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Q&A Character name and its capitalisation

Nobody in my story knows the actual name of one of the characters. She calls herself 'tina. She always writes it 'tina and gets irritated if people write it Tina - it's short for something, but nob...

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

#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T04:36:27Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/18897
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Ottsel‭ · 2019-12-08T04:36:27Z (almost 5 years ago)
Nobody in my story knows the actual name of one of the characters. She calls herself 'tina. She always writes it 'tina and gets irritated if people write it Tina - it's short for something, but nobody knows what. To her, the apostrophe and the lower case "t" are important - she likes the air of mystery that it creates for herself, allowing herself to hide away part of her life.

My question: When I'm talking about her, should I always write her name as 'tina?

I want to, but it's a name, so an inner voice is telling me i should drop the apostrophe and capitalise the T when I'm saying "Tina did this" or "Tina said that". But if I start doing that then how do I decide when it should be 'tina and when it should be Tina. If I'm not careful then her name, an important part of her character, will be relegated to a throw away comment when I first introduce her and will likely make her sound much more pretensious than she actually is.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2015-09-03T20:07:13Z (about 9 years ago)
Original score: 2