I’ve been making the decision to capitalize the word Bigfoot for the last year and a half now, and it occurred to me recently that I might be doing it all wrong.
While curled up in bed last week, snug as a bigfoot in a rug, I flipped through the pages of books like Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science, Monster Trek, Searching for Sasquatch, Bigfoot, Yeti, and the Last Neanderthal, Anatomy of a Beast, etc., and I realized there was no consensus on capitalization. Authors would use big B’s and little b’s at different times—sometimes with multiple variations in one text.
Were these decisions arbitrary? I refused to believe it! If each author had enough time to write a book about Sasquatch, then they surely had enough time to deeply ponder the writing mechanics—or at least do whatever a random editor told them to do.
I decided to capitalize the word Bigfoot mostly because that’s what I’d seen most modern journalists doing. I was a mimicker. A sheep! A wild, black sheep by nature—but a sheep, nonetheless. I couldn’t believe I had overlooked this for so long.
It plagued me for hours, even whole days. I would lie awake for minutes. I nearly dreamed about it. It was clear that I was a fraud. How could I call myself a professional writer if I hadn’t solved the ultimate Bigfoot mystery of B vs. b?
I Googled some other posts about the capitalization conundrum and found them all to be frustratingly inconclusive and CAPITAL-B BORING.
Sitting at my desk at work last Friday, I knew I couldn’t live with myself anymore. I had to seek out someone who could answer the question lurking deep in the wilderness of my psyche, throwing rocks at my ego and knocking ominously on the black, rotting bark of my soul. The quest called to me.
So I swiveled in my chair.
“Kate?” I said to the professional copy editor with decades of experience who I’ve sat next to for the last three years. “Bigfoot with a big B or little b?”
“Hm, that’s a tough one,” Kate said, crossing her arms and bringing her fingertip to tap her lips. “I would say if you are a Bigfoot believer, lowercase. Uppercase would imply that he is a singular, mythological animal. Writing the word in lowercase normalizes Bigfoot, since you’re treating it like any species of animal, including human.”
“Oh my God,” I said. Or is it, “Oh my god?” I thought.
I was aghast. By writing Bigfoot with an uppercase B this entire time, have I been inadvertently making a strong statement about my Bigfoot beliefs?!
I mean, I’m not a believer. But I’m also not not a believer. Crap! Who am I?!?!
“Oh, and regarding Bigfoot’s pronouns,” Kate continued, ignoring the panicked flush in my cheeks, “Say you’re looking for a bigfoot and you found one, what would you call the animal? It? Him? Them?”
“I supposed I’d prefer to go with she,” I told her, since Patty, arguably the most well-known Bigfoot from the famous Patterson-Gimlin film, had, for lack of a better term: TIG OL’ BITTIES. Kate scoffed.
“I’ve watched [the PG film] too, but I don’t think those are boobs,” Kate said. “They could just as easily be moobs [AKA man boobs]. I think it’s inconclusive. And look at a mountain gorilla! They have pretty big moobs too. Or early Schwarzenegger.”
She had a point.
“Besides,” she said. “As an editor, to be safe, I tend to go plural singular with bigfoot, with they.”
Yes. We wouldn’t want to offend anyone by calling Bigfoot by an incorrect pronoun. Sasquatch is from Northern California after all, and while the beasts could be a peaceful folk—they could also be violently liberal.
And then of course, she said, there’s the issue of what to call bigfoot when there are many.
“Would you refer to multiple bigfoot like deer?” I said. “Or moose?”
“That is definitely difficult,” Kate said with hard nod. “I mean, we still can’t agree on what to call more than one octopus.”
However, she said, she would lean more towards bigfoots than bigfoot.
She admits it looks weird, but generally when pluralizing words in an English manner, adding an s is the way. Deer and moose are exceptions to the rule.
I looked up the plural of Bigfoot in the dictionary and apparently Merriam-Webster agrees—with the plural of Bigfoot written as bigfoots or even bigfeet.
My head was swirling.
“To be B or not to B?” I wondered, as an existential crisis crawled up from my stomach to form a lump in my throat. This was serious capital-B Business. I could only imagine the consequences of my ignorance up to this point, what my readers must be thinking of me.
“Whose side is she on?” many have surely asked—sharpening hunting knives on their back porches at night while moonlight shined through gaps in their teeth. “It better be MY SIDE.”
Fuck! OK. Well…
Until we have legit DNA or a body proving Bigfoot’s undeniable existence, I can’t in good conscience say Bigfoot exists—which makes him mythical. Score for big Mama B. I will capitalize the word Bigfoot!
But wait…
I’m also not presumptuous enough to declare that people didn’t have encounters if they say they really did. And I do think it’s possible that Bigfoot could exist or at least could have existed at some point. Score for baby b.
It’s a tie! WHAT DO I DO?
After much consideration, chocolate consumption, and some inner turmoil that bubbled like a fine fondue, I finally determined what I must write…
Which is whatever I want.
That’s right! I’m a wild card! Writer gone rogue! A real wise gal with serious authority problems! Catch me if you can!
I think how you write the word Bigfoot all depends on what looks and sounds better, damn it. For the intrigue. For the fun. For the flow.
Language changes all the time. As a writer, I make the rules and break the rules. I’m in charge. This is my domain.
Bitch!
Of course, this is the reason Kate is the copy editor and I’m the wayward writer/sometimes editor who tends to spring for style over stylebook.
“This sentence just feels right,” I’ll say with bravado as Kate takes the pages from my hands and tells me to go away.
So that’s how you write about Bigfoot. You know the take of a trusted English language expert.
And now, more importantly—my opinion:
As far as I’m concerned, Bigfoot, real or not, is far more exceptional than a deer or many deer—and thus, can be referred to in the plural as bigfoot. I think the bigfoots and bigfeet options really stink. They sound totally unnatural. Fuck bigfeet! In the figurative language sense, of course. (Or literally, if you’re into that kind of thing. JUST NEVER TELL ME.)
Also, I have no interest in being politically correct when it comes to Bigfoot’s pronouns, and will call he, she or it whatever I feel like. If Bigfoot is ever discovered and declared a minority, I will just have to go down in history as a bigfoot bigot—caricatured in mags like the New Yorker and slandered in future punk rock zines with names like Bigfoot Femme or Razorsquatch.
And finally, I think that capital Bigfoot has a lot more pow on the page—and being a punchy writer, I prefer to go for the gut. But! I may want to experiment with lowercase bigfoot when referring to many of them in the wild, or a bigfoot rather than the Bigfoot. Same could be said for the Sasquatch. Or some wild yeti.
To me, I think the “correct” way to write the word Bigfoot should remain forever elusive. As far as we know, the creature might not exist in real life, but it certainly exists in our minds and our books, and on our blogs.
Why not write about Bigfoot as we see fit? Big B’s, little b’s, boobs, moobs, and all.
