Answer: Muggle/Wizarding capitalization

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

immortalje wants to know: In the example "the Wizarding/Muggle world," what words should be capitalized?

Fortunately, Harry Potter is a book fandom, so we have a written source.

As much as J.K. Rowling's universe overlaps with our own, her books are still fantasy books and, as all fantasy authors do, she created the rules for the bits she made up. So, diving into Rowling's text, I see that Dumbledore wields a Put-Outer to extinguish lights, Floos are distinguishable from ordinary flues, and a wizard or witch might be a Metamorphmagus. Yet brooms are still brooms, even if they fly, though their make might be Cleansweep or Firebolt.

For our reader's particular question, Rowling uses "wizarding world" and "Muggle world." Follow the canon author's precedent.

Comments

[alethiaxx.livejournal.com]

Potterwords (http://community.livejournal.com/potterwords/9493.html) is a great reference for HP canon spelling/capitalization, if anyone's interested. :)

[immortalje]

Somehow I never managed to find it in the books when I remembered to check and the different precedent doesn't really help as I had hoped for a simple rule to help me remember if it's capitalized.

I guess the only help will be bookmarking this post as an easier check up. Thanks for the answer!
And thanks to alethiaxx for the link.

[papertowns.livejournal.com]

I was editing a friend's Harry Potter story and was unsure about this. Thanks for the clarification!

[szaleniec1000.livejournal.com]

Belated thanks for this. If it helps, here's (http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b234/rsm109/wizardingworld.jpg) an image illustrating the canon (un-)capitalisation of "wizarding world" that I used in a review when I finally got sick of that mistake.