Fan Fic Correct English (or not)

[justcarol67]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Sarah Leigh ..."
<plungy116 at ...> wrote:
>
> Just a quick question.
> I have a scene with Dung, who is talking about Harry and the Hog's
Head pub.
> Dung is the sort of person who might drop his h's, so my question
is, in dialogue when Dung is using a noun, but dropping the 'h', does
the next letter become capitalised?
> eg 'Arry, or 'arry ?
> 
> I'm thinking that the vowel should remain lower case, but I'm just
checking because I don't think this is the sort of thing you can look
up in a grammar book.
> 
> TIA Sarah xx
>

Interesting question. As a copyeditor, I would recommend capitalizing
it because a name remains a name even with the initial letter dropped
(and of course it would be capitalized at the beginning of a sentence,
regardless). I checked HBP, and JKR (or her editor) capitalizes
"'Arry" as spoken by Fleur in "An Excess of Phlegm." "'Agrid" is
treated the same way in GoF. So even if you're not persuaded by my
reasoning, you can't go wrong in following JKR and her editors.

Carol, whose usual source for editing questions would not be a grammar
book but "The Chicago Manual of Style," which is followed by the
majority of American publishers except those in specialized fields
like medicine and psychology