You may have noticed I’ve chosen to capitalize Werewolf and Were in my Calling the Moon series.
My editor and I had long conversations about this. If I didn’t capitalize Werewolf, then I couldn’t capitalize Were. And if I didn’t capitalize Were, then I’d run into sentences like this: “The weres were my friends, though one were was my enemy.”
If you’re in the middle of reading a book about Weres, your brain parses that pretty well…yet it can still make your brain stumble a bit or need to re-read the sentence.
After our discussions, we decided capitalizing smoothed out the sticking points for readers brains and we should treat Werewolf/Were like a proper noun, with the capital. Therefore, Zombies, Vampires, Salamanders/’Manders, Witches, Necromancers…all the paranormal race words would get the same treatment in the series.
What do you think? Do you agree the capitalization is less disruptive to your reading flow? Or is it more disruptive?
Sarah E. Stevens 