CAPITALIZATION

A.      Capitalization

Capitalization is the usage of uppercase or capital letter in writing. The main function of capitals is to focus attention on particular elements within any group of people, places, or things.  It is used when:

1.       At the begining of a sentence (sentence case). It is when the first letter in a sentence is in uppercase letter and the other is in lowercase letter exept for the proper nouns (pronoun). In normal sentence case my be substituted by UPPER CASE (all letters are capitalized), and Title Case (only the first letter of each words is capitalized). Capitals are ususally not used after a colon.

2.       With some nouns and adjectives, usually a proper noun (pronoun).

a.       Pronoun “I”

b.      Personal and place names: “John”, “Mr. Smith”, “Amsterdam”, “Mount Everest”, “the Ganges”.

c.       Points of the compass: “North”

d.      National nad regional adjectives: “an American” (noun), “an American man” (adjective).

e.      Religions: “an Islamic Center” (adjective).

f.        Deities and personifications: “God”, “Fame”.

g.       Days, months: “Monday”, “January”, but not the seasons such as “spring”.

h.      Brand names: “Nike”, “Coca-Cola”, but not eBay.

i.         Royal titles: “King George III” but not “kings and queens of England”, and only sometimes ‘sir’ or ‘madam’.

3.       Capitonyms are the words that can changed in meaning by the using of capitalization or not, such as “liberal” and “Liberal”: “A man of liberal tastes” and “The leader of the Liberal Party”.

4.       Capitalization of multi-word place names, institutions and titles of works.

Generally prepositions and articles are not capitalized: “the Forest of Dean”, “Gone with the Wind”, “University of Southampton”. With some publications the “The” forms part of the title: “reading The Times”.

5.       Capitalization of acronyms

Generally acronyms are capitalized: “S.O.S”