please empty your brain below |
It just reminds me of Das Kapital - or is that just the way that TfL is run?
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Das Kapital sprung to my mind too.
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Maybe it's an age thing (grumpy old man?) but I feel the same, in just the same way I felt when a certain orange airline branded its company with a small letter at the start of its name.
Still, it could be worse. At least TfL (or should that be TFL?) haven't started writing in "text speak." Yet! |
It's 'Capitalism' gone mad!
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Comment of the day John DLC (Don't Like Capital?).
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Soon it'll be the Premier Capital and we'll all have to submit sealed bids to be allowed to live in London, unless we agree to a zero hours contract guarding empty apartments which are visited by their foreign owners a couple of weeks a year.
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The BBC local news do it too, referring to "the capital" where "Greater London" would do perfectly fine. Has London become a dirty word somehow?
Do other seats of government find it necessary to constantly reinforce their self-esteem by reminding their citizens who's the boss? |
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd suggest it's a device to thwart the aspirations of those young upstarts Edinburgh and Cardiff.
I'm not tho, so I shan't. |
Have we now got a Mayor of Capital?
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I don't know why, but to me it looks very 1984.
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It's only a single letter, so why does this change make me feel oddly disturbed?
Weird. |
Makes me think of the Hungar Games and the Capitol.
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I a Freedom Of Information request has just been submitted via whatdotheyknow so we should know within a month.
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My last comment should say "I see a Freedom of Information" request has just been submitted.
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John DLC - actually, think it's "Capitalization" gone mad.
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Will "New Tube for London" be rebranded "New 1938 Tube Stock" in the same way of reusing the title of a design classic from the past?
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Here's the FOI request for those interested:
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/press_office_style_guide |
Some damnfool consultancy full of wouldbe hipsters who don't believe they earn their fees if they say "Actually, you've got a perfectly good brand already, don't muck it about", but instead bamboozle their clients into believing the cool thing to do is go all American and start talking about "Our Nation's Capital". Gah. I blame this newfangled television thing.
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I've noticed that the Edinburgh Evening News has done this for several years when referring to its home city - maybe someone from there has moved down south to work for TFL?
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Or it could just be another example of falling education standards!
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This and maybe the following DG entry might be presciently linked - to put Lond- sorr, the Capital - on its own Time Zone, or GMT+a bit. We could call it New Time for London perhaps? After all, 'new' 'sells'...
Its probably just someone scared to be seen as not having enough to do. That or another someone had a whopping great chunk out of our collective fare money for coming up with this... |
Tim and others - don't worry, there are still plenty of us providing content to the TfL website who take a bit of pride in our use of the English language.
(slight pause while checking for anything a pedant might pick up on) ...yes, I know. |
FYI: The Capital of the USA is Washington, District of Columbia. Right in the middle of DC is the United States Capitol Building. Maybe the Houses of Parliament are in line for a name change.
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I was a freelance copywriter for 16 years, and when clients supplied the copy, their overuse of capital letters was the bane of my life. I would change each instance of 'Managing Director' or 'Chief Executive Officer' to 'managing director' and 'chief executive officer', only to watch the client change them all back again.
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But, but . . . people have been seeing London as the Capital of the world for ages. Back in the day when Britain had an Empire it was the Capital - for a third of the world.
I remember seeing a cover of the Illustrated London News which had a 'view of the world' starting in London and moving, over the Home Counties, to France, the rest of the Continent (now there's another capitalisation!) and on to the rest of the world - drawn very small and distant. I'm not so sure that the view of the world of the average Brit has changed all that much. |
@ Richard M; there's been a long discussion about this (capitals for job names) in a Facebook group. Most people felt that if it's an official title, eg Chief Accountant, it would be capitalised, and if it's just a description, lower case.
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It is contained within TfL's writing style guide that London must now be referred to as the Capital.
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TfL have also started using the phrase '"...or visit us in station" on their radio ads, adopting the practice already used by mobile phone companies etc.
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@Amber
The prime minister of Great Britain is an official title, but you shouldn't write 'the Prime Minister'. Similarly, the president of the United States. Only in conjunction with a person's actual name would you capitalise. So, for instance, 'President Obama' is fine. But without his name, he is simply 'the president'. I used to use the copy style guides of the Economist and the Guardian (or should that be The Economist and The Guardian?) when I was unsure. I still maintain that something like 'managing director', in any context, should be in lower case. For example: http://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2014/feb/12/ten-minutes-joanna-prior-penguin-books |
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