Which is the meaning of the word in capital letters

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Capitalization (American English) or capitalisation (British English)^[1] is writing a word with its first letter as a capital letter (uppercase letter) and the remaining letters in lower case, in writing systems with a case distinction. The term also may refer to the choice of the casing applied to text.

Conventional writing systems (orthographies) for different languages have different conventions for capitalization, for example, the capitalization of titles. Conventions also vary, to a lesser extent, between different style guides. In addition to the Latin script, capitalization also affects the Armenian, Cyrillic, Georgian and Greek alphabets.

The full rules of capitalization in English are complicated. The rules have also changed over time, generally to capitalize fewer words. The conventions used in an 18th-century document will be unfamiliar to a modern reader; for instance, many common nouns were capitalized.

The systematic use of capitalized and uncapitalized words in running text is called «mixed case».

Parts of speech[edit]

Owing to the essentially arbitrary nature of orthographic classification and the existence of variant authorities and local house styles, questionable capitalization of words is not uncommon, even in respected newspapers and magazines. Most publishers require consistency, at least within the same document, in applying a specified standard: this is described as «house style».

Pronouns[edit]

• In English, the subjective form of the singular first-person pronoun, «I», is capitalized, along with all its contractions such as I’ll and I’m. Objective and possessive forms «me», «my», and «mine» are not.
• Many European languages traditionally capitalize nouns and pronouns used to refer to God, including references to Jesus Christ (reverential capitals): hallowed be Thy name, look what He has done. Some English authors capitalize any word referring to God: the Lamb, the Almighty; some capitalize «Thy Name». These practices have become much less common in English in the 20th and 21st centuries.
  • In Baháʼí literature, singular and plural object, subject, and possessive forms get capitalization if referring to a Rasul, the Twelve Imams, or ‘Abdu’l-Baha.
• Some languages capitalize a royal we (pluralis majestatis), e.g. it is capitalized in German.

2nd-person pronouns[edit]

Many languages distinguish between formal and informal 2nd-person pronouns.

• In German, the formal 2nd-person plural pronoun Sie is capitalized along with all its case-forms (Ihre, Ihres, etc.), but these words are not capitalized when used as 3rd-person feminine singular or plural pronouns. Until the recent German spelling reform(s), the traditional rules (which are still widely adhered to, although not taught in schools) also capitalized the informal 2nd-person singular pronoun Du (and its derivatives, such as Dein) when used in letters or similar texts, but this is no longer required.
• Italian also capitalizes its formal pronouns, Lei and Loro, and their cases (even within words, e.g. arrivederLa «goodbye», formal). This is occasionally also done for the Dutch U, though this is formally only required when referring to a deity and may be considered archaic.
• In Spanish, the abbreviations of the pronouns usted and ustedes, Ud., Uds., Vd., and Vds., are usually written with a capital.
• In Finnish, the second-person plural pronoun can be used when formally addressing a single person, and in writing the pronoun is sometimes capitalized as Te to indicate special regard. In a more familiar tone, one can also capitalize the second-person singular pronoun Sinä.^[2]
• Similarly, in Russian the formal second-person pronoun Вы, and its oblique cases Вас, Вам etc., are capitalized (usually in personal correspondence); also in Bulgarian.
• Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian capitalize the formal second-person pronoun Vi along with its oblique cases (Vas, Vam, Vami) and personal pronoun (Vaš etc.) in formal correspondence. Historically, the familiar second-person pronoun ti and its cases (tebe, tebi, teboj) were capitalized as well, but new orthography prohibits such use.
• In Danish, the plural second-person pronoun, I, is capitalized, but its other forms jer and jeres are not. This distinguishes it from the preposition i («in»). The formal second-person pronoun is also capitalized in all its forms (De, Dem, Deres), distinguishing it from the otherwise identical third-person plural pronouns.
• In Norwegian, both second-person singular and plural have a capitalized alternative form (De, Dem, Deres in Bokmål; De, Dykk, Dykkar in Nynorsk) to express formality for both subject and object of a sentence, but is very rarely used in modern speech and writing.
• In formally written Polish, Czech, Slovak and Latvian, most notably in letters and e-mails, all pronouns referring to the addressee are capitalized. This includes Ty («thou») and all its related forms such as Twój and Ciebie. This principle extends to nouns used formally to address the addressee of a letter, such as Pan («sir») and Pani («madam»).^{[citation needed]}
• In Indonesian, capitalizing the formal second-person pronoun Anda along with all references to the addressee, such as «(kepada) Bapak/Ibu» ((to) Sir/Madam), is required in practice of Ejaan Yang Disempurnakan (Perfected Orthography).^[3] However, some people do not know of or choose not to adhere to this spelling rule. In contrast, Malay orthography used in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei does not require the capitalization of anda.
• In Tagalog and its standard form, Filipino, the formal second-person pronouns Kayo and Ninyo and their oblique form Inyo are customarily and reverentially capitalized as such, particularly in most digital and printed media related to religion and its references. Purists who consider this rule as nonstandard and inconsistent do not apply it when writing.
• In Tajik, capitalization is used to distinguish the second-person formal pronoun Шумо from the second-person plural pronoun шумо.
• In Swedish, since du-reformen, the second-person singular pronoun du may be capitalized as Du when addressed formally.

Nouns[edit]

• The various languages and dialects in the High German family, including Standard German and Luxembourgish, are the only major languages using the Latin alphabet in which all nouns are generally capitalized. This was also practiced in other Germanic languages (mainly due to German influence):
  • In German, all nouns are capitalized.^[4]
  • Danish, before the spelling reform of 1948
  • Swedish, during the 17th and 18th centuries^[5]
  • English, during the 17th and 18th centuries^[6] (as in Gulliver’s Travels, and most of the original 1787 United States Constitution)
  • Some regional languages, such as Saterland Frisian
• In nearly all European languages, single-word proper nouns, including personal names, are capitalized (like France or Moses). Multiple-word proper nouns usually follow the traditional English rules for publication titles (as in Robert the Bruce).
  • Where placenames are merely preceded by the definite article, this is usually in lower case (as in the Philippines).
    • Sometimes, the article is integral to the name, and thus is capitalized (as in Den Haag, Le Havre). However, in French this does not occur for contractions du and au (as in Je viens du Havre, «I come from Le Havre»). In other European languages, it is much more common for the article to be treated as integral to the name, but it may not be capitalized (die Schweiz, les Pays-Bas, yr Almaen, etc.).
  • A few English names are written with two lowercase «f»s: ffrench, ffoulkes, etc. This originated as a variant script for capital F.
  • A few individuals have chosen not to use capitals in their names, such as k.d. lang and bell hooks. E. E. Cummings, whose name is often written without capitals, did not do so himself: the usage derives from the typography used on the cover of one of his books.^[7][8]

    

  • Most brand names and trademarks are capitalized (e.g., Coca-Cola, Pepsi), although some have chosen to deviate from standard rules (e.g., easyJet, id Software, eBay, iPod) to be distinctive. When capitals occur within a word, it is sometimes referred to as camel case.
• In English, the names of days of the week, months and languages are capitalized, as are demonyms like Englishman, Arab. In other languages, practice varies, but most languages other than German (which capitalizes all nouns) do not.^[9]
• In English-language addresses, the noun following the proper name of a street is capitalized, whether or not it is abbreviated: Main Street, Fleming Ave., Montgomery Blvd. This capitalization is often absent in older citations and in combined usages: Fourth and Main streets. In French, street names are capitalized when they are proper names; the noun itself (rue, place) is normally not capitalized: rue de Rivoli, place de la Concorde.
• In Italian the name of a particular concept or object is capitalized when the writer wants to emphasize its importance and significance.^[10]
• Capitalization is always used for most names of taxa used in scientific classification of living things, except for species-level taxa or below. Example: Homo sapiens sapiens.
• Controversially, some authors capitalize common names of some animal and plant species. As a general rule, names are not capitalized, unless they are part of an official list of names, in which case they have become proper nouns and are capitalized. This is most common for birds^[11] and fishes. Names referring to more than one species (e.g., horse or cat) are always in lower case. Botanists generally do not capitalize the common names of plants, though individual words in plant names may be capitalized for another reason: (Italian stone pine). See the discussion of official common names under common name for an explanation.
• Common nouns may be capitalized when used as names for the entire class of such things, e.g. what a piece of work is Man. French often capitalizes such nouns as l’État (the state) and l’Église (the church) when not referring to specific ones.
• Names by which gods are known are capitalized, including God, Athena, and Vishnu. The word god is generally not capitalized if it is used to refer to the generic idea of a deity, nor is it capitalized when it refers to multiple gods, e.g. Roman gods. There may be some confusion because Judaism, Christianity, and Islam rarely refer to the Deity by a specific name, but simply as God (see Writing divine names). Other names for the God of these three Abrahamic faiths, such as Elohim, Yahweh, and Lord, are also capitalized.
• While acronyms have historically been written in all-caps, British usage is moving towards capitalizing only the first letter in cases when these are pronounced as words (e.g. Unesco and Nato), reserving all-caps for initialisms (e.g. UK, USA, UNHCR).
• In life stance orthography, in order to distinguish life stances from general -isms. For instance, Humanism is distinguished from humanism.^[12]
• In legal English, defined terms that refer to a specific entity, such as «Tenant» and «Lessor», are often capitalized. More specifically, in legal documents, terms which are formally defined elsewhere in the document or a related document (often in a schedule of definitions) are capitalized to indicate that that is the case, and may be several words long, e.g. «the Second Subsidiary Claimant», «the Agreed Conditional Release Date».
  • In contracts, particularly important clauses are often typeset as all-caps
• Most English honorifics and titles of persons, e.g. Sir, Dr Watson, Mrs Jones, His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh. This does not apply where the words are not titles; e.g. Watson is a doctor, Philip is a duke.
• In very formal British English the Queen is referred to as The Queen.
• The governing body of English solicitors is correctly referred to as The Law Society. (In general any organisation may choose a name starting with a capitalized «The».)

Adjectives[edit]

• In English, adjectives derived from proper nouns (except the names of characters in fictional works) usually retain their capitalization: e.g. a Christian church, Canadian whisky, a Shakespearean sonnet, but not a quixotic mission nor malapropism. Where the original capital is no longer at the beginning of the word, usage varies: anti-Christian, and either Presocratic, pre-Socratic, Pre-Socratic or presocratic. Never preSocratic – a hyphen must precede a capital in a compound word.
• Such adjectives do not receive capitals in French (socratique, présocratique), Spanish (socrático, presocrático), Swedish (sokratisk, försokratisk), Polish (sokratejski, presokratejski) nor partly in German (sokratisch, präsokratisch, but Ohm’sches Gesetz («Ohm’s Law»)). In German, if the adjective becomes a noun by using an article or numeral in front of it (das/die Bunte (the colorful thing(s)), eine Schöne (a beautiful one)), it is capitalized like any other noun, as are nouns formed from proper nouns (der Urgoethe). The same applies to verbs (das Laufen (the (practice of) running), das Spazierengehen (the (practice of) going for a walk)).
• Adjectives referring to nationality or ethnicity are not capitalized in German, French or Czech, even though nouns are: ein kanadisches Schiff, un navire canadien, kanadská loď, a Canadian ship; ein Kanadier, un Canadien, Kanaďan, a Canadian. Both nouns and adjectives are capitalized in English when referring to nationality or ethnicity.

Places and geographic terms[edit]

The capitalization of geographic terms in English text generally depends on whether the author perceives the term as a proper noun, in which case it is capitalized, or as a combination of an established proper noun with a normal adjective or noun, in which case the latter are not capitalized. There are no universally agreed lists of English geographic terms which are considered as proper nouns. The following are examples of rules that some^[which?] British and U.S. publishers have established in style guides for their authors:

• In general, the first letter is capitalized for well-defined regions, e.g. South America, Lower California, Tennessee Valley^[13]
• This general rule also applies to zones of the Earth’s surface (North Temperate Zone, the Equator)^[14]
• In other cases, do not capitalize the points of the compass (north China, southeast London) or other adjectives (western Arizona, central New Mexico, upper Yangtze, lower Rio Grande)
• Capitalize generic geographic terms that are part of a place name (Atlantic Ocean, Mt. Muztagata, River Severn)
• Otherwise, do not capitalize a generic term that follows a capitalized generic term (Yangtze River valley)
• Use lower case for plurals of generic terms (Gobi and Taklamakan deserts)^{[citation needed]}; but «the Dakotas»
• Only capitalize «the» if it is part of the (short-form) formal place name (The Hague vs. the Netherlands, the Sudan, and the Philippines)

Upper case: East Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Central America, North Korea, South Africa, the European Union, the Republic of Poland, the North Atlantic, the Middle East, the Arctic, The Gambia, The Bahamas, The Hague

Lower case: western China, southern Beijing, western Mongolia, eastern Africa, northern North Korea, the central Gobi, the lower Yangtze River.

Abbreviated

When a term is used as a name and then subsequently a shorter term is used, then that shorter term may be used generically. If that is the case do not capitalize. («The Tatra National Park is a tourist destination in Poland. Watch out for bears when visiting the national park.»)^[15][16]

By context[edit]

• In all modern European languages, the first word in a sentence is capitalized, as is the first word in any quoted sentence. (For example, in English: Nana said, «There are ripe watermelons in the garden!»)
  • The first word of a sentence is not capitalized in most modern editions of ancient Greek and, to a lesser extent, Latin texts. The distinction between lower and upper case was not introduced before the Middle Ages; in antiquity only the capital forms of letters were used.
  • For some items, many style guides recommend that initial capitalization be avoided by not putting the item at the beginning of a sentence, or by writing it in lowercase even at the beginning of a sentence. Such scientific terms have their own rules about capitalization which take precedence over the standard initial capitalization rule. For example, pH would be liable to cause confusion if written PH, and initial m and M may even have different meanings, milli and mega, for example 2 MA (megamperes) is a billion times 2 mA (milliamperes). Increasingly nowadays, some trademarks and company names start with a lowercase letter, and similar considerations apply.
  • When the first letters of a word have been omitted and replaced by an apostrophe, the first letter in a sentence is usually left uncapitalized in English and certain other languages, as « ’tis a shame …» In Dutch, the second word is capitalized instead in this situation: «‘t Was leuk» vs. «Het was leuk» (both meaning «It was fun»).
• Traditionally, the first words of a line of verse are capitalized in English, e.g.:
  Meanwhile, the winged Heralds, by command
  Of sovereign power, with awful ceremony
  And trumpet’s sound, throughout the host proclaim
  A solemn council forthwith to be held
  At Pandemonium, the high capital
  Of Satan and his peers. […] (Milton, Paradise Lost I:752–756)
  • Modernist poets often ignore or defy this convention.
• In the U.S., headlines and titles of works typically use title case, in which certain words (such as nouns, adjectives and verbs) are capitalized and others (such as prepositions and conjunctions) are not.

Names of capitalization styles[edit]

The following names are given to systems of capitalization:

Sentence case[edit]

«The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.»
The standard case used in English prose. Generally equivalent to the baseline universal standard of formal English orthography mentioned above; that is, only the first word is capitalized, except for proper nouns and other words which are generally capitalized by a more specific rule.

A variation is mid-sentence case which is identical to sentence case except that the first word isn’t capitalized (unless it would be capitalized by another rule). This type of letter case is used for entries in dictionaries.

Title case[edit]

«The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog.»
Also known as headline style and capital case. All words capitalized, except for certain subsets defined by rules that are not universally standardized, often minor words such as «the» (as above), «of», or «and». Other commonly lowercase words are prepositions and coordinating conjunctions.^[17] The standardization is only at the level of house styles and individual style manuals. (See Headings and publication titles.) A simplified variant is start case, where all words, including articles, prepositions, and conjunctions, start with a capital letter.

All caps[edit]

«THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG.»
Also known/written as «all-caps«. Capital letters only. This style can be used for headlines and book or chapter titles at the top of a book page. It is commonly used in transcribed speech to indicate that a person is shouting, or to indicate a hectoring and obnoxious speaker.^[18][19] For this reason, it is generally discouraged. Long spans of Latin-alphabet text in all uppercase are harder to read because of the absence of the ascenders and descenders found in lowercase letters, which can aid recognition.^[20][21] In professional documents, a commonly preferred alternative to all–caps text is the use of small caps to emphasize key names or acronyms, or the use of italics or (more rarely) bold.^[22] In addition, if all–caps must be used, it is customary in headings of a few words to slightly widen the spacing between the letters, by around 10% of the point height. This practice is known as tracking or letterspacing.^[23]

Special cases[edit]

Compound names[edit]

Compound names are nouns that are made up of more than one stem, or a stem and one or more affixes.^[a]
Names that are made up of several affixes and one or more nouns are not compound names under this definition, but noun phrases, that are made up of one or more separable affixes, and one or more nouns. Examples of the separable affixes may be found in List of family name affixes.^[b] Noun phrases are in this context treated as if they were nouns. So the general rule that nouns-as-names are capitalized in principle applies to compound names and noun-phrases-as-names as well. There are, however, exceptions to this rule that differ by language community.

• In German, the separable affix, and at the same time preposition, von (meaning «of», pronounced [fɔn]) or genannt (meaning «named») in a surname (e.g. Alexander von Humboldt) is not capitalized (unless it is the first letter of a sentence). Von is however often dropped within a sentence. The same applies to similar Italian and Portuguese affixes.^[c][24]
• In Dutch, the first affix, like van; or de, or declensions of de; or contractions of a preposition and an article, like ter; in a surname are capitalized unless a given name, initial, or other family name.^[d] precedes it^[e] Other affixes in the noun phrase (if present) are left lowercase.^[f] However, in Belgium the capitalization of a surname follows the orthography as used for the person’s name in the Belgian population register and on his or her identification card., except when introducing a title of nobility or when use of the lower case has been granted to some noble family.^[25] An exception for the rule that a Dutch name starts with an uppercase letter under all circumstances (including at the start of a sentence) is included in the general capitalization rule: «If the sentence begins with an apostrophe, the following full word is capitalized.»^[g] This also applies to Dutch names that begin with a contraction that consists of an apostrophe and a letter.^[h][26]

• In English, practice varies when the name starts with a particle^[i] with a meaning such as «from» or «the» or «son of».
  • Some of these particles (Mac, Mc, M, O) are always capitalized; others (L’, Van) are usually capitalized; still others often are not (d’, de, di, von). The compound particle de La is usually written with the L capitalized but not the d.^[27][j]
  • The remaining part of such a name, following the particle, is always capitalized if it is set off with a space as a separate word, or if the particle was not capitalized. It is normally capitalized if the particle is Mc, M, or O. In other cases (including Mac), there is no set rule (both Macintyre and MacIntyre are seen, for example).^{[citation needed]}
• Americans with non-Anglophone surnames often have not followed the orthographic conventions usual in the language communities of their extraction (or the US immigration authorities flouted the orthographic rules for them when they arrived at ports of entry like Ellis Island).^[k] These idiosyncratic spellings and capitalizations should be accepted with equanimity and not «corrected.» As there are no universally accepted capitalization rules in these circumstances to serve as a guideline the best policy would seem to be to use the style that dominates for that person in reliable sources; for a living subject, prefer the spelling consistently used in the subject’s own publications.^[28]

Titles[edit]

The Chicago Manual of Style recommends that the titles of English-language artistic works (plays, novels, essays, paintings, etc.) capitalize the first word and the last word in the title.^[29] Additionally, most other words within a title are capitalized as well; articles and coordinating conjunctions are not capitalized.^[29] Sources disagree on the details of capitalizing prepositions.^[29] For example, the Chicago Manual of Style recommends rendering all prepositions in lowercase,^[30] whereas the APA style guide instructs: Capitalize major words in titles of books and articles within the body of the paper. Conjunctions, articles, and short prepositions are not considered major words; however, capitalize all words of four letters or more.^[31]

In other languages, such as the Romance languages, only the first word and proper names are capitalized.

Acronyms[edit]

Acronyms are usually capitalized, with a few exceptions:

• Acronyms which have become regular words such as laser and scuba.
• Some acronyms of proper nouns in which function words are not capitalized, such as TfL (Transport for London) and LotR (The Lord of the Rings).

«O»[edit]

• The English vocative particle O, an archaic form of address, e.g. Thou, O king, art a king of kings. However, lowercase o is also occasionally seen in this context.

Accents[edit]

In most languages that use diacritics, these are treated the same way in uppercase whether the text is capitalized or all-uppercase. They may be always preserved (as in German) or always omitted (as in Greek) or often omitted (as in French).^[32] Some attribute this to the fact that diacritics on capital letters were not available earlier on typewriters, and it is now becoming more common to preserve them in French and Spanish (in both languages the rule is to preserve them,^[33] although in France and Mexico, for instance, schoolchildren are often erroneously taught that they should not add diacritics on capital letters).

However, in the polytonic orthography used for Greek prior to 1982, accents were omitted in all-uppercase words, but kept as part of an uppercase initial (written before rather than above the letter). The latter situation is provided for by title-case characters in Unicode. When Greek is written with the present day monotonic orthography, where only the acute accent is used, the same rule is applied. The accent is omitted in all-uppercase words but it is kept as part of an uppercase initial (written before the letter rather than above it). The dialytika (diaeresis) should also always be used in all-uppercase words (even in cases where they are not needed when writing in lowercase, e.g. ΑΫΛΟΣ — άυλος).

Digraphs and ligatures[edit]

Some languages treat certain digraphs as single letters for the purpose of collation. In general, where one such is formed as a ligature, the corresponding uppercase form is used in capitalization; where it is written as two separate characters, only the first will be capitalized. Thus Oedipus or Œdipus are both correct, but OEdipus is not. Examples with ligature include Ærøskøbing in Danish, where Æ/æ is a completely separate letter rather than merely a typographic ligature (the same applies in Icelandic); examples with separate characters are Llanelli in Welsh, where Ll is a single letter; and Ffrangeg in Welsh where Ff is equivalent to English F (whereas Welsh F corresponds to English V).^[34] Presentation forms, however, can use doubled capitals, such as the logo of the National Library of Wales (Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru). The position in Hungarian is similar to the latter.

• An exception is the Dutch digraph IJ. Both letters are capitalized even though they are printed separately when using a computer, as in IJsselmeer. In the past the digraph was written as Y, and this still survives in some surnames.
• A converse exception exists in the Croatian alphabet, where digraph letters (Dž, Lj, Nj) have mixed-case forms even when written as ligatures.^[35] With typewriters and computers, these «title-case» forms have become less common than 2-character equivalents; nevertheless they can be represented as single title-case characters in Unicode (Dž, Lj, Nj).
• In Czech the digraph ch (usually considered as a single letter) can be capitalized in two ways: Ch or CH. In general only the first part is capitalized (Ch), unless the whole text is written in capital letters (then it is written CH). In acronyms both parts are usually capitalized, such as VŠCHT for Vysoká škola chemicko-technologická (University of Chemistry and Technology). However, the practice is not unified when writing initial letters of personal names (first name and surname), for example Jan Chudoba can be abbreviated both J. Ch. or J. CH.^[36]

Initial mutation[edit]

In languages where inflected forms of a word may have extra letters at the start, the capitalized letter may be the initial of the root form rather than the inflected form. For example, in Irish, in the placename Sliabh na mBan, «(the) mountain of the women» (anglicized as Slievenamon), the word-form written mBan contains the genitive plural of the noun bean, «woman», mutated after the genitive plural definite article (i.e., «of the»). The written B is mute in this form.

Other languages may capitalize the initial letter of the orthographic word, even if it is not present in the base, as with definite nouns in Maltese that start with certain consonant clusters. For example, l-Istati Uniti (the United States) capitalize the epenthetic I, even though the base form of the word — without the definite article — is stati.

Case-sensitive English words[edit]

In English, there are a few capitonyms, which are words whose meaning (and sometimes pronunciation) varies with capitalization. For example, the month August versus the adjective august. Or the verb polish versus the adjective Polish.

See also[edit]

• Camel case
• Capitalization of Internet
• Capitalization in English
• Letter case
• Orthography
• Capitalization conspiracy

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• Council of Science Editors, Style Manual Committee. Scientific Style and format: the CSE manual for authors, editors, and publishers, 7th ed. Reston (VA): The Council; 2006. Section 9.7.3, P. 120.

External links[edit]

Capitalization Rules

1. Check Capitalization rules
2. if you want convertcase in to Capitalization Rules then you can above rules.
3. Definition of capitalization

1. What is Capitalization?

In writing, capitalization is the use of capital letters as a type of punctuation. When we say that something is “capitalized,” it means that the first letter of the word or words is a capital (i.e. capital A versus lowercase a). Capitalization’s real goal is to point out and separate specific, individual things from general things, which helps us identify them in a sentence. So, we use capitalization to mark the beginning of a sentence and to identify all types of proper nouns, names, and titles.

Since a capital letter starts every sentence, you know that every sentence uses capitalization at least once!

2. Examples of Capitalization

Here are some examples of capitalization in a sentence. You’ll see that it’s important in many situations:

• To Begin a sentence:
  • My friends are great.
• For emphasis:
  • “SLOW DOWN!” yelled the man as the car sped by.
• For Proper Nouns:
  • Last summer I visited London, England.

3. Types of Capitalization

There are a few ways that we use capitalization, like to begin a sentence, or for proper nouns, titles, and emphasis. So, overall, a good rule to follow is that the name or title of ANYTHING specific—from people, to books, to places, to things—should be capitalized.

a. To Begin a Sentence

The first rule of capitalization is easy—we always begin a sentence with a capital letter! That’s how you know where a sentence begins. Capitalize the start of a sentence whether it’s a single letter, like this:

• I visited Paris last year.
• A year ago I visited Paris.

Or, if it’s the first letter of a word, like this:

• Last spring, I visited Paris.
• Before long, I had fallen in love with the city.

b. Proper Nouns

A proper noun is a person, place, thing or idea with a specific, unique name. We always capitalize proper nouns, because they represent one single thing—for instance, the Empire State Building is one specific building, not just a building in general. So, capitalization gives us a way to make that distinction.

Here’s a list of rules about the capitalization of proper nouns that you use every day:

• When we use I to identify ourselves in writing, it is always capital.

• We always capitalize the first, middle, and last names of people, like: Jane Ann Smith and Jimmy Michael Brown, for example.

• Capitalize official titles for people, like: President Barack Obama, Dr. Robinson, Mr. and Mrs. Jones, and Professor Smith.

• Capitalize the names of places, including countries, cities, buildings, roads, and landmarks, like: Europe; London, England; Buckingham Palace; Abbey Road; etc.

• Capitalize the names of natural landmarks and specific geographic locations, from oceans to mountains to islands, like: the Great Lakes, the Nile River, the Atlantic Ocean, the Himalayas, and the Sahara Desert.

• Capitalize the names of stores and brand name things, like: Abercrombie & Fitch, Nike shoes, Oreo cookies, and Pepsi cola, to name a few.

• Always capitalize the days of the week and months of the year.

c. Titles

It’s crucial to remember to capitalize the titles of books, movies, TV shows, essays, and any other piece of work, literature, art, and so on. Here are some examples:

• Every Thursday I watch the series The Walking Dead.
• I wrote an essay called “How to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse.”
• I just read the book Pride, Prejudice and Zombies.
• My favorite movie is Night of the Living Dead.

d. Capitalization For Emphasis

Sometimes we use capitalization to highlight an important word, phrase, or even full sentence, like you see on many signs:

• DO NOT ENTER
• STOP
• BEWARE OF DOG

Capitalizing all of the letters in these phrases makes them stronger and more urgent. These are all important messages, and capitalization emphasizes that.

e. Capitalization in Dialogue

Capitalization can also be a particularly useful technique for dialogue. It can add fear, volume, intensity, urgency, excitement—pretty much any strong feeling that needs to be emphasized. Here are a few examples:

• “DON’T OPEN THAT DOOR, JANE!” yelled Jimmy.
• Seeing the other car approaching, I screamed “WATCH OUT!”
• “Ugh, I just HATE broccoli!” said Sam.

You can see that adding capitalization really makes some of the words in the dialogue stand out. When you’re reading, seeing capitalized words gives you the feeling that the person or character is shouting, or like the signs, that the words are really important and meaningful. At the same time, it’s important not to overuse capitalization in dialogue, otherwise it loses its strength.

4. How to Avoid Mistakes

Capitalization is definitely one of the easiest types of punctuation to use, so long as you know what it’s for. By now you can recognize the true purpose of capitalization—to identify individual people and things. That said, here are some rules to follow and things to avoid:

a. When it comes to names, don’t use capital letters for general and common things. For example:

Fast Food Restaurants usually sell Hamburgers. INCORRECT
I am going to the City this weekend. INCORRECT

A “fast food restaurant” is just a general type of restaurant, and a hamburger is a common food; so, we don’t need to capitalize them. Likewise, “the city” could be any city. But, if we are talking about specific things, we need capitals:

McDonalds is a fast food restaurant that sells a hamburger called the Big Mac. Correct!
I am going to New York City this weekend. Correct!

Remember, capitalization is for specific things.

b. Don’t capitalize “the” unless it is an official part of a title (or the first word of a sentence):

Last summer I visited the Empire State Building Correct!
Last summer I visited The Empire State Building INCORRECT

The little girl’s favorite book is The Giving Tree. Correct!
the little girl’s favorite book is the Giving Tree. INCORRECT

c. When using the name of a place, all of the words in the name need to be capitalized, not just the first word:

• I can’t wait to visit Niagara Falls.
• Have you ever been to Yellowstone National Park?
• You can see the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

d. When creating a title or heading for something, it isn’t necessary to capitalize small words like a, to, the, or, and, but, on, in, and is, for example (unless it’s the first word). You only need to capitalize the important, meaningful words, which you can see from these book titles:

• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
• Catcher in the Rye
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• James and the Giant Peach

e. Finally, don’t forget—if it’s a name or a title, capitalize it!

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.

When do you capitalize a word?

The capitalization of a word (meaning its first letter is in the upper case) often depends upon its context and placement within a sentence. While there are some words that are always capitalized no matter where they appear in a sentence—such as “proper” nouns and adjectives, as well as the first-person pronoun I—most words are only capitalized if they appear at the beginning of a sentence.

Determining when to capitalize words in the titles of creative or published works (such as novels, films, essays, plays, paintings, news headlines, etc.) can be very difficult because there is no single, generally accepted rule to follow. However, there are some standard conventions, which we’ll discuss a little further on.

Capitalizing the first word of a sentence

The first word of a sentence is always capitalized. This helps the reader clearly recognize that the sentence has begun, and we make it clear that the sentence has ended by using terminal punctuation marks (e.g., periods, exclamation points, or question marks).

We also capitalize the first letter of a sentence that is directly quoted within another sentence. This is known as direct speech. For example:

• John said, “You’ll never work in this city again!”
• Mary told him, “We should spend some time apart,” which took him by surprise.
• The other day, my daughter asked, “Why do I have to go to school, but you don’t?”

Sometimes, a portion of a larger statement will be quoted as a complete sentence on its own; this is especially common in journalistic writing. To preserve capitalization conventions, we still usually capitalize the first letter of the quoted speech (if it functions as a complete independent sentence), but we surround the capital letter in brackets to make it clear that the change was made by the person using the quotation. For instance:

• The president went on to say, “[W]e must be willing to help those less fortunate than ourselves.”

Note that we do not capitalize the first word in the quotation if it is a word, phrase, or sentence fragment incorporated into the natural flow of the overall sentence; we also do not set it apart with commas:

• My brother said he feels “really bad” about what happened.
• But I don’t want to just “see how things go”!

Trademarks beginning with a lowercase letter

Sometimes, a trademark or brand name will begin with a lowercase letter immediately followed by an uppercase letter, as in iPhone, eBay, eHarmony, etc. If writers decide to begin a sentence with such a trademarked word, they may be confused about whether to capitalize the first letter since it is at the beginning of a sentence, or to leave the first letter in lowercase since it is specific to the brand name. Different style guides have different requirements, but most guides recommend rewording the sentence to avoid the issue altogether:

• «iPhone sales continue to climb.» (not technically wrong, but not ideal)
• “Sales for the iPhone continue to climb.” (correct and recommended)

Proper Nouns

Proper nouns are used to identify a unique person, place, or thing (as opposed to common nouns, which identify generic or nonspecific people or things). A proper noun names someone or something that is one of a kind; this is signified by capitalizing the first letter of the word, no matter where it appears in a sentence.

The most common proper nouns are names of people, places, or events:

• “Go find Jeff and tell him that dinner is ready.”
• “I lived in Cincinnati before I moved to New York.”
• “My parents still talk about how great Woodstock was in 1969.”

Proper nouns are similarly used for items that have a commercial brand name. In this case, the object that’s being referred to is not unique in itself, but the brand it belongs to is. For example:

• “Pass me the Frisbee.”
• “I’ll have a Pepsi, please.”
• “My new MacBook is incredibly fast.”

The names of organizations, companies, agencies, etc., are all proper nouns as well, so the words that make up the name are all capitalized. However, unlike the nouns of people or places, these often contain function words (those that have only grammatical importance, such as articles, conjunctions, and prepositions), which are not capitalized. For example:

• “You’ll have to raise your query with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.”
• “I’ve been offered a teaching position at the University of Pennsylvania.”
• “Bay Area Rapid Transit workers continue their strike for a fifth consecutive day.”

These are often made into acronyms and initialisms, which we’ll discuss a bit later.

Appellations

Appellations are additional words added to a person’s name. These may be used to indicate respect for a person (known as honorifics) or to indicate a person’s profession, royalty, rank, etc. (known as titles). Some appellations are always abbreviated before a person’s name, such as Dr. (short for Doctor), Mr. (short for Mister), and Mrs. (originally a shortened form of Mistress), and some may be used in place of a person’s name altogether (such as Your Honor, Your Highness, or Your Majesty).

Appellations are considered a “part” of the person’s name and are also capitalized in writing as a proper noun. For example:

• “Dr. Spencer insists we perform a few more tests.”
• “I intend to ask Professor Regan about her dissertation on foreign policy.”
• “Prince William is adored by many.”
• “Please see if Mr. Parker and Mrs. Wright will be joining us this evening.”
• “I have no further questions, Your Honor.”

Normal words can also function as appellations after a person’s name to describe his or her appearance, personality, or other personal characteristics; these are formally known as epithets. They are usually accompanied by function words (especially the article the), which are not capitalized. For example:

• Alexander the Great
• Ivan the Terrible
• Charles the Bald

Proper Adjectives

Proper adjectives are formed from proper nouns, and they are also capitalized. They are often made from the names of cities, countries, or regions to describe where something comes from or to identify a trait associated with that place, but they can also be formed from the names of people. For example:

Proper Noun	Proper Adjective	Example Sentence
Italy	Italian	I love Italian food.
China	Chinese	How much does this Chinese robe cost?
Christ	Christian	In Europe, you can visit many ancient Christian churches.
Shakespeare	Shakespearean	He writes in an almost Shakespearean style.

Sometimes, a word that began as a proper adjective can lose its “proper” significance over time, especially when formed from the name of a fictional character. In these cases, the word is no longer capitalized. Take the following sentence:

• “He was making quixotic mistakes.”

The word quixotic was originally a proper adjective derived from the name “Don Quixote,” a fictional character who was prone to foolish, grandiose behavior. Through time, it has come to mean “foolish” in its own right, losing its association to the character. As such, it is no longer capitalized in modern English.

Another example is the word gargantuan. Once associated with the name of a giant in the 16th-century book Gargantua, it has come to mean “huge” in daily use. Since losing its link with the fictional monster, it is no longer capitalized:

• “The couple built a gargantuan house.”

Other capitalization conventions

While proper nouns, proper adjectives, and the first word in a sentence are always capitalized, there are other conventions for capitalization that have less concrete rules.

Reverential capitalization

Traditionally, words for or relating to the Judeo-Christian God or to Jesus Christ are capitalized, a practice known as reverential capitalization. This is especially common in pronouns, though it can occur with other nouns associated with or used as a metaphor for God. For example:

• “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name.”
• “We must always model our actions on the Lord’s will, trusting in His plan and in the benevolence of the Almighty.”

However, this practice is one of style rather than grammatical correctness. It is becoming slightly less common in modern writing, especially in relation to pronouns, and many modern publications (even some editions of the Bible) tend not to capitalize pronouns associated with God or Jesus Christ (though nouns such as “the Lamb” or “the Almighty” still tend to be in uppercase).

Finally, note that when the word god is being used to describe or discuss a deity in general (i.e., not the specific God of Christian or Jewish faith), it does not need to be capitalized. Conversely, any name of a specific religious figure must be capitalized the same way as any other proper noun, as in Zeus, Buddha, Allah, Krishna, etc.

Acronyms and Initialisms

Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations of multiple words using just their initial letters; like the initials of a person’s name, these letters are usually capitalized. Acronyms are distinguished by the fact that they are read aloud as a single word, while initialisms are spoken aloud as individual letters rather than a single word. (However, because the two are so similar in appearance and function, it is very common to simply refer to both as acronyms.)

Acronyms

Because acronyms are said as distinct words, they are usually (but not always) written without periods. In some cases, the acronym has become so common that the letters aren’t even capitalized anymore.

For example:

• “Scientists from NASA have confirmed the spacecraft’s location on Mars.” (acronym of “National Aeronautics and Space Administration”)
• “The officer went AWOL following the attack.” (acronym of “Absent Without Leave”)
• “I need those documents finished A.S.A.P.” (acronym or initialism of “As Soon As Possible”; also often written as ASAP, asap, and a.s.a.p.)
• “His scuba equipment turned out to be faulty.” (Scuba is actually an acronym of “self-contained underwater breathing apparatus,” but it is now only written as a regular word.)

It’s worth noting that in British English, it is becoming increasingly common to write acronyms of well-known organizations with only the first letter capitalized, as in Nafta (North American Free Trade Agreement) or Unicef (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund), while initialisms, such as UN or UK, are still written in all capital letters.

Initialisms

Like acronyms, it is most common to write initialisms without periods. However, in American English, it is also common to include periods between the letters of some initialisms. This varies between style guides, and it is generally a matter of personal preference; whether you use periods in initialisms or not, be sure to be consistent.

Here are some examples of common initialisms (some with periods, some without):

• “I grew up in the US, but I’ve lived in London since my early 20s.” (initialism of “United States”)
• “It took a long time, but I’ve finally earned my Ph.D.” (initialism of “Philosophiae Doctor,” Latin for “Doctor of Philosophy”)
• “I need to go to an ATM to get some cash.” (initialism of “Automated Teller Machine”)
• “The witness claimed to have seen a U.F.O. fly over the field last night.” (initialism of “Unidentified Flying Object”)

Notice that the h in Ph.D. remains lowercase. This is because it is part of the same word as P (Philosophiae); it is spoken aloud as an individual letter to help make the initialism distinct. While this mix of uppercase and lowercase letters in an initialism is uncommon, there are other instances in which this occurs. Sometimes, as with Ph.D., the lowercase letters come from the same word as an uppercase letter; other times, the lowercase letter represents a function word (a conjunction, preposition, or article). For example:

• AmE (American English)
• BrE (British English)
• LotR (Lord of the Rings)
• DoD (Department of Defense)

Finally, there are two initialisms that are always in lowercase: i.e. (short for the Latin id est, meaning “that is”) and e.g. (short for the Latin exempli gratia, meaning “for example”). The only instance in which these initialisms might be capitalized is if they are used at the beginning of a sentence, but doing so, while not grammatically incorrect, is generally considered aesthetically unappealing and should be avoided.

Abbreviations in conversational English

In conversational writing, especially with the advent of text messages and online messaging, many phrases have become shortened into informal abbreviations (usually initialisms, but occasionally said aloud as new words). They are usually written without periods and, due to their colloquial nature, they are often left in lowercase. While there are thousands of conversational abbreviations in use today, here are just a few of the most common:

• LOL (short for “Laugh Out Loud,” said as an initialism or sometimes as a word [/lɑl/])
• OMG (short for “Oh My God.” Interestingly, the first recorded use of this initialism was in a letter from Lord John Fisher to Winston Churchill in 1917.)
• BTW (short for “By The Way”)
• BRB (short for “Be Right Back”)
• BFF (short for “Best Friend Forever”)
• IDK (short for “I Don’t Know”)
• FWIW (short for “For What It’s Worth”)
• FYI (short for “For Your Information”)
• IMHO (short for “In My Humble/Honest Opinion”)
• P2P (short for “Peer-To-Peer,” with the word To represented by the number 2, a homophone)
• TLC (short for “Tender Loving Care”)
• TL;DR (short for “Too Long; Didn’t Read”)
• TTYL (short for “Talk To You Later”)

Because these are all very informal, they should only be used in conversational writing.

What to capitalize in a title or headline

There is much less standardization regarding how to capitalize titles or article headlines; different style guides prescribe different rules and recommendations.

That said, it is generally agreed that you should capitalize the first and last word of the title, along with any words of semantic significance—that is, nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs—along with proper nouns, proper adjectives, acronyms, and initialisms. “Function words,” those that primarily add grammatical meaning rather than anything substantial (prepositions, articles, and conjunctions), are generally left in lowercase. This convention is sometimes known as title case, and some style guides recommend following it without exception, even for longer function words like between or upon.

For example:

• “New Regulations for Schools Scoring below National Averages”
• “An Analysis of the Differences between Formatting Styles”
• “President to Consider Options after Results of FBI Investigation”
• “Outrage over Prime Minister’s Response to Corruption Charges”

Some words can pose problems because they can in some instances be prepositions and in other instances be adverbs. For example, in the phrasal verb take off, off is functioning adverbially to complete the meaning of the verb, so it would be capitalized in a title:

• “Home Businesses Taking Off in Internet Age”
• “Home Businesses Taking off in Internet Age”

Another group of words that often gives writers problems is the various forms of the verb to be, which conjugates as is, am, are, was, were, been, and being. Because many of its forms are only two or three letters, writers are often inclined not to capitalize them; however, because to be is a verb, we should always capitalize it when using title case:

• “Determining Who Is Responsible for the Outcome” (correct)
• “Determining Who is Responsible for the Outcome” (incorrect)

Capitalizing words longer than three letters

Function words are usually not capitalized in title case, but longer function words (such as the conjunctions because or should or the prepositions between or above) are often considered to add more meaning than short ones like or or and. Because of this, it is a common convention is to capitalize function words that have more than three letters in addition to “major” words like nouns and verbs. Here’s how titles following this convention look:

• “New Regulations for Schools Scoring Below National Averages”
• “An Analysis of the Differences Between Formatting Styles”
• “President to Consider Options After Results of FBI Investigation”
• “Outrage Over Prime Minister’s Response to Corruption Charges”

Some style guides specify that only function words that are longer than four letters should be capitalized. Following this convention, the first three examples would remain the same, but the word over in the fourth example would remain lowercase. However, the “longer than three letters” rule is much more common.

Capitalizing hyphenated compounds

When a compound word features a hyphen, there are multiple ways to capitalize it in a title. Because compound words always serve as nouns or adjectives (or, rarely, verbs), we always capitalize the first part of the compound. What is less straightforward is whether to capitalize the word that comes after the hyphen. Some style guides recommend capitalizing both parts (so long as the second part is a “major” word), while others recommend only capitalizing the first part. For example:

• “How to Regulate Self-Driving Cars in the Near Future”
• “Eighteenth-century Warship Discovered off the Coast of Norway”

Certain style guides are very specific about how to capitalize hyphenated compounds, so if your school or employer uses a particular guide for its in-house style, be sure to follow its requirements. Otherwise, it is simply a matter of personal preference whether hyphenated compounds should be capitalized in full or in part; as always, just be consistent.

Compounds with articles, conjunctions, and prepositions

Some multiple-word compounds are formed with function words (typically the article the, the conjunction and, or the preposition in) between two other major words. While capitalizing the major words in the compound is optional and up to the writer’s personal preference, the function words will always be in lowercase:

• “Are Brick-and-Mortar Stores Becoming Obsolete?”
• “Prices of Over-the-counter Medications Set to Rise”
• “Business Tycoon Appoints Daughter-In-Law as New CEO”

The only exception to this rule is when writers choose to capitalize every word in the title.

Start case

To eliminate the possible confusion caused by short “substance” words (e.g., forms of to be), long function words (e.g., because or beneath), and hyphenated compounds, some publications choose to simply capitalize every word in a title, regardless of the “types” of words it may contain. This is sometimes known as “start case” or “initial case.” For instance:

• “New Regulations For Schools Scoring Below National Averages”
• “An Analysis Of The Differences Between Formatting Styles”
• “President To Consider Options After Results Of FBI Investigation”
• “Outrage Over Prime Minister’s Response To Corruption Charges”

This is especially common in journalism and online publications, but it is usually not recommended for academic or professional writing.

Sentence case

“Sentence case” refers to titles in which only the first word has a capital letter, the same way a sentence is capitalized. (Again, proper nouns, proper adjectives, acronyms, and initialisms remain capitalized.) As with start case, sentence case is useful because it eliminates any possible confusion over which words should be capitalized. Titles following this convention look like this:

• “New regulations for schools scoring below national averages”
• “An analysis of the differences between formatting styles”
• “President to consider options after results of FBI investigation”
• “Outrage over Prime Minister’s response to corruption charges”

Sentence case is not typically recommended by academic or professional style guides, though this is not always true. Some magazine and news publications use the style for their headlines as well, as do many websites.

Capitalizing subtitles

When a piece of work has both a main title and a secondary subtitle (separated by a colon), we apply the same capitalization rules to both—that is, the same types of words will be in uppercase or lowercase depending on which style is being used. We also capitalize the first word after the colon, treating the subtitle as its own. For example:

• The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day
• Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir
• Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero (sometimes written as Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero due to the preference of capitalizing words longer than three letters)

This convention is also true in academic essays, whose subtitles tend to be longer and more detailed, giving the reader a brief explanation of what the essay is about:

• From the Television to the Supermarket: How the Rise of Modern Advertising Shaped Consumerism in America
• True Crimes: A Look at Criminal Cases That Inspired Five Classic Films

Note that if the main title is written in sentence case, then we only capitalize the first word of the subtitle (after the colon):

• In their shoes: Women of the 1940s who shaped public policy

However, this style is generally only used when a title appears in a list of references in an essay’s bibliography (individual style guides will have specific requirements for these works cited pages).

Alternate titles

Sometimes a subtitle acts as an alternate title; in this case, the two are often separated with a semicolon or a comma, followed by a lowercase or (though the specific style is left to the writer’s or publisher’s discretion). However, the alternate title is still capitalized the same way as the main title, with the first word after or being capitalized even if it is a short function word. For example:

• Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
• Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
• Twelfth Night, or What You Will
• Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Capitalizing headings

Headings are titles that identify or introduce a specific section within a larger academic essay or business document. In general, headings will be capitalized in the same manner as the document’s title, usually having the first and last word capitalized as well as any nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs (and, depending on the style guide being followed, any prepositions or conjunctions longer than three letters).

Sometimes a written work will have multiple subheadings of sections that belong within a larger heading. It is common for subheadings to be written in sentence case, but most style guide have specific requirements for when this can be done (for instance, if the subheading is the third or more in a series of headings), if at all.

Deciding how to capitalize a title

Ultimately, unless your school or employer follows one specific style guide, it is a matter of preference to decide how the title is formatted. No matter which style you adopt, the most important thing is to be consistent throughout your body of writing.