May I know why the capital letters(Prime Minister) have to be applied to the first sentence, whereas the second one doesn't have to?
1. The Prime Minister is attending the summit.
2. How is the French prime minister elected?
Thank you very much indeed.
***** NOT A TEACHER
***** ONLY MY OPINION
Panicmonger,
I was fascinated by your question, for I, too, am interested in such
details.
It was interesting that the teacher told us that "prime minister" is
capitalized when referring to the current officerholder.
(1) I am now looking at my local newspaper (one of the top 5 American
papers) and its report on the recent G-20 meeting:
President Obama appeared to ....
British Prime Minister David Cameron warned of ....
Bank of China Chairman Xiao Gang called ....
... with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.
THEN
The
president began the day Thursday ....
My point:
If I remember correctly, when I was younger (much younger),
American newspapers always referred to the
President.
For example:
The
President is scheduled to visit our city today.
Somewhere along the line (I do not know when), most (all?)
newspapers changed the policy. Now "president" and other
titles are capitalized only when they proceed the person's
name. I am pretty sure that when this first started to become
used, I was astounded. Now I accept it as "normal." Our
newspapers often set the policy when it comes to punctuation.
For example, almost all American papers write:
James' house. To
the best of my knowledge,
The New York Times (our leading
paper) still insists on
James's house.
Thank you
P.S. Yes, the word "the" in
The New York Times is supposed to be
capitalized because the word "the" is actually in the paper's
name. But most American papers refer to it like this:
There was an interesting report this morning in the New York Times.
(They don't even italicize newspaper names anymore, either!!!)
The more you study English, the more you will learn how arbitrary
many "rules" are. That is, there is no particular reason. "Somebody"
decided X is correct, so everyone else said, "OK."
