"Landlady" can be Both a Proper and a Common Noun
In short:
- A common noun is a non-specific person, place or thing.
For example: dog, house, oven
- A proper noun is a specific person, place or thing.
For example: Fido, Burger King, Statue of Liberty
Are there cases, though, where a noun can be both a proper noun and a common noun? Yes, there are.
Is it Landlady or landlady?
When to use a capital letter when it comes to nouns, such as landlady or landlord.
lower case letters: landlady
A good tip to work out if the noun is a common or proper noun is to look at the word that comes before it. If that word is a possessive determiner or an article, don’t capitalize the noun. It will be a common noun.
For example:
I will have to talk to my (possessive determiner) landlady about dinner on Sunday.
When you should capitalize the first letter: Landlady
If the noun is used as a substitute for the person’s name, you should capitalize the first letter of that noun. Let’s say your landlady’s name is Angela. If you can easily replace the noun with her name in the sentence, the noun should have a capital letter.
For example:
I will have to talk to Landlady about dinner on Sunday.
I will have to talk to Angela about dinner on Sunday.
Also, if the noun is used as a title, the noun becomes a proper noun and needs a capital letter.
I will have to talk to Landlady Angela about dinner on Sunday.
There are numerous occasion where you used, [landlady_name.lower()] when you should have used [landlady_name], because you are using it to replace her name, which is a proper noun.