It’s common to the point of mootness, but: when describing the planet, Earth is a proper noun and should be capitalized. Otherwise you are referring to soil.
It’s common to the point of mootness, but: when describing the planet, Earth is a proper noun and should be capitalized. Otherwise you are referring to soil.
It isn’t even an error, though. It’s just wrong. “Earth” should be lowercase. I can understand being pedantic, but pedantic and wrong is super irritating.
The original post is technically correct on the topic of capitalization for “Earth”. When referring to the planet, it is a proper noun, thus capitalized. source
However, that is a pretty egregious use of a colon XD
“On earth” (e.g. “richest man on earth”) is one of those idioms, so the E is lowercase. See here.
It’s a bit confusing, but they aren’t literally referring to “the planet Earth” in an astronomical sense. If you were writing a sci-fi story and comparing the wealth of the richest man on Earth to, say, the richest man on Mars, then it would be capitalized.