Capitalization with races

[tower_keeper]

I seem to be having trouble in whether or not to capitalize a race in a sentence. I'm working on fantasy stories and use a lot of different races. I understand that in a title, it is capitalized like...

Frodo the Hobbit, Bernat the Hill Giant.

And I understand when talking about a race in general its not...

The elves have gone into the forest.

The orcs are raiding the village.

My question, I guess, is if you are referring to one specific individual in which you know the race but not their name. For example,

The Ogre from the Centaur's Tavern came at us.

Is it capitalized or not?

What about a specific group? Like...

The Ogres of Fellendor are leaving town.

Well maybe I just answered my own question there.

All the same, I need help in this area.

Thanks!!

[Maeve]

I seem to remember that Tolkien capitalized "Orc" for his goblins, but "ogre" is a common word not usually capitalized. ( Tolkien found the word "orc" in [I]Beowulf[/I. The word is not capitalized in the poem.)

A fantasy writer has a lot of leeway when deciding what to capitalize and what not to capitalize. As a reader I find a lot of capitalization to be distracting. (I can never get used to the way all the nouns are capitalized in German.)

My suggestion would be to keep capitalization to a minimum. Orcs and ogres are not races in the sense that Negro, Caucasian and Asian are races. Orcs and ogres are species. Since we don't capitalize "human being," I don't think it's necessary to capitalize orc, ogre, elf, or ent. But that's just my opinion.
The final decision is up to the writer creating the story.

[--Deb]

For fantasy, I'd say you could capitalize or not, your choice. It's your world--your rules! (grin)

--Deb

[DanielScocco]

For fantasy, I'd say you could capitalize or not, your choice. It's your world--your rules! (grin)

--Deb

Good point.

[Alex]

I think that in cases like Frodo the Hobbit, where the whole forms an entity of identification, it should be capitalized, like in Alexander the Great.

In the ogre from the tavern example, I'd keep it lower-case unless everyone knows and addressed being always as 'Ogre'. Like: "Frodo, the hobbit we met in the tavern, disappeared in front of our eyes!"

As for 'The Ogres of Fellendor are leaving town', unless it is not the specific name of the group, I'd also use lower-case.

So: 'The Ogres of Fellendor are infamous mercenaries.'
But: 'Only the ogres of Fellendor are leaving; all the others agreed to stay till the end of the battle.'