When should we capitalise ranks and titles?

Do we write the king or the King, professor or Professor, detective inspector or Detective Inspector? 

When I copy-edit books, Capital Letters jump out at me as if they’re bold and underlined. Straightaway, I ask, ​Is the capitalisation essential here? Often in the case of ranks and titles, the answer is, No.

Spotting unnecessary capitals

Take a look at the following passage:

Captain Henglebing threw down his sword. The Soldier must be mistaken! The Lieutenant had said that the King was dead, and his Queen with him; that one of the Night Watchmen – that idiot Sergeant Bongalong – had caved in their skulls with a battleaxe stolen from Lord Lunderwig. The Captain sank to his knees in horror. That blasted Sergeant. And that stupid Lord for having a battleaxe on his person in the first place in the middle of King Rupert’s birthday ball. Now the King and Queen were dead. Dead! And he would never have his wicked way with the Queen, which was a shame, because he was rather tiring of Princess Gertrude. The Princess was pretty, right enough, but that wart on the end of her nose was rather off-putting…​

Setting aside for a moment the dubious quality of the tale itself, consider the capitalisation in the passage. We have:

• Captain (x 2)
• Soldier
• Lieutenant
• King (x 3)
• Queen (x 3)
• Night Watchmen
• Sergeant (x 2)
• Lord (x 2)
• Princess (x 2)

… all crammed into one 130-word paragraph. That’s a lot of words with initial caps. Imagine a whole book styled in this way; it would be a pretty laborious read.

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