Beginning of sentence capitalisation question

[manyeyedhydra]

If you have a colloquialism where part of the word is skipped at the beginning of the sentence, is it still capitalized?

Instead of

"Besides,

I have a character start the sentence with 'sides

"'Sides,

I'm pretty sure the S is still capitalized. Just wanted to make sure.

 

[mynameisben]

If you have a colloquialism where part of the word is skipped at the beginning of the sentence, is it still capitalized?

Instead of

"Besides,

I have a character start the sentence with 'sides

"'Sides,

I'm pretty sure the S is still capitalized. Just wanted to make sure.

Yep. You capitalize the S, because it is the first non-punctuation mark of the sentence. 'Sides, the capital S just looks so much sexier!

 

[elfin_odalisque]

I don't quite follow. Opening quotation marks surely require a capital letter - even if you begin with a conjunction or an abbreviation? Being at the beginning of a sentence is surely irrelevant.

I stand to be corrected.

 

[BONNIEBREA]

I don't quite follow. Opening quotation marks surely require a capital letter - even if you begin with a conjunction or an abbreviation? Being at the beginning of a sentence is surely irrelevant.

I stand to be corrected.

The issue isn't quotation marks (or the lack of them). Every first letter of a word that begins a sentence is capitalized, whether part of a quote, a word normally used as a conjunction, or a letter that would normally be in the interior of a word but is first because part of the word is apostrophized.

The only exception I'm aware of would be when the first word is the actual name of something that has been intentionally labeled with a word beginning with a lowercase letter (such as a product name or the name of a person who intentionally makes a point of presenting their name in lowercase). As in:

iPads are easy to use.

e e cummings never used uppercase letters in his poems. (although this example could really be done either way. At the time that his poems were originally published his publisher presented his name in all lowercase with no punctuation, to mimic the style of his poems. But he used both forms - all lowercase/no punctuation and upper and lower with normal punctuation - pretty interchangably when signing his name. Today publishers typically use standard usage with his name, and the various societies involved with promoting his artistic production use normal capitalization and punctuation.)