And that, she decided, was the only rule that mattered.
The next morning, Clara sat at her desk. She opened the style guide, then closed it. She took out a fresh sheet of paper and wrote a letter to the editor of the grammar column she secretly admired. should autumn be capitalized
In the small, orderly town of Grammatica, there lived a copyeditor named Clara. Clara loved rules. She loved the crisp finality of a period, the suspense of a semicolon, and the quiet dignity of a capital letter at the start of a sentence. But for years, one question had prickled at her like a stray comma splice: Should autumn be capitalized? And that, she decided, was the only rule that mattered
Clara smiled. “Sweetheart, ‘autumn’ shouldn’t have a capital A. It’s not a name.” She took out a fresh sheet of paper
Perhaps grammar is not about correctness. Perhaps it is about attention. And Autumn, I think, has earned ours.
The unease began one October evening when her nephew, Leo, handed her a drawing. He was seven, with jam on his chin and a fierce sense of wonder. The drawing showed a lopsided tree with orange and red crayon scribbles, and beneath it, in wobbly letters: My Frend Autumn.