7. Capitalization and Hyphenation
7.1 Places, persons, days, and months are capitalized.
Tirana, Leopold, Monday, June
7.2 NationalitiesNationalities, religions, and nounsphilosophies deriving from people or languages are capitalized.
Somali, Marxism, Christian, Platonist, Buddhist, Lutheran
biblical, communist, catholic, nazi
christian, buddhist, lutheran, catholiccatholic, platonist
7.3 Non-white racial identity-denoting adjectives are capitalized. For more on this, consult The Guardian article here.
Black, Brown, IndigenousIndigenous, white
7.4 For racial identities we use unhyphenated terms.
Black American, Asian Brazilian
When describing Black, Brown, and Indigenous people and a specific experience, Black, Brown, and Indigenous are capitalized because it indicates the collective, diasporic sense of history, identity, and community specific to Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. When describing white people, white is not capitalized. For more on this, consult The Guardian article here. Neither adjective should be used as singular nor plural noun. “African American" is less specific to American-born Black people. In this case, “Black Americans” is more appropriate. This also lends itself to expressions of other nationalities (e.g., Black Britons, Black French, Black Brazilians, etc.). Furthermore, when referring to specifically Black experiences, Black + noun is fine, but when referring to people who are not white, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) + noun is more appropriate.
In US English, “Black” and “Blacks,” when used as nouns, is never appropriate except in the original quotations. Black is an adjective that should modify a noun as specified as much as possible; e.g., Black communities, Black property, so forth. While Black people might work in general cases, it would be best to be as specific as possible because though the capitalization of Black suggests similarly shared experiences, these experiences are not monolithic and still vary intersectionally.
Capitalize “Southern” in "Southern America" because it suggests a shared lived experience between specific types of planters, in this case, those who share the economic trappings of slave-ownership. “Southern” here refers to the southern states or the southern United States, which is an appropriate designation to describe the “southern United States.” When capitalized, it takes on a specific set of economic, cultural, and political experiences and development, informed by slavery, in the southern states in relation to northern experiences. The same rule would not apply to what could almost be called “Northern America” because, first, it sounds too close to North America the continent. Second, one would lowercase the “n” when "northern" modifies a noun, for example, “northern industrialization” because industrialization as an indefinite set of changes and “progress” in industry does not suggest a set of experiences that can explicitly be defined as a singular, “northern” experience. Though, of course, not one of these terms are comprised of homogenous experiences – and describing that set of experiences as homogenous would crumble at the first blow of scrutiny – and neither describe monolithic conceptions of shared experience, the capitalization of “Southern America,” or preferred "American South," can suggest the broad ways in which the southern states historically developed economically, culturally, and politically. “American” here stays because “American colonies” is common use in historical sources and because the United States, as a country, was, like many new countries, a bit fuzzy around the edges early on. Lastly, cardinal directions should not be capitalized (e.g., southeast Asia, northwestern United States). A region, however, can be capitalized when defined on certain parameters above (e.g., the American South during the Antebellum era; the United States Southwest).
“American” can be used when referring to anyone from North, Central, or South America. When referring to people in the United States, be as specific as possible (e.g., The United States Postal Service, “people in the United States”). Though, in many cases, "American" will have to do. Indeed, people of the United States need a different demonym because “Americans” may be associated with the 35 or so countries on the two continents. This might seem contradictory to the note I just made about Black Americans, but punctum does the best we can with the languages we have.
Use as specific terminology as possible; e.g., "unhoused" over "homeless."