MECHANICAL PENCIL by Duy Đoàn
for Amy
Do you capitalize phobias? Do you capitalize job titles when they’re attached to people? You capitalize the shorthand of a degree but not the degree spelled out. At my job we leave out the Oxford Comma, which sometimes gets us into trouble when it comes to clarity and always gets us into trouble when we leave the comma in there and forget to take it out, and our boss strikes through it. How do you spell the phobia with the gross holes. I’ve never Googled it because I don’t want to risk seeing images. A friend once warned me never to do so. I’ve tried every variation I can think of, in Microsoft Word, but they all come up wrong. Maybe Word doesn’t know that phobia. Or maybe it has that fear, too. Every variation I try has that line under it: red, squiggly, foreboding failure. Having a fear of birds is called ornithophobia. I know this because I Googled it. Do you capitalize phobias.
