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Bill Burns writes (edited):
>I have a question about capitalization of proper nouns used as adjectives.
> EXAMPLE: The MSDS book is kept in the assembly areas in the
> Employee Right-to-Know stations.
>I have been treating "assembly" strictly as an adjective here. Although
>using initial lowercase here could be viewed as consistent grammatically (it's
>no longer a proper noun), it appears inconsistent visually. Also, the term
>itself creates problems. Are these areas in Assembly, or they areas in which
>product assembly takes place?
>_The_Gregg_Reference_Manual_ and the _Handbook_of_Technical_Writing_ are
>unclear on this issue.
Visually, your sentence is readable. If you put in one more capitalized
word, it would slow down the reader. Besides, if the reference guides are
unclear, you have the freedom to set your own conventions before things
become "standard".
I'd go with lower case every time. After editing work written by engineers
in which every other word was capitalized for emphasis, I don't capitalizing
anything (unless I have to follow standards.)
