Some Natural Life Magazine readers may have noticed that whenever we use the word “Nature” meaning universe in which we live, and all its living and non-living things, we capitalize the letter “N.” So I thought I’d let you know why we do that.

Back in 2004, I heard from Chris Adam,  the Executive Director of the Earthvalues Institute asking for our endorsement for their “Putting the capital N back in Nature” campaign. As a writer and editor, I strongly believe in the power of words to make change.  So I was interested to learn that in the 1700s, Nature would have been spelled with an upper case N. But sometime during the Industrial Revolution – the same time that Nature began to take a back seat – that convention was lost. So we agreed with the Earthvalues Institute’s initiative as a way to highlight the need to take the earth and its riches into consideration when making individual and political decisions.