Grammar Post 2

This weeks confusing grammar issue for me is when and when not to capitalize certain titles. For example, While I was writing my paper on my political cartoons, I noticed the grammar checker corrected me several times when typing "Middle East", or "United States". What's confusing to me is that when you're referring to the geographical location of the middle east do you have to capitalize it like you would the United States? Apparentely so! The reasoning behind the answer is pretty simple, but somewhere along the first grade I never applied locations as person, places, or things, in other words NOUNS! Maybe it's my hair color getting in the way again, but anyways, I found this cool website called writers block that reiterated what I should have learned in elementary school! So the moral of the story is, when referring to a location as a title, you must capitalize it even if it is not the name of a specific country!! Here's the link to the website <http://www.writersblock.ca/tips/monthtip/tipmar98.htm>