11.3: Capitalization

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Athena Kashyap & Erika Dyquisto
City College of San Francisco via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative

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Capitalization

The following are some capitalization rules. You probably know most of them, but it's very possible you may be unclear on a couple of them.

Always capitalize the first letter of a sentence. This gives a visual signal to your reader that a new idea is beginning.
Always capitalize "I" when referring to yourself. Don't fall into the texting lowercase "i" habit.
Always capitalize proper nouns. This may be a little trickier than you think. See this video for some tips.

The following video will tell you more.

Capitalize

Don't Capitalize

Names of people
A particular river or mountain
Brands
Company/organization names
Days of the week
Months of the year
Street and square names
Departments of the government
Historical eras
Holidays
Institutions
Man-made structures
Geographical and geopolitical locations (countries, counties, etc.)
Landmarks
Planets when referred to as their name
Races, nationalities and tribes
Religions and names of deities
Books that are the basis of a religion
Special events and occasions
The genus of an organism

Types of animals, unless it's named after a person or a place
Just the words river or mountain
Elements off the periodic table of elements (no exceptions)
Types of companies
Food, unless it's a brand name or has someone's name in it
Medical conditions, unless they are named after someone
Plants, vegetables, and fruits unless they are named after someone (and only capitalize the name)
Use of department and other generic terms without titles
Chemicals and minerals
Seasons and times of day

Heavenly bodies that aren't planets

The species of an organism

Note:

Capitalize adjectives when the adjective pertains to "X," and "X" is a proper noun. For instance, French refers to France, which is a proper noun. So French in French fries should be capitalized.

Writing at Work

When working with legal documents, capitalization rules differ from the standard. Defined terms may be capitalized throughout legal documents.

Exercise 1

Correct the capitalization errors in the following fictional story. Copy the corrected paragraph onto your own sheet of paper.

lance worthington signed a Recording Contract with Capitol records on june 15, 2007. Despite selling two million copies of his Debut Album, nothing to lose, lance lost quite a bit as his tax returns from the irs revealed. lance did not think it was fair that the Record Company kept so much of his earnings, so he decided to hire robert bergman, a prominent music Attorney with a Shark-like reputation. bergman represented lance all the way to the supreme court, where lance won the case against capitol records. Lance worthington was instrumental in changing intellectual property rights and long standing Record Company practices. All artists and musicians can thank him for his brave stance against record companies. Lance subsequently formed his own independent record label called worthy records. worthy is now a successful Label based out of chicago, illinois, and its Artists have appeared on well known shows such as The tonight show and Saturday night live. Lance worthington is a model for success in the do-it-yourself World that has become the Music Industry.

Capitalization of Titles (Title Case)

Capitalization of titles can be confusing because we see this done in different ways (styles) in different publication.

The traditional method of capitalizing a title involves:

Capitalizing the first letter of the first and last words in a title.
Capitalizing the first letter of all words that aren't articles or coordinating conjunctions that are less than five letters.

The following video illustrates this with particular examples.

Note:

Some style guides treat the title as a sentence and only capitalize the first word. This is not generally acceptable in college classes, however.

In particular, when you list the title on your Works Cited or Bibliography page, even if the original title used sentence case capitalization, change the capitalization to title case.

Exercise 2

Capitalize the following titles according to standard title case.

1. the song remains the same

2. enter the wu-tang (36 chambers)

3. the dna drug revolution

4. the curious incident of the dog in the night time

5. so long, and thanks for all the fish

6. if life's a bowl of cherries, what am i doing in the pits?

Contributors and Attributions

Adapted from Writing for Success. Provided by: The Saylor Foundation. License: CC-NC-SA 3.0.

This page most recently updated on June 8, 2020.