Big G is watching you.

One thing that I see from time to time in copyediting and proofreading work is that some writers and editors insist on lowercasing the G in God, referring to the Supreme Being. I object on two grounds, theological and pedantic, which I shall touch on below.

The first one is theological, and that is because I believe in God. There, I said it. Thus, I believe in an intelligent -- in fact, all-intelligent -- being, in whose image we are created. You may believe that or not, but when I find Someone that requires worship, I find the need to break out the Initial Caps.

The pedantic reason, though, is the one that's being run over by the Ford Pinto of aggressive atheism, and that's just this: In English, proper nouns are capitalized. Period.

So when you talk about Thor, the god of thunder, "god" is a job description and should be lowercased, but the proper noun "Thor" is uppercased. When you talk about God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen, you are using a proper noun that should be capped.

I grant plenty of leeway in this regard. If an author doesn't believe in God, that's up to the author. Some of these authors, or book editors, really hate the whole idea of God and want to lowercase god all the time to show contempt for it. But there are expressions in which the name God is used as a proper noun, and others in which it is not, and that brings us to the pedantic problem. And believe me, copyediting is nothing but a series of pedantic problems.

Here are some examples of what I mean:

"Thank God!" Makes no sense lowercased -- only works as a proper noun. Try it with other ordinary nouns ("Thank tree!" "Thank rock!").

"For the love of god." Could be lowercased; would still seem to need a possessive pronoun or article though ("our god" "the god" etc.).

"The god's honest truth." Works all right lowercased.

"As God is my witness..." A witness must be a person, and a person has a name. If "god" is supposed to be a job description instead or a name, then you're a pagan and you need an article ("As the god is my witness...").

Let's appeal to a higher authority to sort this out. No, not the Lord, not here; I mean the Chicago Manual of Style 17th edition, the lowercase-B bible for copy cats:

I also have the 14th, 15th, and 16th editions
on my desk. I am not fooling around.

Like the Bible, CMoS is arranged by chapter and verse -- really.

Thou shalt not suffer a participle to dangle.

Here are some quotes on this topic from the 17th edition:

8.91: "Names of deities, whether in monotheistic or polytheistic religions, are capitalized."

8.92: "Alternative or descriptive names for God as supreme being are capitalized."

The nomenclature is settled. Even if God does not smite you himself, the copy editor's guide is ready to smite away on its own. This has nothing to do with faith but everything to do with proper English.

And if that doesn't get the message across, I'll drop a copy of the 17th edition on you. That sucker weighs six or seven pounds easy. Smite!