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Is It “President” or “president” of the United States?
Author(s) -
HARDY RICHARD J.,
WEBBER DAVID J.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
presidential studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.337
H-Index - 5
eISSN - 1741-5705
pISSN - 0360-4918
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-5705.2007.02634.x
Subject(s) - presidential system , newspaper , style (visual arts) , political science , politics , typology , law , media studies , history , sociology , archaeology
Over the past thirty‐five years, most publications have lowered the “p” in “President” to “president” of the United States. After discussing political symbolism and the importance of the “President” as a national symbol, we offer a typology for analyzing the grammatical changes that have occurred in leading political science monographs, introductory college textbooks, professional journals, popular periodicals, newspapers, and style manuals over the past three decades. Prior to the 1970s, publications generally employed the uppercase “President,” when this nearly universal standard changed dramatically. We find that it was neither journalists, grammarians, publishers, nor politicians but rather prominent presidential scholars (namely Thomas E. Cronin and George E. Reedy) who led the nation's intellectual charge to make the lowercase “president” the rule rather than the exception.