Spelling Bible With a Capital B
Do you have any pet peeves about writing? I do. I can be a downright militant when it comes to the proper spelling of the word, “Bible.” When I say Bible, I’m speaking of the holy writings of Christians and Jews, also known as the Scriptures. It seems that in recent years people have taken to referring to this sacred book as the “bible.” They put the name of the book in lower case letters.
I’m not sure why people do this, but I think it springs from two motivations— one is that posting to Internet sites and text messaging has led to a lot of sloppiness in writing. People are used to ignoring the shift key and they use keystroke shortcuts to create words and phrases that defy the grammar of any known language.
The second reason so many people spell Bible using lower case is a bit more sinister. It’s a way for them to make a social, political or theological statement signifying that they do not think the Bible is a holy book. Using the diminutive form of the word is a subtle way of denigrating all that the Bible stands for.
However, when it comes to writing with clarity, it’s good to play by the rules. The word “Bible,” when it refers to the sacred book, is a proper noun and it’s always capitalized. That writing rule is in all the grammar books and people seem to abide by it when referring to books—except when it comes to something as controversial as books connected with religious faith.
“Holy Bible” and “Scripture” are also proper nouns and should always be capitalized. The word “biblical” is not a proper noun and is not capitalized. Thus, you could have a sentence that looks like this — “She was a student of the Bible and so she had a biblical worldview.”
There are cases when the word Bible is not capitalized— when it is not used as a proper noun. For example, someone might write, “Gun safety is the first commandment in the shooters bible,” and that would be perfectly correct.
Christian writers will want to go the extra mile when it comes to the the proper usage of the word Bible and will always want to make sure they capitalized the word when it refers to the Scriptures, even in informal writing. Some may even want to become a grammar zealot like me, and when they see Bible spelled in lowercase, they can take a minute to help others understand the importance of the proper use of proper nouns.