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In my review of The 11:05 murders, I wrote the following sentence:
Action in the novel centers primarily around Woman Detective Sargent Denise Stewart.

The editorial reviewer responded: 'woman' should not be capitalized in this sentence, also 'around woman detective' is not correct grammatically, the sentence should be 'around the woman detective'

Woman Detective Sargent is a job title, not a reference to Denise Stewart being a woman. I can understand confusion on the reviewer's part. Here in the United States, I have not seen job titles for police officers designated by gender. In Ireland, where the novel is set, it appears that they are so designated.

I would like to note that, in the novel, the author showed her title capitalized in the same way I have done above. If you would like to verify this, please refer to the first page of chapter two (in my PDF version that was page 16).

Given this information, was my capitalization of Ms. Stewart's title as Woman Detective Sargent correct? Thank you for considering my question.

If the novel is set in Ireland then Ireland's title designations apply. In my opinion you were correct; however, in fairness to the reviewer I confess that I would also have responded in kind as I too was not aware of Ireland's title conventions in this regard. I would consider it an honest and well-intentioned (though erroneous) correction on the part of your critic.

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I definitely agree that this was confusing so the error is easily understandable. I enjoyed the quote in your signature-you don't often come across one by Steven Wright.

Yeah, that job title also really confused me when I read the book. I even did some Googling on it and apparently it was a thing in Ireland until the early 2000's, or somewhere around there. I really wish we could add notes to the editor, or something like that, so that this kind of thing wouldn't happen.

Thanks for the information. I appreciate your reply.

I think the capitalization is company/job/industry specific. In general, it would not be capitalized. I have corrected such errors when editing/proofreading dissertations and draft journal articles.

AliceofX wrote:Yeah, that job title also really confused me when I read the book. I even did some Googling on it and apparently it was a thing in Ireland until the early 2000's, or somewhere around there. I really wish we could add notes to the editor, or something like that, so that this kind of thing wouldn't happen.

Good

BoyLazy wrote:

AliceofX wrote:Yeah, that job title also really confused me when I read the book. I even did some Googling on it and apparently it was a thing in Ireland until the early 2000's, or somewhere around there. I really wish we could add notes to the editor, or something like that, so that this kind of thing wouldn't happen.

Good

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I agree. I think there is a suggestion box-perhaps if enough of us suggest it?

It seems like the easy answer is in the book. If you can pull a quote from the book that shows your usage was proper, you shouldn't have been penalized. If you can't, then the reviewer was probably correct. I've run into this kind of thing with the editing team, too. Ultimately it's kind of like school. Sometimes it doesn't matter if you're right -- it's what the teacher/editor thinks is right that matters for the grade.