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Should fall be capitalised in the following? If yes, is it because Fall 2011 is a proper noun?

Where should an app be released in Fall 2011?

Context.

In a Wikipedia article, Avatar (2009 film), a particular summer is capitalised (my emphasis):

Work on the language for the film's extraterrestrial beings began in Summer 2005, and Cameron began developing the screenplay and fictional universe in early 2006.

(The related question Should the names of seasons be capitalized? is about the seasons themselves (as in I love the colors of the leaves in autumn.), not a particular season, like Fall 2011.)

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I'm not really interested in OP's should. He can choose which style guide he wants to follow, and take their advice.

Obviously if the season itself is part of a compound name (an event, academic term, publication issue, as per @Gnawme's examples), it's capitalised just like the other words.

As regards what people actually write in other contexts, instances of last summer,summer 1995 in Google Books suggest people usually capitalise the latter, but not the former. I believe this is because even though both terms reference a single specific season, including the actual year makes it more of a "proper noun" with a single referent which never changes.

By contrast, last summer is a more ephemeral concept - last year it was this summer, and by next year it'll need far more words to identify exactly which one we're talking about. In such usages, the name of the season behaves more like a pronoun - we capitalise John, but not the more generic he (unless "He" is [a] God).

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Various style manuals and guides (MLA, Chicago, Guardian, Grammar Girl) tend to concur:

  • The four seasons are lowercased.
  • Except when part of a formal name, such as the name of an event (Winter Olympics), school term (Spring Quarter 2012), or issue of a journal (Summer 2008).
  • Except when the season is personified, as in poetry ("Then Spring--with her warm showers--arrived.").
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According to Swan's Practical English Guide , capitalization of seasons is not normal:

We use capital letters at the beginning of .... the names of days, months and public holidays( but not usually seasons) e.g. Sunday, Tuesday, but autumn, summer.

"Summer" and "autumn" is only capitalized, when used in poetry, and the season is being personified, for example:

And Winter comes, with the goblet of snow and ice.

But normally, the names of seasons aren't capitalized.

Edit: Due to Peter Mortenson's comment, I'd like to add that:

Seasons are capitalized when used in a title.
The catalog for Spring 2006 will be out in February.

The example given above seems to be of the same type, as the OP's example, namely, when a particular season, of a particular year is given. Thus, I would say, yes, in the OP's example, "Fall" can be capitalized.

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  • I think this is clear from the other question, "Should the names of seasons be capitalized?". But what about a particular summer, say the one in 2012? Is it "The UEFA European Football Championship is held in Summer 2012" or "The UEFA European Football Championship is held in summer 2012"?
    – Peter Mortensen
    Commented Aug 26, 2011 at 7:19
  • Is the converse true? Never capitalised when not in a title?
    – Peter Mortensen
    Commented Aug 26, 2011 at 7:28
  • No. You could still capitalize for when the season is being personified, as in poetry.
    – Thursagen
    Commented Aug 26, 2011 at 7:32
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Both do seem to be used, with the uncapitalized version usually at least twice as common in most of the queries I tried (see one example below). I don't think a definitive answer is possible, but I would go with lower case.

Graph showing frequency of "in fall 1998" vs "in Fall 1998" from the Google Books corpus

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  • But I recall being taught by one teacher, perhaps in the 4th grade, ca 1959, that "Autumn" should be capitalized, but not "fall".
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Apr 8, 2015 at 3:11
  • Many people, including elementary teachers, have odd ideas like this.
    – Brett Reynolds
    Commented Apr 8, 2015 at 11:39
  • But it may have been a common "rule" at one time.
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Apr 8, 2015 at 12:21
  • Absent any evidence for that, I'd call it a personal idiosyncrasy.
    – Brett Reynolds
    Commented Apr 9, 2015 at 13:10
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Capitalizing the particular season in the context you have mentioned means that, in that particular season an event of greater importance took place. And it can be made clear to the reader by capitalizing the season. And in rest of the common scenarios like "This summer is hotter than the previous summer", the season will not capitalized.

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It depends if we use season names as generic nouns or proper nouns. Proper nouns are the names of particular (i.e. specific one of kind items) persons, places, times, or things, and that all proper nouns should be capitalized. For example:

I will return to school in the Fall

The season word is the name of that period of time, and so it is capitalized.

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    This isn't the correct definition of proper nouns ... with this definition, anything with a the in front of it would have to be capitalized, and that's not standard usage.
    – Peter Shor
    Commented Jan 1, 2012 at 18:48
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From my survey of numerous websites and print sources, it is clear that those parties interested in such questions as whether the names of the seasons should be capitalized do not agree, except perhaps on which usage is more common in practice.

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  • I would add that it would be helpful to have a clear explanation of why the names of the seasons should not be regarded as proper nouns when the names of the days of the week are so regarded. I can see
    – Edward Davenport
    Commented Apr 8, 2015 at 2:22
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    Your answer would be better if you included either a link to a formal survey, or some examples.
    – DougM
    Commented Apr 9, 2015 at 2:50

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