After looking at the editorial calling for the President to fire Donald Rumsfeld, I browsed around
http://www.armytimes.com/index.php and found that it violates MedMech's rules on capitalization. That publication repeatedly uses the word "soldier" without capitalizing the "s", which is of course consistent with customary usage in the English language. So, those of you who are accustomed to seeing that word spelled with a lower case "s", you are not alone.
I did a quick google on this issue and did not come up with anything directly on point, but I did find a reference to a style manual used by the Army. It seems to support the
Army Times' approach. Maybe MM knows of a rule out there that says that "Soldier" is to be treated differently than other official titles such as "president." Here's the link:
http://www.gordon.army.mil/ac/stylemanual.asp#Article%20sections
And this is what it says:
Quote:
B-3. Titles used with names or titles standing for persons
a. Capitalize titles preceding proper names. Do not capitalize when used in a general sense. b. Capitalize titles following proper names, or used alone as substitutes for names, when they indicate pre-eminence. Capitalize titles in the second person. Do not capitalize when used in a general sense or when not indicating pre-eminence.
AP Stylebook guidance agrees with a but disagrees with b, and therefore AC style follows the AP Stylebook on b. Capitalize a person's title only when used preceding one or more names (President Bush; Presidents Clinton and Bush). Lowercase in all other instances. Therefore most frequent usage is to lowercase: the president, the secretary of defense, the secretary of the Army. But: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of the Army Thomas White. (Because these titles are long, it's more grammatically correct to say Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense, or Thomas White, secretary of the Army. Note that when set off by commas, the title is not capitalized! "Capitalization" entry in AP Stylebook has more information.)
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I guess we need the AP Stylebook to answer the question, unless MM is talking about an unwritten rule.