Grammar girl here, I'm Minyon Fogridi and this week I have a quick and dirty tip about

capitalizing directions, a tidbit about elbow grease, and a meaty middle about why people

talk with their hands.

And now on to capitalizing directions.

Sometimes directional terms such as south are capitalized and sometimes they aren't.

When you're describing a direction, south is lower case.

The map is behind a secret door on the south wall.

We drove south for 20 miles before we found a gas station.

But when you're naming a region, directions are usually capitalized.

For example, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Nashville are all in the capitalized south, not the

lower case south.

One hint, although it's not 100% definitive, is that if you can put the word the in front

of the name, then the direction is often capitalized.

For example, like this, he's from the Pacific Northwest, both Pacific and Northwest are

capitalized.

She's from the far east, both far and east are capitalized.

You also capitalize other well-known region names like East Coast, West Coast, the South

of France, and Southern California.

But it can get tricky because whereas Southern California may be a well-known region, Southern

Washington, Western Turkey, and Southern Africa aren't, at least not according to my style

guides.

So in those cases, you wouldn't capitalize the directional words.

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