-able," i.e. in-Fuckable, or perhaps (since this sounds like how it would be used) "un-Fuckingbelieve-able." As in, "man, that E.E. Cummings wrote some IN-EFF-ABLE poems!"
posted by soyjoy at 12:53 PM on January 19, 2005


Sounds like the germ of a Family Guy episode
posted by fleacircus at 1:18 PM on January 19, 2005


What I find interesting is the discussion of whether or not Cummings had his name legally changed to be all-lowercase. I don't think that's possible. Names do not get their first letters capitalized because they were written that way on the birth certificate (sometimes the name is all in caps, for example), they get capitalized that way because that is the gramatically accepted way to write names.
posted by bingo at 6:29 PM on January 19, 2005


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