So What if I don't Capitalize?

While at church on Easter Sunday, I learned a valuable lesson in capitalization. While singing a praise song, the words pop up on the screen, "O death, where is your sting? O hell, where is your victory?"

While this may not catch everyone's attention, as an English teacher, I find joys in the little things in life. This happened to be one of them. Without capitalizing the word Hell, they've used it's more inappropriate brother, hell. Hell, representing the Christian afterlife for non-followers of Jesus Christ, should always be capitalized because it is the proper name for a place. While hell is better known as a curse word and is incidentally commonly preceded by the word "Oh".

So while in church on Sunday, I sang along with the words, "O hell." And I couldn't help but wonder if I was considered to be cussing since I knew the difference in the non-capitalized and the capitalized.

In reality, however, I simply had a good giggle about the typo and went on enjoying church.