The rules of capitalization are so unfair to words in the middle of a sentence.

Framed as a playful complaint about English orthography, the line personifies “words” as if they could feel slighted by typographic hierarchy. Capitalization privileges the first word of a sentence (and proper nouns) with visual prominence, while words in the middle are rendered comparatively anonymous. Green’s humor points to how arbitrary many language conventions are—rules we treat as natural even though they are historical accidents and style choices. The quip also echoes a broader theme in his writing: sympathy for the overlooked or ordinary, and an awareness that small formal structures (grammar, labels, categories) shape how we perceive importance and meaning.