An author friend inquired about whether or not to capitalize
the word “earth” when using it to refer to the planet, rather than to soil.
While the planet is made up of soil, it gave me pause to consider the
ramifications. As an editor and a citizen of Planet Earth and a concerned
inhabitant of Mother Earth, I decided to capitalize the word as often as
possible, using the lower case “e” only when referring to sod, soil, dust, or mud.
When I consulted my thesaurus, I found references under “earth” with a small
“e”, only to soil. Under “Earth” with a capital “E”, were
choices among: humankind, planet, and globe. Curious about the reference to “humankind”, I
looked it up and found: human race, humanity, people, civilization. Now there’s a great metaphor! Earth means People, Humans,
Us! We came from Earth (soil), or so it is said. We stay alive through Earth
(soil) that grows food for us. We return to Earth (soil) when we finish living
(“Earth to Earth, dust to dust”).
So tell me, understanding how interwoven we are with Earth,
how dependent we are to the continued gifts from Earth, and as we watch civilization destroy the very ground we walk on — day by day…
tell me why we cannot come to grips with the notion that it may all turn to
dust and blow away soon, blowing us away with it at the same time?
We have discovered that people cannot be forced to be
careful with Earth’s resources (water, air, soil), just as writers cannot be
forced to capitalize that precious word: Earth.
However, I can ask
writers to consider the importance of the deeper meaning of “Earth” every time
they write it. Perhaps that will keep us around a few millennia… centuries…
decades longer.
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