A Word, Please:

AIG. Lehman Bros. Countrywide. There was a time when the names of America’s business titans evoked only low-key contempt instead of the red-faced foot-stomping rage they inspire today. And, as with so many other things that make us angry enough to burst a neck vein, part of the rage we feel toward corporate crumb bums has to do with how powerless they make us feel.

Well, I come to you today with a weapon — a tiny tool for taking back a little bit of the turf to which corporate America’s lowest life forms have laid claim. It won’t make Bernie Madoff grow a heart or Henry Paulson grow a brain. But it can evoke a small-scale feeling of “I’m not letting big business push me around anymore.”

It’s a weapon you already possess. You call it lowercase.

You see, a lot of companies use capital letters to mark as their own stuff that really isn’t. They use capitals to signify ownership of everything from “Double Cheeseburger” to the word “Company” itself. But they’re not the boss of you. Contrary to what you read in press releases and legal documents and on company websites, you don’t necessarily have to capitalize everything a company tells you to.

Here’s an example of the stuff we copy editors see every day: “Pierre Grandtete, the Executive Chef overseeing all of our Restaurant’s 200 locations, serves up his signature Duck Breast with Blueberry Roux paired with his delicious Carrots and Leeks Julienne on the side.” And here’s what we copy editors do with that: “executive chef?.?.?.?restaurant’s?.?.?.?duck breast with blueberry roux?.?.?.?carrots and leeks julienne.” And, man, does it feel good — especially when the restaurant is owned by a publicly traded conglomerate held by our 401K or just caters to the Wall Street lunch crowd.

Of course, you can’t lowercase everything. There’s no way to interpret a trademarked name as a description. You may be eating a strip steak, but if you’re eating it at a certain Las Vegas restaurant called Stripsteak — well, that’s a proper name and it should start with a capital. Yet even here you have some power because the owners of Stripsteak would have you write it STRIPSTEAK. Most newspapers don’t let companies tell them to capitalize whole words, and you don’t have to, either.