Q. I am editing an article, and the terms “Cause of Death,” “Manner of Death,” “Natural,” “Accident,” “Suicide,” “Homicide,” and “Undetermined” are all capitalized. If the term is reused later in the article, e.g., “This is a Natural death” and “There has been no finding as to the Manner and possible Cause of death,” should I capitalize “Natural,” “Manner,” and “Cause” in this latter usage?
A. This type of capping is antiquated and unfortunate. As common nouns and adjectives, the terms should be lowercased. They may be italicized on first mention, but afterward they should appear as regular words—no italics or quotation marks or caps.