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Brenda W.

asked • 12/10/15

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Which of the following is a proper noun and therefore should be capitalized? a) giraffe b) high school c) pacific ocean d) orange truck

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Ira S. answered • 12/10/15

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Proper nouns are names.....of anything. Geoffrey, the giraffe or the Hess truck. There are many oceans, The Atlantic,  Pacific, Indian......
 
Actually, just a little side note to be difficult, pacific is and adjective and means calm. so the pacific ocean could just be referring to a calm ocean....but the do mean the Pacific ocean.   and by the way, proper nouns are capatalized.
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Ed M.

I agree with Ira S. that of the choices in your question, c), "pacific ocean," is the most likely to be used as a proper noun and therefore the first letters of its constituent words need to be capitalized, i.e., Pacific Ocean.
 
But I think the question is a bit unfair and tricky at as you've reported it for the following reasons:
  • As Ira pointed out, yes, we could have a phrase pacific ocean in which ocean is used as an ordinary, common noun and thus neither it nor any of its modifiers like pacific would need capitalization, e.g., Balboa caught sight of a pacific ocean. But on the other hand, when this phrase is used as a proper noun, it normally is always accompanied by the definite article, the, as are many other proper nouns in English that refer to geographic features, so to exclude the from the text of choice c) seems a bit misleading if one is trying to elicit the phrase's use as a proper noun.
  • Similarly, the phrase high school can also be part of a proper noun, e.g., McKinley High School, and thereby require capitalization of the first letters of high and school. Admittedly, high school is probably much more often used as a common rather than a proper noun, but because of its frequent occurrence in both uses it also seems a little unfair to include this among the answer choices, though perhaps it was chosen to be a good "distractor" as I understand what term describes in testing theory.
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12/11/15

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