Center for a New American Security

1. We will now capitalize Marine and Marines when referring to individual members of the United States Marine Corps. Under the previous rule, we capitalized references to the service as a whole, but lowercased “marine” in referring to individuals. We used to say, “Three marines were wounded in the fighting.” Now we’ll say, “Three Marines were wounded in the fighting.” (We’ll make a similar change to capitalize “Coast Guardsman,” though that comes up less frequently.)

2. We will now use the spelling whisky, with no “e,” when referring specifically to Scotch and Canadian spirits. We’ll use “whiskey” for the Irish and American versions, and for general references, with no place of origin indicated. Under the previous rule, we used “whiskey” in all references.