“Cindy-Loo Who* is an Executive with a passion for Leadership. A Writer, Speaker, Consultant, Coach, Mother, Wife, & seeker of wisdom.”

Oh Random and whimsical Capitalization — there You are again. There are rules as to what should be capitalized and what should not. When you just randomly capitalize words that strike you as important, it makes you look less intelligent than you may wish. The situation’s even worse when you’re capitalizing words that you are using to refer to yourself, because it sounds like you’re trying to make yourself sound especially important. “Less intelligent” in combination with “self-aggrandizing” is probably not the effect you’re aiming for in a Twitter profile.

 Purdue Owl provides a nice, concise explanation of the rules of capitalization.

I was just finishing up another post when I came across the profile I quote above and felt compelled to do my little bit to help stamp out random capitalization. The profile also made me wonder: Why “speaker” and not “seeker”? Why, given everything that IS capitalized, would you not capitalize “passion” and “wisdom”? In this writer’s system, are those qualities relatively unimportant or does the writer follow some odd rule that we’re unaware of? That’s the problem with random capitalization — aside from making a lot of people dismiss you at first glance — it doesn’t express your meaning in the way you intend. That’s why you need to learn the rules and then follow them because all writers — OK, most writers — have agreed at least implicitly that we follow certain rules so that we can express ourselves and be understood as well as possible.

OK, just one more gripe — referring to oneself by name always sounds pompous and, frankly, a little unstable. Cindy-Loo Who*, I’m talking to you. For your own sake, please edit your profile.

*Name changed to protect the privacy of the individual, Random Capitalizer though s/he may be. I left everything else pretty much the same in the hopes that Cindy* might recognize the profile and edit accordingly.

At the C-level management meeting, the CEO said that he knew there was a rumor starting to circulate about positions being outsourced offshore and he wanted to nip it in the ____.
a. butt
b. bud

Answer: b.

Explanation:
You can imagine a use for “nip it in the butt” — you could deter someone that way but it doesn’t seem like office-appropriate behavior.

The actual saying is “nip it in the bud.” The meaning is to take care of a problem in its early stages before it gets too big to manage easily.

Here’s Paul Brians on the question:

“To nip a process in the bud is to stop it from flowering completely. The hilariously mistaken ‘nip it in the butt’ suggests stimulation to action rather than stopping it.”

It’s surprising how often “nip it in the butt” appears, especially online. I think this is yet another case of people mishearing something and not seeing it in print (because they don’t read enough, I’m thinking).

There are lots of examples of misuse, even within the media, especially the sports media (just saying):

From USA Today:

“These were two crucial points for us,” said Bailey, who has four goals and nine points during a six-game point streak. “If you don’t get them, they’ll nip you in the butt at the end of the year.”

From Scout.com:

“… but I realized that if something starts to not feel good you’ve got to nip it in the butt quickly and not just keep going and get into a bigger problem …“

From the Turf Show Times:

“Hopefully both sides will realize they caused this mess by letting people who are litigation experts lead negotiations, and next time, when this happens again, they’ll nip it in the butt before it causes a problem.”

From NJ.com:

“If the people around you are negative thinkers, it’s like having wolves at the door. It becomes an emotionally contagious atmosphere. Managers have to nip it in the butt. Once a company is in freefall, it’s too late.”

Then, again, the expression is occasionally used to good effect, whether or not the writer knows the correct expression:

From the Philadelphia Enquirer:

“Something dangerous is going on in the world of women’s underwear, and I want to nip it in the butt. Sorry. I am referring, of course, to Spanx. If you don’t know what Spanx are, I have one word for you: Girdles.”

So there you have it. If you want to use “nip it in the butt” for a bit of wordplay, I have no quarrel with you. But if you’re just writing about stopping a small problem before it gets out of hand, save your dental work — the correct expression is “nip it in the bud.”

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