Capitalization Question

[basketball2squid]

Hello all! One of the essay prompts for the current nomination I am working on includes the words "military service academy." Those three words are included two separate times in the prompt. The first time the beginning of each word is lowercase; however, the second time, the beginning of each word is capitalized.

Would you recommend I use uppercase or lowercase when addressing "military service academy" in my essay?

 

[MidCakePa]

I’m a disciple of the Associated Press Stylebook. It would say that when referring to a specific academy, you’d capitalize. When referring to generic or multiple academies, you wouldn’t capitalize. For example:

YES: I want to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

YES: I want to go to a military academy.

YES: There are several military academies in the country.

When all is said and done, I highly doubt admissions will penalize you for capitalizing or not capitalizing, AS LONG AS you capitalize that specific academy and are consistent with whatever you choose to do.

 

[Capt MJ]

I’m a disciple of the Associated Press Stylebook. It would say that when referring to a specific academy, you’d capitalize. When referring to generic or multiple academies, you wouldn’t capitalize. For example:

YES: I want to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

YES: I want to go to a military academy.

YES: There are several military academies in the country.

When all is said and done, I highly doubt admissions will penalize you for capitalizing or not capitalizing, AS LONG AS you capitalize that specific academy and are consistent with whatever you choose to do.

Yay stylebooks! I cut my teeth on Strunk & White. I have a couple ready to hand in my home office.

These essays are apparently for a nom application. I suspect various staffers have updated web page content over the years without a style book ready to hand, using the “I Think This Looks Right” approach, and did not proofread all related content for consistent usage either.

 

[MidCakePa]

The Good Book of Writing comes in two parts — each very good on its own, but even better when taken together.

Old Testament: Strunk & White.
New Testament: AP Stylebook.