I grew up on descriptive notation, where the names of the pieces are capitalized. Consequently I am used to seeing the pieces’ names capitalized in annotations. This seems not to happen any more. But why is the noun “the Exchange” capitalized in Chess Life? Why was the verb “to Queen” capitalized in GM Benko’s endgame columns? Is there a style manual someplace governing these usages in Chess Life? It just seems non-standard to me.
Capitalization is important in a game score. If White has a bishop on d2, there is a difference between bxc3 and Bxc3.
Alex Relyea
But I would usually just scrawl “bc” instead of “bxc3” (unless two such pawn captures were possible, a very rare event) which, besides being faster, had the additional benefit of being even more distinguishable from “Bc3:” or “Bxc3”.
“The pawn” was never capitalized in print, at least in my lifetime, though “P-K4” was. But all the other pieces were capitalized way back when. It is a puzzlement.
I would not capitalize “to queen.”
Perhaps by analogy with the German "die Qualität "?
And also to avoid ambiguity between “sacrifice of the Exchange” and “the exchange of queens.”
I share your experience and agree that there should be standardization. I think, however, that Exchange should be on the “always capitalized” list. (I don’t know why other than that’s how it reads in my older books! And also, it has a more generic meaning - reserved for the lower case.) The player colors should also be always capitalized (White, Black)… in part to distinguish from the square colors. It is more common in recent years to see “light square” [e.g., bishop] and “dark square”, but in years passed it used to be unambiguous to say “white” and “black” for squares/bishops, since the players were White and Black. Pieces should be capitalized; of course, pawns are not pieces. 
Thanks for triggering some nostalgia! 
Agree with all (All?) 
…for example: a pawn can queen to become a Queen and be quickly exchanged, or could become a Knight (underpromotion) - which unlike the Queen that can be exchanged, can aspire uniquely to win the Exchange. 
(Or on the other hand, the Knight, too, can simply be exchanged. 
Even for a pawn. 
)
CL has had several style manuals over the years, not sure what they’re using at present. It really comes down to the editor’s preference. My own is to capitalize all piece names (but not “pawn”), as well as “Exchange,” “White,” and “Black” in all of my articles and magazines. But those are personal shibboleths, and I wouldn’t claim that everyone else has to follow suit.
I wonder if some of the confusion centers around whether a given exchange, piece, or color could be considered a proper noun in the context of the sentence. Consider, “This type sharp middle game play usually leads to white winning the exchange,” versus, “At move 26 in this game White won the Exchange.” (That is, in a particular game there is a particular exchange event by a specific player/color being referred to, as opposed to the general concept of the exchange.) Likewise one could be describing a particular Queen in a game as opposed to the queen piece in general.
But on second thought this really doesn’t hold water. I don’t drive my specific Car to the specific Garage for a specific Repair, while I do drive my Chevrolet Impala to Leman Chevrolet to have the exhaust manifold repaired. (And pay too much money in the process. 
) And I must confess to being horribly inconsistent at times when I write - I tend to capitalize White and Black but not universally.
Is there a teacher of English in the house? :mrgreen:
I read both examples as saying that the player, who moved first in the game, won a rook for a bishop or knight. That’s the pretty consistent meaning of the noun “exchange.” But the verb “exchange” can mean a swap of pieces, or the general interaction you refer to, and it never means winning a rook for a minor piece.
I thought it said “Lemon Chevrolet” at first. 
In German all nouns are capitalized.
I think Chess Life has an editorial standard for capitalization, maybe Daniel Lucas can respond to this one?
See how David Forsyth does it.
My theory, as a former copy editor, is that Chess Life doesn’t have a copy editor. At least, not a proper, dedicated, full-time, knows-his-####, maintains-his-own-stylebook copy editor. Looking in the staff box, I see one Alan Kantor credited as “editorial assistant/copy editor.” If I had to make a guess based solely on intelligence guided by experience, I’d say Kantor had never worked on a copy desk, and he landed this particular responsibility by being pretty good at proofreading. But cleaning up obvious errors isn’t all there is to copy editing.
Copy editing is one of those niche skills, like teaching and home improvement, that too many people mistakenly think any halfway intelligent person can do using common sense alone. Consequently, more and more businesses with publication divisions – including, sadly, actual publishers – are trying to save money by doing without dedicated copy editors. Alert readers notice the result. It’s not pretty.
You may be right.
I am troubled by those who jump on the bandwagon of incorrect and substandard usages. I will credit “nor’easter” as a spoken form when people also say “Nor’eastern University.” Television meteorologists refer to “the Monadnocks” when Mt. Monadnock is in fact a solitary mountain; I believe dictionaries highlight this fact. I had a supervisor who used the verb “pour” when “pore” was meant; she referred to a dictionary in favor of her usage. In fact the dictionary meant that if you read “pour” in some text, then perhaps “pore” was the intended meaning. Dictionaries nowadays are descriptive rather than prescriptive.
I read in an old book (written in the 19th century) of a storm approaching from the southwest being called a “sou’wester”. I remember because it was about two days ago that I read it. It may be a nautical usage.
That, on the other hand, is illiteracy. And I don’t care if a dictionary provides an excuse for it.
At the time I wrote this letter to the editor, I had just finished reading a German opening book and was used to “Bc3:” (really, “Lc3:”). The development of Portable Game Notation (*.pgn) files led to the standardization of pawn captures and other things in notation as well. While I used a two character pawn capture in that letter, I have not recorded a pawn capture in that format for over thirty years.
So pgn is a subset of algebraic notation, that it’s extra easy to write a computer parser for.
But my human parser works fine and it’s already written. I know what “bc” means. 
I confess the : was picked up from German. A friend had picked it up from reading books in German, and I copied the notation style as well as borrowing some of his books. 40 years ago, a lot of the literature was not available in English. 30 years ago, most of it was appearing in English though.
Agreed. But I’m not foolish enough to criticize a supervisor in that way.
Similarly, I read in a hobby magazine about defining the “parameters” of one’s collection, when “perimeters” was meant. A response from the editorial assistant referred me to the dictionary she used.
The only time I saw “sou’wester,” I think, referred to an outer garment. It was a long time ago and I could be mistaken. There was one time I thought I was wrong, but I was mistaken.
I am used to Algebraic but I really like Descriptive better.
I handed a book with Descriptive to a student of mine. He didn’t have a clue what was the notation meant. But he figured it out shortly.
Corrected a typo
Descriptive is really more “human”, in the sense that B3 (that is KB3 or QB3) has certain characteristics: it is two squares diagonally from a corner, it is a typical developing square for a knight, etc. The same applies if you’re the second player. How much sense does it make when White thinks of a3, Black has to think of a6 to consider a similar square in his position?
Algebraic has less semantic clues in the notation, but it may be easier to remember which are light and dark squares in algebraic, and it’s a little easier when discussing a game to refer to a square with a single name.
It’s not like metric vs. English measure. Metric is just better, but we don’t use it. Algebraic is not purely better than descriptive, but we got rid of descriptive.
I still use descriptive.
One potential “advantage” (for those 15A cases where it applies) would be that a person writing a move down prior to making it on the board has slightly fewer concerns about an opponent reading it upside down and getting some additional thinking time to work on a response. Since I don’t write my move down until after I make it I miss out on that.