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Q&A 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 ...

1 answer  ·  posted 9y ago by horse hair‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T04:25:45Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/18079
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar horse hair‭ · 2019-12-08T04:25:45Z (about 5 years ago)
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?

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2015-07-08T14:42:45Z (over 9 years ago)
Original score: 5