The party that gave us Canada-U.S. free trade, North American free trade and the World Trade Organization began life as protectionist.

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To read the policy platform the Republicans adopted on Monday at their Milwaukee convention, it seems that making America great again requires adopting 19th-century styles of arbitrarily capitalizing the initial letters of many nouns and even going all-caps on important points.

Making your way through the platform’s 23 pages feels like reading a Dickens novel, with this and that noun capitalized, occasionally haphazardly. “We are a Nation,” its preamble says, “in SERIOUS DECLINE.” This is despite the fact that “In 2016, President Donald J. Trump was elected as an unapologetic Champion of the American People. He reignited the American Spirit and called on us to renew our National Pride. His Policies spurred Historic Economic Growth, Job Creation, and a Resurgence of American Manufacturing.”

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And so it goes, all in the style of a Trump tweet — though without typos and with only eight exclamation marks in all, e.g.: Tax Cuts for Workers, and No Tax on Tips!. Donald Trump rules over his party so utterly it now punctuates its official documents the way he punctuates his posts.

Most people probably think that how a document is capitalized or punctuated is not especially important. For those of us who write and edit by trade, however, departures........

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