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Questions & Answers about Der Chef sucht Sie.
Why is Sie capitalized in the middle of the sentence?
Because it means "you" in the formal sense. In German, the formal "you" (Sie) is always capitalized, no matter where it appears in a sentence. This helps tell it apart from the pronoun sie (meaning "she" or "they"), which is only capitalized if it happens to be the very first word of a sentence.
How do we know Sie is the object (accusative) here, rather than the subject?
We can figure it out by looking at the other words. Der Chef is the subject (the person doing the looking), which we know because Der is the "the" used for masculine subjects (the nominative case). Because Sie is the one receiving the action of being looked for, it is the direct object (the accusative case). Luckily for learners, the formal Sie looks exactly the same in both the subject and object forms!
The English translation says "looking for", but there is no word for "for" in the German sentence. Why?
In English, we have to use the phrase "to look for". But in German, the verb suchen means "to seek" or "to search". It acts directly on the object without needing an extra preposition like "for". You simply say sucht Sie (literally "seeks you").
If I wanted to say "The boss is looking for her", how would this sentence change?