Convention

Did you know that written English was not standardized until somewhere between 1830 and 1840? Before that, there were only (totally guessing, here!) four different ACCEPTED ways to spell the word for a female offspring. No, really. Spelling, punctuation, and even grammar were all over the place. Reading was HARD!!... Which maybe explains why so few people learned how to do it.

But even since, then, stuff has changed- English is a living dynamic language, after all. Did you know it's only been in the last.. 10-ish years that "ain't" officially became a word? Yeah, there's a committee somewhere that decides when a word becomes an official word- they meet every two or three years. And ginormous- same thing, but of course that was a little more recent.

I'm curious about when "karen" will become a common noun. We know the traditional meaning is a proper noun referring to a woman who has "Karen" on her birth certificate, driver license, and other official documents.

But if  you've ever worked in retail, food service, or other field where you work with customers or the public in general, you've probably been exposed to one of THOSE women, or at least heard of them. She's middle aged, has That Hair Cut, and is probably white, and epically entitled. Things don't go her way, "I want to talk to your manager! Corporate headquarters will hear about this! I'll be back to make sure you get fired!" She knows she's entitled to reparations because the customer is always right.. right? (And yes, in case you weren't aware- I do sincerely hate that term!)

To me, there's a world of differenced, and it's important to me to differentiate between the two, mostly because there are a number of sweet darling women in my life who just happen to have the (mis)fortune of being named Karen. The convention I've come up with is to capitalize the proper noun, and use lower case to indicate a common noun:

"I talked to Karen yesterday. She and her husband were able to visit their grandkids and they had a blast!"

"A karen came in to work today. She about lost her mind when the manager confirmed that her expired coupon wasn't going to be honored."

I kinda hope for the sake of all the Karens in the world, that this convention catches on.