Fits Them to a T

natalily0317

Now that we’re not in T-shirt weather, I’ve been reading about characters who are. They’re wearing tee shirts with phrases on them and designing concert Ts for their own bands. One thing they are not doing is wearing t-shirts, with a lowercase T. Merriam-Webster lists both T-shirt and tee shirt, with good reason: the classic T-shirt is shaped like a capital T. More of a turtleneck collar, perhaps, would justify a lowercase T, but in the meantime a T-shirt is more comfortable capitalized.

A stick figure with a body shaped like a capital T is waving to a stick figure with the body of a lowercase t.
T-shirts are more common than t-shirts. Doodle by Natalie Roth

Besides looking up “T-shirt,” I’ve been toggling between Microsoft Word and Merriam-Webster this week to verify how to treat many other words, like makerspace and car seat. It helps to know that lifelike is one word, while life-size has a hyphen. This may be the less glamorous side of copyediting (or copy editing, depending on your style), yet it is so satisfying to know that the project spellings fit the dictionary spellings to a T.

Line drawing of a capital letter T made out of two big pencils and with stick arms and legs. Next to it is a little stick figure who is drawing on one of the legs.
I asked Bing AI for a doodle, and here’s what I got! Created using Bing AI’s DALL-E 3, November 17, 2023

Looking for someone to verify those little details on your latest project? You can ask me about copyediting using my Contact page.