Yaarel
🇮🇱 🇺🇦 He-Mage
To capitalize or not to capitalize.
D&D has technical jargon. Some of this jargon is normally capitalized, like the skill name "Arcana". Some of this jargon is normally not, like "hit points".
Some of the jargon is ambiguous, at least in practice. Sometimes the origin "Fey" seems to be capitalized, sometimes not.
Regarding spells, officially they are lowercase − and italicized which is inconvenient in casual discussions. Personally, I always capitalize the names of spells as proper nouns. The terms "Fly" and "fly" have different meanings, the first being the name of a spell, the second being a type of speed.
Similarly I always capitalize the names of classes and races. A "Fighter" is the technical name of a class. A "fighter" might mean something else.
Whether I capitalize a race or not is almost random at this point. I used to always capitalize race names for the same reason as class names. But a race might also have the sense of a nationality or tribe, thus be a proper noun, and important to capitalize. I would capitalize names like "Human, Elf, and Dragonborn". But honestly, in contexts discussing race, the frequency of capital letters does start to look distracting. So I have been switching to consistently lowercase races, ... sometimes. So, I write "human, elf, and dragonborn".
Even if "elf" is lowercase, is "Wood Elf" an ethnicity thus capitalized? Even if "drow elf" is not treated as an ethnicity, "Uda-drow", "Aeven-drow", and "Loren-drow" feel like ethnicities. Or are they subcultures?
At the moment, I am leaning toward always capitalizing class names, and always lowercasing race names and similar. But it gets tricky.
D&D has technical jargon. Some of this jargon is normally capitalized, like the skill name "Arcana". Some of this jargon is normally not, like "hit points".
Some of the jargon is ambiguous, at least in practice. Sometimes the origin "Fey" seems to be capitalized, sometimes not.
Regarding spells, officially they are lowercase − and italicized which is inconvenient in casual discussions. Personally, I always capitalize the names of spells as proper nouns. The terms "Fly" and "fly" have different meanings, the first being the name of a spell, the second being a type of speed.
Similarly I always capitalize the names of classes and races. A "Fighter" is the technical name of a class. A "fighter" might mean something else.
Whether I capitalize a race or not is almost random at this point. I used to always capitalize race names for the same reason as class names. But a race might also have the sense of a nationality or tribe, thus be a proper noun, and important to capitalize. I would capitalize names like "Human, Elf, and Dragonborn". But honestly, in contexts discussing race, the frequency of capital letters does start to look distracting. So I have been switching to consistently lowercase races, ... sometimes. So, I write "human, elf, and dragonborn".
Even if "elf" is lowercase, is "Wood Elf" an ethnicity thus capitalized? Even if "drow elf" is not treated as an ethnicity, "Uda-drow", "Aeven-drow", and "Loren-drow" feel like ethnicities. Or are they subcultures?
At the moment, I am leaning toward always capitalizing class names, and always lowercasing race names and similar. But it gets tricky.
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