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I was always taught to capitalize the first letter of the first word in a sentence, and also the first letter of proper nouns. In the last few years it's been common for certain firms to name their brands something that is always spelled with a small first letter and a capital second letter. It is almost as if they demand the rules of usage are changed. What do you do about this? Where is the inquisition when you need it? Should you start a sentence with "IPhone"? Should you use "iphone" in the middle of a sentence?

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It's called CamelCase: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CamelCase – paradroid Sep 10 '11 at 21:57
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I suppose it's up to you which rule you give priority, but I'd have thought the right of eBay to say what their own name is outweighs the "right" of pedants to say what constitutes good grammar. – FumbleFingers Jan 17 '12 at 5:58
There are some interesting points on this here boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=505324&; – MikeVaughan Jan 17 '12 at 6:03
Same way you would capitalize McDonald's, whether used as a brand name or a last name. – zooone9243 Sep 28 '12 at 23:09

2 Answers

up vote 27 down vote accepted

Brand names

You should never change a brand name. 'iPhone' should always be spelled as 'iPhone,' no matter where in the sentence it is. 'IPhone,' 'iphone,' 'I-phone,' 'i-phone' or 'I phone' are always wrong. 'iPhone' is the only good one:

Good

iPhones are the best selling smartphones.

Wrong

IPhones are the best selling smartphones.

Terrible

Iphones are the best selling smartphones.

This is the same for all brand names, but this can also be for other (nick)names invented by people, for example 'rms' which should always be spelled lowercase.

Exception

There could be, however, one exception, when the sentence is spelled in all caps, usually for styling purposes:

Good

IPHONES ARE THE BEST SELLING SMARTPHONES.

Acceptable

iPhones ARE THE BEST SELLING SMARTPHONES.

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This is true... but to avoid the weirdness of beginning a sentence a lower-case letter I usually avoid putting "iPhone" as the first word in the sentence. – JSBձոգչ Jan 17 '11 at 15:57
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@JSBangs: Good idea. It's probably easy to avoid this a lot of the time; for example, the sentence above could be written, "The iPhone is the best-selling smartphone." – Andy Jan 18 '11 at 22:06
@JSBangs: Yes. This actually came up in real life for me yesterday. A client's product had a name like "neutraCELL." In a couple of lead sentences I was able to rewrite so that it wasn't the first word, but so much of the text started with "neutraCELL stands alone as..." and so forth that I finally gave in. – The Raven Feb 23 '11 at 11:55
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+1, nice formatting. – ApprenticeHacker Jan 15 '12 at 16:18
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I think this is a case of the general rule that people have the right to decide on their own proper names. Like, if someone is named "Sallee", I don't think others should be saying, Oh, that's mis-spelled, it's supposed to be "Sally", and insist on spelling it that way! – Jay Jan 17 '12 at 16:19
up vote 5 down vote

Wikipedia suggest that eBay is the correct usage.

eBay announced that starting in March 2008, eBay had added to...

However, I would be interested to see if the same convention applies with abbreviations like mRNA

Again, Wikipedia suggests the same.

mRNA is transcribed from a DNA template, and carries coding information...

However, that's not to say that these are the "official" rules in any capacity.

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I would definitely give a poor note to a student who wrote MRNA. For whichever grammar reason... – nico Jan 17 '12 at 7:21
@nico What's a "poor note"? – Andrew Grimm Jul 20 '12 at 14:45
@Andrew Grimm: a low mark when correcting a biology paper/exam etc. – nico Jul 20 '12 at 15:57

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