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single word requests - Is there an antonym for “capitalize” (as in letter-case)?


A word that starts with a lower-case (lowercase?) letter can be capitalized, but what is the converse action?


Google has only one page in the top results that addresses this and the closest thing to a proposed answer is decapitalize, which trips spell-checkers, so de-capitalize.



Answer



While I'll caveat that some people aren't fond of it being used as a verb, lowercase is frequently used in the manner you're referring to. For example:



Chicago style is to lowercase all of these. Chicago Manual of Style



or



Lowercase shortened, informal or descriptive names of committees. KU University Style Guide



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