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Grammar girl here, I'm in Yon Fogarty, and you can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff.

Today, we're going to start with rules, but go heavy on history at the end, because what I thought would be an easy question to answer,

took me down an interesting rabbit hole and finally to an interview.

It all started with this voicemail message.

Hi, Grammar girl.

I actually work for the federal government, and I have a good enough command of writing and grammar that I am humorously referred to as the grammar guru.

Recently, we were writing a report, and something came up.

Some of the people on the committee thought that we should capitalize zip code, and it should be capitalized capital Z, capital I, capital P, capital C, ODE.

My take on that is that would be correct if you are referring to the specific thing, the postal system, that specific system.

But if you're talking about zip code, it has become kind of a generic like Kleenex.

And I don't listen to your podcast, so if you decide to use this, could you please answer it in your column.

Thanks very much, Grammar girl.

I remain a faithful reader.

Thanks again.

Bye-bye.

Well, first, you should listen to the podcast, but the answer will be on the website as an article two.

It's extremely rare that material isn't on both, but thank you for submitting the question as a voicemail so I can use it in the podcast.

Like I said, I thought this would be a quick answer.

I'd look it up in a couple of style guides and BingBam Boom, the end.

But it wasn't so simple, and I started finding interesting tidbits.

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