Should “Hell” be capitalized?

I am of the belief that Hell should be capitalized because real or not, it is the name of a place, and thus a proper noun. It should be capitalized correct?

I have seen it written without capitalization plenty of times, but I suspect that most of those were just due to laziness or illiteracy (it tends to be written with a lower-case ‘h’ mostly on the Internet–sigh).

Other uses, including expletives seem to use it as a place name as well:

• What [in] the Hell‽

• Go to Hell!

Google gives mixed results and checking the WikiPedia entry for Hell to get a proper definition does indicate that it is a location, but even on that same page, there are plenty of instances with a lower-case ‘h’.

Is there a situation in which it would not be capitalized? What about uses as an adjective:

that job was Hell?

Solution 1:

"Hell" is capitalized when it is used as a proper noun. That is, you capitalize it when you are referring to it as a specific place. However, it can be perfectly legitimate to leave it uncapitalized if you are not referring to a specific place.

"That job was hell" does not refer to a specific location, but rather a nebulous concept of torture. Thus, it is not capitalized in this sentence.

Solution 2:

Hell need not be capitalized, even when it refers to a specific place, in the same way we need not capitalize equator (see for example Larry Trask's Guide to Punctuation).

The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary also allows for it to remain uncapitalized. Its capitalization then is possibly due to its religious significance and not its reference to a specific place.

Checking several bibles (that is as real as hell can be) also shows that it need not be capitalized.