Whether to capitalise or not to capitalize the start of lines

[milo]

Interestingly, I occasionally post pieces that I have copied directly from Word and not bothered to correct initial caps -- yet nobody has pulled me up on it.  I would hesitate to suggest a double standard, but if it annoys you enough to tell one person then you should be saying the same for everyone.  That's me with my poet hat on, not my Admin hat, so it's not a directive but a personal observation.

I have posted several piece here with capped first lines.  I prefer them for formal poetry where the identity of the line itself as a unit of poetry is important as well as in acrostics.  Not once has someone mentioned it to me.

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To me it makes.
About as much.
Sense as a period.
At the end of every.
Line.

That is not to say it cannot be used to effect, but that rarely appears to be the case.

I think you do bring about one of the major uses for it which is to maintain the identity of the line as a unit in poetry. If you have read Dennis Hammes book, he makes much of the purpose and use of the line in poetry. He also wrote mostly formal poetry and capped first words in most of them.

http://www.the-rathouse.com/files/prosody.pdf