What word is in all capital letters

In this article, we want to introduce you 2 quick ways to find all words with initial or all letters capitalized in your Word document.

Capitalization is often seen in our documents. For example, some people prefer using capitalization to lay emphasis on important points. Besides, if you are looking through a government document, you will probably see many organization names in acronyms. The reasons to find words with initial or all letters capitalized are as follows:

1. You may need to change capitalized words to other cases, such as small caps.
2. Sometimes, there is no need to use capitalization all the time even as a way of emphasis.
3. In a government proposal, it’s of great importance to recheck the correct spell and explanation of acronyms which are in all caps most time.

Therefore, just pick up the methods we are going to show you to get the job done.

Method 1: Utilize “Advanced Find” Features

This time we use wildcards to help us find all words either with initial or all letters capitalized.

1. Firstly, click the arrow button next to “Find” command under “Home” tab.
2. Then click “Advanced Find” to open the “Find and Replace” box.
3. Next place cursor at the “Find what” text box. Enter “[A-Z]{2,}” to find all words with all letter capitalized. And enter “[A-Z]{1,}” to find all words with initial capitalized.
4. Click “More” to bring out more options.
5. Next check “Use wildcards” box.
6. Then click “Find In” button and choose “Main Document”. You shall see words in selection now.

Note:

As you may notice that when using “[A-Z]{1,}” to find all words with initial capitalized, only capitalized letters are in selection, such as bellow:

An alternative option is replacing the wildcards with “[A-Z][a-z]{1,}” to find all words with initial capitalized. But its setback is that it finds only words over than one letter. For instance, letter “A” will not be recognized.

Method 2: Run Word Macro

Apart from method 1, you can also run macro to highlight all target words as to examine the proper usage.

1. To start off, press “Ctrl+ Home” to go to the beginning of a document.
2. Then press “Alt+ F11” to trigger the VBA editor.
3. Next go to “Normal” project by clicking on it.
4. Click “Insert” tab and select “Module”.
5. Then double click the module to have the editing area on the right side available.
6. Now paste the following codes there:

Sub FindAndHighlightAllCaps()
  Dim objRange As Range
 
  With Selection
    .HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
 
    With Selection.Find
      .ClearFormatting
      .Text = "[A-Z]{2,}"
      .Replacement.Text = ""
      .Forward = True
      .Wrap = wdFindContinue
      .Format = False
      .MatchWildcards = True
      .Execute
    End With
    Do While .Find.Found
      Set objRange = Selection.Range
      objRange.HighlightColorIndex = wdPink
      .Collapse wdCollapseEnd
      .Find.Execute
    Loop
  End With
End Sub

1. Lastly, click “Run”.

This macro will highlight words with all letters capitalized in pink.

To highlight all words with initial capitalized, use this macro instead:

Sub FindandHighlightCapitalizedWords()
  Dim objRange As Range
 
  With Selection
    .HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
 
    With Selection.Find
      .ClearFormatting
      .Text = "[A-Z]{1,}"
      .Replacement.Text = ""
      .Forward = True
      .Wrap = wdFindContinue
      .Format = False
      .MatchWildcards = True
      .Execute
    End With
    Do While .Find.Found
      Set objRange = Selection.Range
      objRange.HighlightColorIndex = wdBrightGreen
      .Collapse wdCollapseEnd
      .Find.Execute
    Loop
  End With
End Sub

As to remove the highlight color, press “Ctrl+ A” to select the entire document. You can click “Home” tab first then click the “Text Highlight Color”. Next choose “No Color”.

Handle Word Errors

It’s such a shame that Word can run into errors every now and then. Therefore, it’s extremely necessary to know the right way to fix Word issues. One of the useful options is to acquire a repairing tool to recover corrupted files.

Author Introduction:

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In general, you should capitalize the first word, all nouns, all verbs (even short ones, like is), all adjectives, and all proper nouns. That means you should lowercase articles, conjunctions, and prepositions—however, some style guides say to capitalize conjunctions and prepositions that are longer than five letters.

What is it called when you capitalize a word?

A capitonym is a word that changes its meaning (and sometimes pronunciation) when it is capitalized; the capitalization usually applies due to one form being a proper noun or eponym. It is a portmanteau of the word capital with the suffix -onym.

Why are some words written in capital letters?

Capital letters are useful signals for a reader. They have three main purposes: to let the reader know a sentence is beginning, to show important words in a title, and to signal proper names and official titles.Capitals signal the start of a new sentence.

What is asset capitalization?

Capitalizing assets simply means you are carrying an asset to balance sheet. It indicates you purchased an asset, the life of which is more than one financial year. In other words capitalizing can be defined as ‘spreading of asset value into number of years equals to the life of the asset by means of depreciation’.

What are the 10 rules of capitalization?

What are the 10 rules of capitalization?

• Capitalize the first word of a sentence.
• Capitalize proper nouns and names.
• Capitalize the majority of titles.
• Capitalize events and periods.
• Capitalize “I” as a pronoun.
• Capitalize any locations and direct addresses.
• Capitalize family relationships.

What are proper nouns?

noun. Essential Meaning of proper noun. : a word or group of words (such as “Noah Webster,” “Kentucky,” or “U.S. Congress”) that is the name of a particular person, place, or thing and that usually begins with a capital letter.

What does it mean when you write in caps and lowercase?

Alternating caps are typically used to display mockery in text messages. The randomized capitalization leads to the flow of words being broken, making it harder for the text to be read as it disrupts word identification even when the size of the letters is the same as in uppercase or lowercase.

What expense can be capitalized?

Capitalized costs can include intangible asset expenses can be capitalized, like patents, software creation, and trademarks. In addition, capitalized costs include transportation, labor, sales taxes, and materials.

What is Capitalisation accounting?

In accounting, capitalization refers to the process of expensing the costs of attaining an asset over the life of the asset, rather than the period the expense was incurred. Rather than listing the asset as an expense, the asset is added to the company’s balance sheet and depreciated over its useful life.

Is finance capitalized?

(Finance is the name of a department. Both words are capitalized.) Jamie works in Finance.(Department, group, company, and similar words are lowercase without a specific name, but see below.)

Are pronouns capitalized in titles?

According to most style guides, nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are capitalized in titles of books, articles, and songs. You’d also capitalize the first word and (according to most guides) the last word of a title, regardless of what part of speech they are. A few parts of speech tend to be lowercase.

How do you capitalize in a sentence?

Capitalize the first word of your sentence. She rarely capitalizes her name when she signs her e-mails. The venture was capitalized with a loan of one million dollars. You can capitalize your investment at any time.

Do you put capital letter after comma?

No. You don’t have to capitalize words after commas everytime. Only when there is a proper noun (a name of an individual person, place, organization, etc) after a comma, you have to capitalize it.

What are 10 proper nouns?

Proper Nouns without THE

• first names. Bill (not the Bill)
• shops. Harrods, Marks & Spencer, Macy’s.
• towns. Washington (not The Washington), Paris, Tokyo.
• states. the United States, the US, the United States of America, the USA.
• the president, the king. President Bush (not the President Bush)
• the lake.
• streets etc.
• people.

What are 10 examples of proper noun?

10 examples of proper noun

• Human noun: John, Carry, Todd, Jenica, Melissa etc.
• Institution, establishment, institution, authority, university nouns: Saint John High School, Health Association, British Language Institute, Oxford University, New York Governorship etc.

What is pronoun example?

A pronoun (I, me, he, she, herself, you, it, that, they, each, few, many, who, whoever, whose, someone, everybody, etc.) is a word that takes the place of a noun. In the sentence Joe saw Jill, and he waved at her, the pronouns he and her take the place of Joe and Jill, respectively.

Do narcissists write in all caps?

They communicate in “all caps.”
If it’s a conversation you’re having in person, rather than over email, you may feel that what’s being said could be translated into words appearing all in capital letters, along with a few extra exclamation points.

How do you know whether to capitalize or expense?

When a cost that is incurred will have been used, consumed or expired in a year or less, it is typically considered an expense. Conversely, if a cost or purchase will last beyond a year and will continue to have economic value in the future, then it is typically capitalized.

What is capitalization and examples?

Capitalization is the recordation of a cost as an asset, rather than an expense.For example, office supplies are expected to be consumed in the near future, so they are charged to expense at once.

What is capitalizing an expense?

To capitalize is to record a cost or expense on the balance sheet for the purposes of delaying full recognition of the expense. In general, capitalizing expenses is beneficial as companies acquiring new assets with long-term lifespans can amortize or depreciate the costs. This process is known as capitalization.

What is balance sheet Capitalisation?

In accounting, capitalization refers to recording costs as assets on the balance sheet instead of as expenses on the income statement. A company may record the purchase price of an asset, as well as the asset’s acquisition costs, such as transportation and setup, as assets on the balance sheet.

Someone in one of my online editing groups wanted to find all the acronyms and initialisms in their document—any word comprising two or more capital (‘cap’) letters (e.g. AB, CDEF, GHIJK, etc.). They wanted a command that would find each one so they could check it (possibly against a glossary), then click Find Next to jump to the next one.

Wildcards to the rescue!

Here’s how:

1. Press Ctrl+H to open the Find and Replace window.
2. Click the Find tab (we only want to find these, not replace them with anything else).
3. Click More to show further options.
4. Select the Use wildcards checkbox.
5. In the Find what field, type: <[A-Z]{2,}>
6. Click Find next to find the first string of two or more caps.
7. Keep clicking Find next to jump to the next string of two or more caps.

How this works:

• The opening and closing arrow brackets (< and >) specify that you want a single whole word, not parts of a word. Without these, you would find each set of caps (e.g. in the string ABCDEF, you would find ABCDEF, then BCDEF, then CDEF, then DEF, then EF, before moving on to the next set of caps).
• [A-Z] specifies that you want a range (the [ ] part) of caps that fall somewhere in the alphabet (A-Z). If you only wanted capped words that started with, say, H through to M, then you’d change the range to [H-M] and all other capped words starting with other letters would be ignored.
• {2,} means you want to find capped words with at least two letters in the specified range (i.e. A-Z). If you only wanted to find two- and three-letter capped words, then you’d change this to {2,3}, and all capped word of four or more letters would be ignored. By not specifying a number after the comma, the ‘find’ will find capped words of any length containing at least two letters.

We can write each letter of the English alphabet as a small letter (abc…) or as a large or capital letter (ABC…). Here is a full list of capital letters.

In English, we do NOT use capital letters very much. We use them mainly for the first letter of sentences, names, days and months as well as for some abbreviations. We always write the first person pronoun as a capital I.

It is not usual to write whole sentences in capitals. A sentence or paragraph written in capitals is very difficult to read. Did you ever see a book written in capital letters? Of course not! We cannot easily read lots of text in capital letters. Lawyers, for example, know that capitals are difficult to read and that is why they often write contracts in capital letters!

When do we Use Capital Letters?

1. Use a capital letter for the personal pronoun ‘I’:

• What can I say?

2. Use a capital letter to begin a sentence or to begin speech:

• The man arrived. He sat down.
• Suddenly Mary asked, «Do you love me?»

3. Use capital letters for many abbreviations and acronyms:

• G.M.T. or GMT (Greenwich Mean Time)
• N.A.T.O. or NATO or Nato (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)

4. Use a capital letter for days of the week, months of the year, holidays:

• Monday, Tuesday
• January, February
• Christmas
• Armistice Day

5. Use a capital letter for countries, languages & nationalities, religions:

• China, France
• Japanese, English
• Christianity, Buddhism

6. Use a capital letter for people’s names and titles:

• Anthony, Ram, William Shakespeare
• Professor Jones, Dr Smith
• Captain Kirk, King Henry VIII

7. Use a capital letter for trade-marks and names of companies and other organizations:

• Pepsi Cola, Walkman
• Microsoft Corporation, Toyota
• the United Nations, the Red Cross

8. Use a capital letter for places and monuments:

• London, Paris, the Latin Quarter
• the Eiffel Tower, St Paul’s Cathedral
• Buckingham Palace, the White House
• Oxford Street, Fifth Avenue
• Jupiter, Mars, Sirius
• Asia, the Middle East, the North Pole

9. Use a capital letter for names of vehicles like ships, trains and spacecraft:

• the Titanic
• the Orient Express, the Flying Scotsman
• Challenger 2, the Enterprise

10. Use a capital letter for titles of books, poems, songs, plays, films etc:

• War And Peace
• If, Futility
• Like a Virgin
• The Taming of the Shrew
• The Lion King, Gone With The Wind

11. Use capital letters (sometimes!) for headings, titles of articles, books etc, and newspaper headlines:

• HOW TO WIN AT POKER
• Chapter 2: CLINTON’S EARLY LIFE
• LIFE FOUND ON MARS!
• MAN BITES DOG

Why is Solid Text in Capital Letters (ALL CAPS) Difficult to Read?

Why are texts written completely in capitals more difficult to read than texts in the usual mix of capital and small letters? There are several reasons, including:

• At least for native English speakers, children usually learn to read and write small letters before capital letters.
• In English, capital letters give us many visual clues, such as the start of a sentence or a proper noun.
• For the same type size, capital letters are usually wider than small letters and therefore take up more space, causing the eye to travel further.
• Words written in capital letters have no «shape». Words with small letters go up and down. Some small letters have «ascenders» (like the letter b). They go up. Some small letters have «descenders» (like the letter p). They go down. Some small letters have no ascender or descender. They stay in the middle. So small letters vary in height. But all capital letters are the same height (BP). When we read text, especially when we read fast, we do not read each individual letter. Instead, we read whole words and phrases. And we recognize these words and phrases partly by their shape.

Word Shape

A word written with small letters has a special «shape». Look at these words. They have different shapes:

But a word written all in capital letters has no special shape. Look at these words. They have the same shape:

The I Song

This fun song by Jonathan Taylor is about the importance of using a «capital I» for the personal pronoun «I», as in:

• Do you know where I live?
  (NOT «Do you know where i live?«)
• I think I‘m going to sleep.
  (NOT «I think i’m going to sleep.«)

Contributor: Jonathan Taylor

The I Song LYRICS

Hi, I am the I
And when I’m alone
I reach the sky

I said hi,
I am the I
And when I’m alone
I stand high

But baby when
I’m walking
beside you
That’s when
you need to
think

Yeah baby when
I’m walking
hand-in-hand
in your word
That’s when I
need to shrink

I said hi,
I’m the I

Lo, these many years ago, I took a typing class (manual typewriters, for a true sense of age!). We were instructed to use ALL CAPS as a substitute for bold and underline (__) as a substitute for italics.

When I started going on line (long before publicly available Internet), I was taught to surround text with asterisk (*) when I intended bold and with underscore (_) when I intended italic. If you pay attention to the markup used in this forum, you can see how those conventions have been honoured and expressed over time and through changing technology.

In English classes (native English, not ESL or second-language) we were also taught to use ALL CAPS to separate the ‘description’ from the ‘real’ text. So, in your error message example, ERROR: is telling you that what follows is an error message as distinct from a warning message (WARNING:) or a purely informational message (INFO:). A similar concept applies to dialogue the way it is normally written in plays.

As a side note, I was also taught that underline was introduced with the typewriter and that previous to that scribes and typesetters used actual italics (and bold). I have not been able to confirm that anywhere, though.

The other answers are, of course, also correct.

What are the Capital Letters? 

Capital letters are the upper-case alphabets of English which are present with our 26 letters. The capital letters are generally more in height than the small letters.

We can easily differentiate upper-case alphabets and lower-case alphabets by just looking at them. 

The capital letters look like – A, B, C, D…. Z

The small letter looks like – a, b, c, d……z

[Image will be Uploaded Soon]

This picture above is clearly showing the difference between capital letters and small letters.

Uses and Examples of Capital Letters

From the first day of starting our journey in the world of education, we start with the learning of alphabets. As time goes by, we learn about what are capital letters, and where do we use capital letters? We learn to differentiate it properly. 

We have always learned that whenever we write our name, we keep the first letter of our name capital always. It is the most basic and important rule towards capitalization. 

For example,

Suppose there is a guy whose name is Vedant.

We are not supposed to write his name as vedant. We can properly see that there is no change in the spelling of the name, but the first letter of the name is in a small letter which is an incorrect way of writing anyone’s name. Proper capitalizing always plays an important role in the English subject. 

The correct way of writing the name is to write the first letter as a capital letter even in between of any sentences. We always write the first letter of the name as a capital letter.

For example,

1. There is a boy named Vedant who likes to play football and cricket both. 

2. There is a boy named vedant who likes to play football and cricket both.

From sentences 1 and 2 we can see that sentence 1 has written the first letter of the name as capital while in sentence 2 we can see that the first letter of the name is small. 

So, which one is the correct form?

The first sentence present in the example is the correct form of writing a person’s name.

Always remember to write the first letter of the name as a capital letter.

Some Rules to use Capital Letters

1. If we write anyone’s name or city the first letter needs to be always in capital letters. 

2. Even when you are using anyone’s name or place in between sentences.

For example,

• Sheela is a good girl

• My favourite dancer is Sheela.

• Paris is my favourite destination to visit.

• Sheela lives in Paris.

All the sentences give you a clear image of the writing name and place the first letter as capital.

3. Whenever we start a sentence the first letter should always be in capital letters. We never start a sentence with a small letter. It’s an important rule for capitalizing letters.

Example-

• The bridge is broken for many years.

• What is your name?

• This is a beautiful present.

[Image will be Uploaded Soon]

4. If we write a sentence that is quoted under quotation.  The first letter of the quoted sentence should always be a capital letter. 

Example,

Mr. Roy, who is an English professor, has complimented me as “You are a brilliant student”. 

In the above example, we have written the first letter of the quoted sentence in capital letter and it should be done always whenever we are quoting any sentences.

5. We always write the large letter of titles of Books or Movies in capital letters. But we do not write any word in a capital letter which has of, they, etc if they are present between the titles.

A Suitable Boy (We generally don’t write the word ‘A’ as a capital letter if it’s present in between any title but because the word ‘A’ is used as the first word we write it in capital letter.) 

War of the Arrows (We generally don’t write the first word  “of” and “the”  in capital letters if they are present in between sentences but like in life there are some exceptions even in the rules of capital letters)

6. If any word is derived from proper nouns, we write that particular word in capital letters.

Example,

My favourite subject to read in English, science is my most hated subject.

In the above sentence, we wrote the first word of English as a capital letter because it’s derived from England whereas science‘s first word is a small letter because it’s not a derived proper noun.

Capital letters are not really an aspect of punctuation, but it is convenient to deal
with them here. The rules for using them are mostly very simple.

(a) The first word of a sentence, or of a fragment, begins with a capital letter:

The bumbling wizard Rincewind is Pratchett’s most popular character.

Will anyone now alive live to see a colony on the moon? Probably not.

Distressingly few pupils can locate Iraq or Japan on a map of the
world.

(b) The names of the days of the week, and of the months of the year, are
written with a capital letter:

Next Sunday France will hold a general election.

Mozart was born on 27 January, 1756.

Football practice takes place on Wednesdays and Fridays.

However, the names of seasons are not written with a capital:

Like cricket, baseball is played in the summer.

Do not write *»… in the Summer«.

(c) The names of languages are always written with a capital letter. Be careful
about this; it’s a very common mistake.

Juliet speaks English, French, Italian and Portuguese.

I need to work on my Spanish irregular verbs.

Among the major languages of India are Hindi, Gujarati and Tamil.

These days, few students study Latin and Greek.

Note, however, that names of disciplines and school subjects are not
capitalized unless they happen to be the names of languages:

I’m doing A-levels in history, geography and English.

Newton made important contributions to physics and mathematics.

She is studying French literature.

(d) Words that express a connection with a particular place must be capitalized
when they have their literal meanings. So, for example, French must be
capitalized when it means `having to do with France’:

The result of the French election is still in doubt.

The American and Russian negotiators are close to agreement.

There are no mountains in the Dutch landscape.

She has a dry Mancunian sense of humour.

(The word Mancunian means `from Manchester’.)

However, it is not necessary to capitalize these words when they occur
as parts of fixed phrases and don’t express any direct connection with the
relevant places:

Please buy some danish pastries.

In warm weather, we keep our french windows open.

I prefer russian dressing on my salad.

Why the difference? Well, a danish pastry is merely a particular sort of pastry;
it doesn’t have to come from Denmark. Likewise, french windows are merely a
particular kind of window, and russian dressing is just a particular variety of
salad dressing. Even in these cases, you can capitalize these words if you want
to, as long as you are consistent about it. But notice how convenient it can be to make the difference:

In warm weather, we keep our french windows open.

After nightfall, French windows are always shuttered.

In the first example, french windows just refers to a kind of window; in
the
second, French windows refers specifically to windows in France.

(e) In the same vein, words that identify nationalities or ethnic groups must be
capitalized:

The Basques and the Catalans spent decades struggling for autonomy.

The Serbs and the Croats have become bitter enemies.

Norway’s most popular singer is a Sami from Lapland.

(An aside: some ethnic labels which were formerly widely used are now
regarded by many people as offensive and have been replaced by other labels.
Thus, careful writers use Black, not Negro; native American, not Indian or red
Indian; native Australian, not Aborigine. You are advised to
follow suit.)

(f) Formerly, the words black and white, when applied to human beings, were
never capitalized. Nowadays, however, many people prefer to capitalize them
because they regard these words as ethnic labels comparable to Chinese or
Indian:

The Rodney King case infuriated many Black Americans.

You may capitalize these words or not, as you prefer, but be consistent.

(g) Proper names are always capitalized. A proper name is a name or a title that
refers to an individual person, an individual place, an individual institution or an
individual event. Here are some examples:

The study of language was revolutionized by Noam Chomsky.

The Golden Gate Bridge towers above San Francisco Bay.

There will be a debate between Professor Lacey and Doctor Davis.

The Queen will address the House of Commons today.

Many people mistakenly believe that Mexico is in South America.

My friend Julie is training for the Winter Olympics.

Next week President Clinton will be meeting Chancellor Kohl.

Observe the difference between the next two examples:

We have asked for a meeting with the President.

I would like to be the president of a big company.

In the first, the title the President is capitalized because it is a title referring to a
specific person; in the second, there is no capital, because the word president
does not refer to anyone in particular. (Compare We have asked for a meeting
with President Wilson and *I would like to be President Wilson of a big
company.) The same difference is made with some other words: we write the
Government and Parliament when we are referring to a particular government or
a particular parliament, but we write government and parliament when we are
using the words generically. And note also the following example:

The patron saint of carpenters is Saint Joseph.

Here Saint Joseph is a name, but patron saint is not and gets no capital.

There is a slight problem with the names of hazily defined geographical
regions. We usually write the Middle East and Southeast Asia, because these
regions are now regarded as having a distinctive identity, but we write central
Europe and southeast London, because these regions are not thought of as
having the same kind of identity. Note, too, the difference between South
Africa (the name of a particular country) and southern Africa (a vaguely defined
region). All I can suggest here is that you read a good newspaper and keep
your eyes open.

Observe that certain surnames of foreign origin contain little words that
are often not capitalized, such as de, du, da, von and van. Thus we write
Leonardo da Vinci, Ludwig van Beethoven, General von Moltke
and Simone de
Beauvoir. On the other hand, we write Daphne Du Maurier and Dick Van
Dyke, because those are the forms preferred by the owners of the names.
When in doubt, check the spelling in a good reference book.

A few people eccentrically prefer to write their names with no capital
letters at all, such as the poet e. e. cummings and the singer k. d. lang. These
strange usages should be respected.

(h) The names of distinctive historical periods are capitalized:

London was a prosperous city during the Middle Ages.

Britain was the first country to profit from the Industrial Revolution.

The Greeks were already in Greece during the Bronze Age.

(i) The names of festivals and holy days are capitalized:

We have long breaks at Christmas and Easter.

During Ramadan, one may not eat before sundown.

The feast of Purim is an occasion for merrymaking.

Our church observes the Sabbath very strictly.

The children greatly enjoy Hallowe’en.

(j) Many religious terms are capitalized, including the names of religions and of
their followers, the names or titles of divine beings, the titles of certain
important figures, the names of important events and the names of sacred
books:

An atheist is a person who does not believe in God.

The principal religions of Japan are Shinto and Buddhism.

The Indian cricket team includes Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Parsees.

The Lord is my shepherd.

The Prophet was born in Mecca.

The Last Supper took place on the night before the Crucifixion.

The Old Testament begins with Genesis.

Note, however, that the word god is not capitalized when it refers to a pagan
deity:

Poseidon was the Greek god of the sea.

(k) In the title or name of a book, a play, a poem, a film, a magazine, a
newspaper or a piece of music, a capital letter is used for the first word and for
every significant word (that is, a little word like the, of, and or in is not
capitalized unless it is the first word):

I was terrified by The Silence of the Lambs.

The Round Tower was written by Catherine Cookson.

Bach’s most famous organ piece is the Toccata and Fugue in D
Minor.

I don’t usually like Cher, but I do enjoy The Shoop Shoop Song.

Important note: The policy just described is the one most widely used in
the
English-speaking world. There is, however, a second policy, preferred by
many people. In this second policy, we capitalize only the first word of a title
and any words which intrinsically require capitals for independent reasons.
Using the second policy, my examples would look like this:

I was terrified by The silence of the lambs.

The round tower was written by Catherine Cookson.

Bach’s most famous organ piece is the Toccata and fugue in D
minor.

I don’t usually like Cher, but I do enjoy The shoop shoop song.

You may use whichever policy you prefer, so long as you are consistent about
it. You may find, however, that your tutor or your editor insists upon one or
the other. The second policy is particularly common (though not universal) in
academic circles, and is usual among librarians; elsewhere, the first policy is
almost always preferred.

(l) The first word of a direct quotation, repeating someone else’s exact words,
is always capitalized if the quotation is a complete sentence:

Thomas Edison famously observed «Genius is one per cent inspiration
and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.»

But there is no capital letter if the quotation is not a complete sentence:

The Minister described the latest unemployment figures as
«disappointing».

(m) The brand names of manufacturers and their products are capitalized:

Maxine has bought a second-hand Ford Escort.

Almost everybody owns a Sony Walkman.

Note: There is a problem with brand names which have become so successful
that they are used in ordinary speech as generic labels for classes of products.

The manufacturers of Kleenex and Sellotape are exasperated to find people
using kleenex and sellotape as ordinary words for facial tissues or sticky tape of
any kind, and some such manufacturers may actually take legal action against
this practice. If you are writing for publication, you need to be careful about
this, and it is best to capitalize such words if you use them. However, when
brand names are converted into verbs, no capital letter is used: we write She
was hoovering the carpet and I need to xerox this report, even though the
manufacturers of Hoover vacuum cleaners and Xerox photocopiers don
‘t much
like this practice, either.

(n) Roman numerals are usually capitalized:

It is no easy task to multiply LIX by XXIV using Roman numerals.

King Alfonso XIII handed over power to General Primo de Rivera.

The only common exception is that small Roman numerals are used to number
the pages of the front matter in books; look at almost any book.

(o) The pronoun I is always capitalized:

She thought I’d borrowed her keys, but I hadn’t.

It is possible to write an entire word or phrase in capital letters in order
to emphasize it:

There is ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE to support this conjecture.

On the whole, though, it is preferable to express emphasis, not with capital
letters, but with italics.
It is not necessary to capitalize a word merely because there is only one
thing it can possibly refer to:

The equator runs through the middle of Brazil.

Admiral Peary was the first person to fly over the north pole.

The universe is thought to be about 15 billion years old.

Here the words equator, north pole and universe need no capitals, because they
aren’t strictly proper names. Some people choose to capitalize them anyway;
this is not wrong, but it’s not recommended.

Capital letters are also used in writing certain
abbreviations and related
types of words, including the abbreviated names of organizations and
companies, and in letter
writing and in the headings of essays.

There is one other rather rare use of capital letters which is worth
explaining if only to prevent you from doing it by mistake when you don’t
mean to. This to poke fun at something. Here is an example:

The French Revolution was a Good Thing at first, but Napoleon’s rise
to power was a Bad Thing.

Here the writer is making fun of the common tendency to see historical events
in simple-minded terms as either good or bad. Another example:

Many people claim that rock music is Serious Art, deserving of Serious
Critical Attention.

The writer is clearly being sarcastic: all those unusual capital letters demonstrate
that he considers rock music to be worthless trash.

This stylistic device is only appropriate in writing which is intended to
be humorous, or at least light-hearted; it is quite out of place in formal writing.

The use of unnecessary capital letters when you’re trying to be serious
can quickly make your prose look idiotic, rather like those content-free books
that fill the shelves of the «New Age» section in bookshops:

Your Eidetic Soul is linked by its Crystal Cord to the Seventh Circle of
the Astral Plane, from where the Immanent Essence is
transmitted to your Eidetic Aura,…

You get the idea. Don’t use a capital letter unless you’re sure you know why
it’s there.

Summary of Capital Letters:

Capitalize

• the first word of a sentence or fragment
• the name of a day or a month
• the name of a language
• a word expressing a connection with a place
• the name of a nationality or an ethnic group
• a proper name
• the name of a historical period
• the name of a holiday
• a significant religious term
• the first word, and each significant word, of a title
• the first word of a direct quotation which is a
  sentence
• a brand name
• a Roman numeral
• the pronoun I

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Copyright © Larry Trask, 1997

Maintained by the Department of Informatics, University of Sussex