Okay, so, I was wondering about this whole “tarot” capitalization thing. You know, like when you’re writing about tarot cards or tarot readings, does it need a capital “T” or not? It’s been bugging me for a while, so I decided to finally figure it out.
First, I did what anyone would do – I went on a little online search. I typed “is tarot capitalized” into the search bar and started browsing through the results. Honestly, it was a bit of a mess. Some websites were all about capitalizing it, others were like, “nah, lowercase is fine.” There was no clear consensus, and it just got me more confused.
Then, I thought, “Okay, maybe I should check out some style guides.” You know, those books that tell you all the rules about grammar and punctuation and stuff? So, I looked up a few of the big ones, like the style guide and the style guide. I figured they would have some definitive answers.
But guess what? Even they didn’t seem to agree! One of them said to capitalize “Tarot” when it’s referring to the actual deck of cards or the practice of reading them, but to use lowercase “tarot” when it’s just being used as an adjective. Like, you’d write “Tarot cards” but “tarot reading.” Another one kind was of vague about it and just said to be consistent, which, like, duh, but that doesn’t really help me decide which way to be consistent!
After that, I decided to do something a little different. I went and looked at a bunch of books and articles about tarot – you know, actual published stuff by people who write about this for a living. I wanted to see what the pros were doing. And you know what I found? It was still a mixed bag! Some were capitalizing, some weren’t. It really seemed like there was no hard and fast rule.
So, here’s what I finally concluded. It looks like the capitalization of “tarot” is one of those things that’s just not super standardized. It’s kind of up to you, or maybe the specific style guide you’re following if you’re writing for a particular publication.
- If you want to play it safe, you can capitalize it when you’re talking about the cards or the practice and use lowercase when it’s an adjective. That seems to be a pretty common approach.
- Or, you can just pick one way – capitalized or lowercase – and stick with it throughout your writing. Just be consistent.
Honestly, I don’t think anyone’s going to yell at you either way. It’s not like spelling “definitely” wrong or something. But hopefully, this little experiment helps clear things up for anyone else who’s been wondering about this!
Final thoughts?
Do what feels right to you, just make it clear what you mean. It’s all good in the world of tarot! Always keep learning and practicing!
