Capitalizing generic names
I have a story with several characters. I've decided that I won't give them names, but refer to them as their titles. For example, the grocer. The cleaner. The officer. Currently I capitalize these names: the Grocer met the Cleaner and they talked about the Officer. I do this because I think it makes it easy to intuitively determine that the individual is that, instead of just any grocer / cleaner / officer, and also because I think it's an interesting creative device.
Is it wrong to do this? Would I be better off not capitalizing in this way?
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1 answer
In old fairy tales, the protagonists were sometimes referred to this way: the king, the princess, the miller's son. But there was only one of each, so it was okay to leave them lowercase.
If there might be the slightest confusion about which grocer, officer, etc. is being discussed, you should capitalize them. If there is only ever one grocer in the story, you're probably okay to leave it lowercase.
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