Just to clarify again - throughout my book, the characters are often referred to by their family status (in Ancient Egypt) eg

'Hello, cousin'
'Listen to me, sister'

They are also, at times, referred to by their names.

For the cousin and sister, do i leave the c and s small? Or, according to the Mum example above, make them big? I'm sure an editor once told me small, and now i'm confused.

Cheers.

I think it would be a small c and small s because they are generic greetings. They probably had many cousins and several sisters, and use the same greeting for each.

Thanks, Naomi - i think that's along the lines of what the editor was saying. The character does only have one sister, as it happens - but she doesn't call her sister as often as a child might call their mother 'mum', so it probably is more generic. I'd never thought about how many cousins she has But yes, probably quite a few.

I always thought the rules were pretty clear: if it's a proper name, it's capitalised; if it's another kind of noun, it's uncapitalised. So the question is, are you using the word as if it were a name, or as a generic term?

Alex

I agree with Alex, if the word you are using is in place of the persons name, capitalize it, if not don't.

Mum and Dad are essentially our names where our children are concerned, so if a character was saying, 'can you help me Dad,' it should start with a capital I think.

But then, if that character is talking to another person, should she still use a capital? For example should it be - 'I was telling Mum and Dad the other night about your wonderful news' or 'I was telling mum and dad the other night...

Oh now I'm not quite sure - lol!

This one, because they're used as proper names:

'I was telling Mum and Dad the other night about your wonderful news'

Titles, too, take the same capitalisation as the noun they go with. For example:

"Where were you when the crime took place?" asked Inspector Jones. I told the inspector I couldn't remember.

(I.e. "inspector" is capitalised the first time, because it's part of a proper name, whereas the second time it's being used as generic noun.)

That's what I was taught at school, anyway.

Alex

Blimey it's been so many years since I left school that I can't remember, lol.

In my case, it's more than 32 years!

Ha ha you beat me by 2 years, only thirty for me!