emmerson and Love of Beauty

Question

Why is "Love of Beauty" capatilized?

Answer 1

Alternatively, if 'Love' and 'Beauty' are capitalized but not in the context of title then the capitalization would have drastically different meaning. Capitalization in a title is just the standard format for titles. However, in the context of the body of writing capitalization signifies a proper noun. It may sound strange to capitalize 'Love' and 'Beauty' to signify proper noun since, typically, we think of proper nouns as someone's name or a city. But turning words such as 'love' and 'beauty' into proper nouns is a way of signifying a unique thing to which these words refer, and, a unique thing that is accessible to both people (speaker and listener, writer and reader, etc.). Uncapitalized, love and beauty are merely mentioned and not discussed with much specificity or depth. But capitalized, love and beauty are the primary things about which we speak. Furthermore, in such a specific context, the pronoun(s) is usually differentiated from other closely related, easily confused, but nonetheless different, things since an absolutely unique thing--conveying no information alone--needs contrast with other things if the proper name is to convey anything meaningful. 

 

Please feel free to contact me or reply with questions and/or comments if my explanation was not sufficiently clear. 

Regards,

Corey

Answer 2

I want to add that the preposition "of" is not capitalized because in English, we don't capitalize prepositions or articles (the, a, an) unless they occur at the beginning or at the end of the title.

Answer 3

If the sentence were:  "My love of beauty is part of who I am," you would not need to capitalize.  Only capitalize if you are referring to a title.  I'm assuming that from your question, this is coming from the title of a poem.  If that's true, titles are always capitalized.

Answer 4

It is capatilzed because it is assumed to be the title of a book, chapter or other literary piece. Sometimes people capatilize captions for emphasis also. I prefer to denote emphasis of captions with italics.