Using "iProducts" at the beginning of a sentence

[ghall]

I was just wondering, since the "i" prefix in iPod, iLife, iMac, etc, is lower-case, if you used one of those product names in the beggining of a sentence, would you write it "IPod", "ILife", or "IMac"?
Just something to think about.

 

[TheAnswer]

No, because it's a trademark you always use the intended capitalization. It looks weird, so I imagine that style guides would suggest getting around this by using phrasing such as: "The iPod", "Those iMacs", "With iMovie", "Apple's iLife Suite", "On the other hand, iDVD", "Lastly, iWork"...and so on. There's always a way to rewrite the sentence so that the "i" doesn't end up in front.

 

[strider42]

I wouldn't. Its a proper noun already, and isn't capitalized. I don't think you should ever change the capitalization fo a proper noun. the correct quicbble in my mind is whether its grammatically correct for someone to claim that the proper noun they came up with shouldn't be captilized. But that seems to be prety widely accepted in today's society.

For instance, I wouldn't capitalize e.e. cummings name at the beginning of a sentence either. The lower case is very intentional and changing it doesn't seem correct.