When asking a question on another SE site, it was brought to my attention that the airline company easyJet is spelled with a lowercase e and a capital J (I initially wrote EasyJet).
How should such a word be capitalized at the beginning of a sentence:
EasyJet is an airline.
or
easyJet is an airline.
If you're constrained to follow any specific style guide, it may have a definite position on whether to capitalise proper nouns like easyJet, eBay if they occur as the first "word" in a sentence. Probably not, though.
But this is from Cambridge University Press in Interchange (a series for adult and young-adult learners of English)...
The above is presented as a "promotional piece" for eBay, so arguably CUP are simply reproducing it without necessarily endorsing it. But it's followed by student's question text that repeats that "non-capitalisation" choice...
My guess is most writers would rather sidestep the issue completely - by rephrasing so the problematic term doesn't start a new sentence. It doesn't make any difference how many people agree or disagree with whatever capitalisation choice you make - there is no "perfect" way to deal with "orthographic anomalies" like this.
EDIT: I personally have no preference one way or the other - even with the potentially more challenging choice between eBay, Ebay, and EBay. But since I've cited Cambridge University Press on the "Trade names trump standard grammar" side (backed by CMOS), I'll just say that both the BBC and New York Times use EBay to start a sentence, as noted in comments.
In short, it's six of one and half-a-dozen of the other (but you should at least be consistent).
Blockquote
Brand names cannot be changed when cited or referred to in writing. However the brand name is written or spelled, it must stay that way even if it means starting a sentence with a lower-case letter.
So, easyJet is the brand name and EasyJet, both used by the company and eBay. So, either one, I'd say.
For example:
easyJet is an interesting company. eBay is a corporate behemoth.
But editors will often reword a sentence to avoid this, as explained below.
Quote from ragan's PR Daily:
"eBay has a fabulous collection of vintage tube tops. iTunes must now compete with Amazon’s Prime Music.
The Chicago Manual of Style has this to say: “Brand names or names of companies that are spelled with a lowercase initial letter followed by a capital letter (eBay, iPod, iPhone, etc.) need not be capitalized at the beginning of a sentence or heading, though some editors may prefer to reword.” That wasn’t always its rule, though:
This departure from Chicago’s former usage recognizes not only the preferred usage of the owners of most such names but also the fact that such spellings are already capitalized (if only on the second letter). Company or product names with additional, internal capitals (sometimes called “midcaps”) should likewise be left unchanged (GlaxoSmithKline, HarperCollins, LexisNexis):".
Summary: Brand names are legal names and cannot be changed in writing.
https://www.prdaily.com/is-there-a-definitive-answer-to-this-capitalization-conundrum/
The Economist The Bestselling Guide to English Usage
company names Call companies by the names they call themselves. Here is a selection of names that are sometimes spelt incorrectly.
abn amro ACNeilsen Allied Domecq aol AstraZeneca AT&T (American Telephone) [see the full list in the PDF]
Refer to the full guide here: The Economist Style Guide
