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Some names are lowercase for example names of programs like grep, ls and vi. If any of these names starts a sentence, should the first letter be capitalised?

Linux has many nice programs. vi is a popular editor. grep is a system tool.

Niklas Rosencrantz
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    No; I'd use semicolons here to avoid the conflict of rules. – Edwin Ashworth Jul 30 '17 at 15:07
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    This question is not about English. The English rule demands that you must start with a capital letter, but you cannot change the case of those commands because the filesystem is case-sensitive. – tchrist Jul 30 '17 at 15:07
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    I do not know the rulebook answer, but for ease of reading I would structure the sentence so as to not begin with such words. – Mark D Worthen PsyD Jul 30 '17 at 15:08
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    @tchrist - It seems to like a legitimate usage question to me. It is probably one of those areas that is debatable, and I would be interested in what other members think. – Mark D Worthen PsyD Jul 30 '17 at 15:10
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    A quick search reveals some capitalisations of grep at the beginning of sentences, others without. I think this is a personal thing. – marcellothearcane Jul 30 '17 at 15:13
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    @MarkDWorthenPsyD I don't see any use in asking what people "think". That's just an opinion, not an answer. As a published writer in that field, I can report that my publisher doesn't allow non-lowercase letters at the front of sentences: you have to reword them. – tchrist Jul 30 '17 at 15:17
  • Andrew Tanenbaum writes a capital F for the finger program with italics: "Finger works as follows." in the latest edition of his os book. – Niklas Rosencrantz Jul 30 '17 at 15:38
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    @tchrist - How would your publisher handle an article about iPhones? – Dan Jul 30 '17 at 16:23
  • @Dan Thanks for a good example with iPhones. I found this https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/9063/how-do-you-capitalize-a-proper-noun-such-as-iphone – Niklas Rosencrantz Jul 30 '17 at 16:25
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    @DjDac - good find. Clearly a ticklish topic! I'm most comfortable with the comment "I suppose it's up to you which rule you give priority, but I'd have thought the right of eBay to say what their own name is outweighs the "right" of pedants to say what constitutes good grammar." There are also many scientific terms (not brand names) that present the same 'problem' - mRNA for example. Suggesting that sentences should be written so as to avoid having these 'problem' words at the start is ridiculous to me. The 'tail' of grammar theory should not be allowed to wag the 'dog' of clarity! – Dan Jul 30 '17 at 16:43
  • I think it makes sense to use the same square bracket notation one always uses when changing the grammar of a quote to make it fit your sentence structure.

    Linux has many nice programs. "[V]i" is a popular editor. "[G]rep" is a system tool.

     – AffableAmbler Jul 30 '17 at 16:45
  • e.e. cummings had no say in the matter, dying as he did in 1962. – Dan Jul 30 '17 at 22:11
  • @tchrist - We cannot express opinions in comments? – Mark D Worthen PsyD Jul 31 '17 at 03:24

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What is the purpose of what's being written? This is core to providing a relevant answer.

First off I'm going to dismiss that a correct answer is a link to some "official" style guide and that anything less is not an answer. There's no criteria for picking such a guide to be a/the "correct" guide, and they're just conventions anyway, not hard and fast rules. I'm instead going to focus on style as a means of accurately conveying information to a target audience.

For a paper, article, or PowerPoint where you're talking about the commands but where it isn't a guide that people will be working from, I'd say capitalize to avoid the confusion about whether or not the preceding period is part of the command:

Linux has many nice programs. vi is a popular editor.

Linux has many nice programs. Vi is a popular editor.

To an uneducated eye, it's not clear if ".vi" is a file extension or some techie jargon - they don't know whether or not to parse the sentence on the period.

You can also use quotes to clariy:

Linux has many nice programs. "vi" is a popular editor.

Linux has many nice programs. "Vi" is a popular editor.

But for documentation, or a how-to article, or a textbook, or even a presentation or article with a techie target audience, it's more clear to stylize the code in a different, monospaced font and with a slight highlight color, just as it appears in your question or in established docs like the python docs here.

I have written a lot of documentation for Python, Powershell, SQL, and others over the last 5 years and I have found this convention to be the most clear and unambiguous.

Community
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Patrick Keenan
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