Do you capitalize the "S" in south?

I like to write, but I’m not very good when it comes to the proper use of the English language.

For instance, the “South” is the part of the country below the Mason-Dixon Line. You have to capitalize the “S” when you are referring to it . This is because the “South” is a proper noun. Those have to be capitalized.

South doesn’t have to be capitalized if you aren’t beginning a sentence with it or are referring to going in a direction. “Running to the south end of the woods and jumping over Pumpkinvine Creek was the only way Little Buck could escape that wild boar.” That is an example of a sentence where “south” does not have to be capitalized.

I have an undergraduate degree in English, another one in Communication, a minor in Journalism and am a lifelong Southerner (which I think also has to be capitalized). I should know this.

God forgive me, I didn’t until my daughter, Ellie, called me a few weeks ago. It was mid-morning and I was in a deep conversation about the recently passed healthcare bill’s impact on 2010 earnings for the Standard and Poors 500 Index. My cellphone rang and I saw Ellie’s name pop up on the screen. Fearing that she must be sick or otherwise traumatized by the middle school experience, I stopped talking business and answered her call.

“Daddy,” she said. “Do you capitalize the “S” in “the South?”

I paused briefly to convince myself that a gun must be pressed against her head to necessitate a call during school hours to ask me about capitalization.

“ I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never been really good with punctuation, grammar and that kind of stuff.”

“So should it be capitalized?” she asked again.

Ellie uses a lot of text lingo. I’m convinced that is one of the things making her brain occasionally think sideways. The same illness plagues all of her teenage friends. They think sideways and are convinced their parents fell from yesterday’s turnip truck.

Knowing this, when she asks me to repeat myself I wonder if she’s dingy, deaf, or forgotten some of her native tongue’s basic terminology. I started to hang up and send a text message stating “idk dgi.” That’s text lingo for “I don’t know dad gum it.”

“I really don’t know,” I answered again, opting against a rude text message. “Where are you?!”

“I’m in school!” she said giggling. “Mrs. Gravley wanted to know.”

I could hear the roar of laughter in the background and knew immediately that her Language Teacher, Mrs. Gravley, was using one of my columns as an example of English Language errors and omissions. Mrs. Gravley is a good teacher, but needs fresh material. I give her plenty of examples each week.

I asked Ellie for the answer and she told me that the “S” should be capitalized. I laughed, told her to pack some more useful information between her ears and hung up.

When I got home that evening my youngest daughter, Maggie, was doing her homework. Maggie turns eleven next week and is in the fourth grade.

“Daddy, I can’t figure out which of these words are adjectives or adverbs,” she said.

I looked down at the paper she was holding out. It was littered with twenty words.

“Half of the words end with “ly,” she said.

This was true and meant absolutely nothing to me.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Well, which ones are adverbs?” she asked again as if a second question would kick in a superior intellect.

“idk dgi,” I said.

Maggie nodded her head and began working on her math homework. I opened my laptop and started looking on the Internet for examples of adverbs and adjectives.

When Ellie came home, she quoted a couple of language rules. Maggie listened, separated the adverbs from the adjectives and sat down to watch the previous night’s recording of American Idol.

Maybe that was yesterday’s Turnip Truck that I fell off of.

I don’t know if I am supposed to capitalize the ‘T” in turnip when referring to a vegetable truck. I don’t know if the “L” in “Language” or the “T” in teacher should be upper or lower case. I have the same trouble with the “L” after English and the T before “South.” I’m not real sure I should be using so many quotation marks. Then again, maybe I should have used more.

Usually if I'm not certain, I will mixed it all up so that I am half right.

Regardless, there are plenty of other mistakes up there and I am certain that language teachers everywhere can make use of a sentence ending in a preposition.

Fresh material. You’re welcome, Mrs. Gravley.