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4.09 Personifications and abstractions

Capitalize vivid personifications and metonymic nouns:

  • the march of Time
  • Fate’s fool
  • the Chair (the person in charge of a meeting or assembly)
  • the Crown (the person or agency representing a king or queen)

Abstractions are sometimes capitalized when used in an ideal sense. As general concepts, however, they are lower-cased:

  • We know that Justice is blind.
  • Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all
    Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
    — John Keats