When it comes to writing, this common English word confuses many native speakers who aren’t sure whether to use Earth or earth. Why is this an issue? Earth can be either a proper noun or a common noun. In English, proper nouns (nouns which signify a particular person, place, or thing) are capitalized.
Recently a couple of readers wrote to Dictionary.com with an issue they had with one of our slideshows from a few years ago. They objected to the following sentence: “Speakers tend to use [obviously] … to emphasize their point with regards to things that aren’t necessarily obvious …” Our users told us that the phrases with regards to and in regards to are incorrect, and …