south Florida. South Florida

According to the Wall Street Journal’s style police, it’s “South Florida,” not “south Florida.”

The editors explain:

“This is as subjective a call as they come for a stylebook, but South Florida qualifies as ‘widely known’ under our approach.”

Here’s the entry in the Journal’s stylebook for “cities and states”:

Usually lowercase the compass points when they describe a section of a state or city:

📍western Pennsylvania
📍southern Atlanta

But capitalize them in referring to several widely known sections:

📍Southern California
📍Northern California
📍Northern Virginia
📍South Florida
📍The South Side of Chicago
📍The Lower East Side of New York
📍South Texas
📍West Texas
📍East Texas
📍North Texas

If in doubt, use lowercase.