Capital "M" in Marine -NY Times gives in

One of those things that was drilled into me as only a USMC Sgt Maj could make that very important point back when I was wearing the skinny-mini butter bars. I noticed "marine" here and there on the forum, not referring to commercial usage, and I hope this article adds to the awareness.
 
Here is the original article which intrigued me when it came out:
http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/when-every-letter-counts/#more-733

The new rules in the style guide:
Here are the changes: 1. We will now capitalize Marine and Marines when referring to individual members of the United States Marine Corps. Under the previous rule, we capitalized references to the service as a whole, but lowercased “marine” in referring to individuals. We used to say, “Three marines were wounded in the fighting.” Now we’ll say, “Three Marines were wounded in the fighting.” (We’ll make a similar change to capitalize “Coast Guardsman,” though that comes up less frequently.)
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Sailor, soldier and airman are not capitalized. Not because they don't deserve respect but for consistency in the usage of proper nouns.
This is the rationale:
We don’t set our style rules by plebiscite, but the old rules put us at odds with the preferred usage of people and organizations directly involved. And we heard repeatedly from readers and sources who found our usage puzzling or ill-informed — even, in the case of “marines,” disrespectful. We’ve assured current and former members of the Marine Corps that the old rule reflected not a lack of respect but rather a desire for consistency. We don’t, for example, capitalize “soldier” in referring to an individual member of the Army, and it seemed inconsistent to refer to “three soldiers and two Marines” in the same context.
But the “consistency” argument can cut both ways, depending on the frame of reference. If the term for an individual member is the same as the proper name of the organization, why not capitalize “Marine” just as we capitalize “Democrat,” “Catholic” or “Rotarian”? The new rule also makes us consistent with The Associated Press and many other news organizations — a particularly important consideration now, when readers get news online from so many sources.
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I am sure that all Marines are now pleased to be in the same company as Coast Guardmen and I am sure all soldiers now wish they were in the "Soldier Corps" instead of the Army.

I still think it's weird to refer to "three soldiers and two Marines...." in the same sentence. Oh well - that's the English language for you.
 
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