Talk:Elder (Latter Day Saints)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Capitalization

Some capitalization was recently removed. I think most of it should stay as Elder, Ward Mission Leader, Stake Presidency, etc. are all titles of a specific person, and thus are proper nouns. Any other thoughts out there on this? Trödel•talk 02:54, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

My personal feeling is to follow the guidelines set forth in BYU's Style Guide. See the section called "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints terms."

They are only proper nouns when the specific person is mentioned in conjunction with the title. An easy, non-Church example is the president of the U.S. We can talk about the president, or we can talk about President Bush. The same things apply here. Elder Packer is in the Council of the Twelve, but there are lots of elders in my ward. Bishop Smith is the bishop, etc.

I guess if we really can't figure out this business about proper nouns, we can look up rules in a grammar book or something on the Internet or at the local library. Either way, it shouldn't be too hard, I don't think, to find the proper English rules for this kind of stuff.

John 04:33, 13 January 2006 (UTC)