Grember girl here, I'm a neon-foculty and you can think of me as your friendly guide to

the English language.

Writing, history, rules, and cool stuff.

Today, I respond to a listener question about when to capitalize Google and have a meeting

middle about why we call the score of zero in tennis, love.

If Google executives care about their trademark, they'd like you to not use Google as a verb

since doing so threatens that trademark.

But as you know, it's very common to hear people say, I googled it, to mean they searched

for something on Google.

AP style is to capitalize Google when you use it as a verb, when you say you googled

something or you are googling something.

The Chicago Manual of Style also says to capitalize trademarks such as Google, but

notes that although this is what corporations would prefer, it's not a legally binding

rule.

And they note that websters includes lowercase entries for both Google and another company

name that's become a verb, Xerox.

The Merriam Webster online dictionary lists the verb Google as lowercase, but notes that

it's often capitalized.

The Oxford English Dictionary entry shows the verb Google capitalized, but says it also

can be lowercase.

And Garner's Modern English usage says it can go either way, but that it's more common

to keep Google capitalized than to write at lowercase.

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