Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Lesson 373. The title of today's
lesson is "When to Capitalize the Word Earth and When not to Capitalize the
Word Earth. " Yeah. This one can be tricky. I know students of ESL are confused about
it and even native speakers sometimes get confused about when they should
capitalize the word earth and when not to. Anyway, let's take
a look at the note here. All names of planets are capitalized. When the word
earth refers to the planet and it's used as the planet's name or its proper name.
It is definitely capitalized. So it's capitalized in that situation. The word
is definitely not capitalized when the the word earth refers to dirt or soil.
Okay. It is also not capitalized when it is a common noun and preceded ...
preceded means it's coming before by "the. " In this case it is not really a you know,
used like as its name. Okay. So let's look at a number of examples here. Number one.
She answered Earth was the third planet from the Sun. So this is probably a
situation where maybe a student was asked what is the third planet from the Sun ? And she
answered Earth is the third planet from the Sun. So in this case, Earth is
definitely capitalized. It's referring to the planet and it's referring to its
name. All right. Number two. Do you think any aliens ever traveled to Earth ?
Definitely the planet , definitely its proper name. Yeah. It would be capitalized
here. All right. Number three. Halley's comet passes Earth every 75 to 76 years. Yeah.
Again, definitely the planet. Definitely referring to its name. The name of the
planet. All right. Number four here. How far do they need to dig into the earth ?
All right. Now in this case, it's not the planet. It's really referring to like
dirt or soil or land. In that case, it's not capitalized. So it
has a small" e" here. Number five. He was buried under the earth when that mine
collapsed. Yeah. Again this, means dirt or land. You know he was in a mine. It collapsed on
top of him. This really doesn't refer to the planet. It would be weird if it were
the planet. It sounds like the whole planet was sitting on top of him. So in
this case, it's definitely not capitalized. Okay. Number six. The... that
earthquake caused the earth to shake. All right. Again,
it's really referring to just the land Even when there are earthquakes, the
entire world the entire planet is not shaking only a small part of it. You know,
in maybe one little area of one country, is the earth actually shaking. So it's
really just referring to land or surface or dirt here. So it's definitely not
capitalized there. Again like I said, you know , sometimes native speakers mess up
on this too. I recently covered an article that was actually written by a
native speaker and they had a line in it and they said I want to spend more time
with the earth and then they capitalized the earth which really seems strange.
Because if you capitalized it , it really means the planet. So you want to spend
more time with the planet ? But do you spend time away from the planet ? Do you
spend time on another planet ? So really it didn't make much sense. In this case, you
probably should have avoided the word earth here. The more proper way for her
to write that sentence probably would have been I want to spend more time in
nature. Because I know that's from reading the article that's probably what
she actually meant. But still she even a native speaker sometimes messes it up.
All right. And one more little point here. In phrases such as what on earth ... you
know, because we always say like what on earth are you doing ? You know we don't
capitalize the word earth and the four corners of the earth.
No. The word earth does not get capitalized. It's not really referring to
it as its proper name. So it doesn't get capitalized in these situations and
probably most other, if there if you can think of other
phrases with the word earth in it. Probably not. Okay. Anyway I hope you got
it. I hope it was clear. I hope it was informative. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.