Proper Names

Someone at work tried telling me that ‘keys’ in ‘USB keys’ should be capitalised because it is a proper name (such as John Smith or Minneapolis). Just to be clear, ‘USB keys’ is not a proper noun. Neither is ‘Zip drives’ or ‘floppy drives’ or ‘hard drives’ or ‘monitors’ or ‘printers’ or any other computer peripheral, no matter how geeky you are and how important you think they are.

By Kim Siever

I am a copywriter and copyeditor. I blog on writing and social media tips mostly, but I sometimes throw in my thoughts about running a small business. Follow me on Twitter at @hotpepper.

2 comments

  2. Of course, that’s a specific product line. All the others are not specific product names.

Comments are closed.