Capitalisation

This article is about capitalization in written language. For another meaning, see market capitalization.

For any word written in a language with two cases, such as those using the Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, or Armenian alphabet, capitalization is the writing of that word with its first letter in majuscules (uppercase) and the remaining letters in minuscules (lowercase).

Capitalization custom varies with language.

• Nouns:
  • In nearly all languages, single-word proper nouns (including personal names) are capitalized. Multiple-word proper nouns usually follow rules like those for English titles (see below).
    • France
    • Darth Vader
    • Moses
  • In German, and also various other languages, all nouns are capitalized.

• Pronouns:
  • In the English language the nominative form of the singular first-person pronoun, I, is capitalized, along with all its contractions (I'll, I'm, etc.)
  • In German the formal second-person plural, Sie is capitalized along with all its declensions (Ihre, Ihres, etc.)

• Adjectives:
  • In English, adjectives derived from proper nouns retain their capitalization
    • a Christian church
  • Where the original capital is no longer at the beginning of the word, usage varies.
    • anti-Christian, Presocratic or Pre-Socratic or presocratic (not preSocratic)
  • In German and French such adjectives do not receive capitals.
    • antichristische, presocratique

• Sentences: In most modern languages, the first word in a sentence is capitalized, as is the first word in any quoted sentence. In Latin and Ancient Greek they are not.
• Titles (of books, etc.)
  • English convention is to capitalize all words in a title except any articles, prepositions, and conjunctions which have fewer than five letters.
  • German and French convention is to capitalize only the first word in a title (and any others that would naturally be capitalized anyway.)
• Titles (of Persons)

Some other miscellaneous rules:

1. In English, in addition to proper nouns, proper adjectives (those derived from a name, such as Canadian, Shakespearian) are written with initial majuscules, as are the names of days of the week, months, languages, and the pronoun I. Some authors, though few if any grammar books, also treat the names of individual species of living things (animals, plants, etc) as proper nouns, and use initial majuscules for them, as in e.g. Peregrine Falcon while asserting that others, e.g. horse or person are not common names of species and should not be capitalized.
2. In Dutch, if a proper noun starts with the diphthong ij both i and j are capitalized. Examples: IJmuiden and IJssel. This because ij is not really two letters, but is actually a ligature ij/IJ.
3. Also in Dutch, 't, d', or 's in names or sayings are never capitalized, as they are short for the articles het and de (or the old possessive form des). Examples: 's Gravenhage (from des Graven Hage), d'Eendracht (from de Eendracht), 't Theehuis (from het Theehuis).
4. In the Danish or Norwegian language, Æ/æ is a single letter, and both 'a' and 'e' must be capitalized.
5. In Romance languages, days of the week, months, and adjectives are not written with initial majuscules.
6. In Spanish, the abbreviation of the pronoun usted, Ud. or Vd., is usually written with a capital. The same goes for the Italian pronoun Lei, the German Sie, and the Dutch U, when these are used as a respectful second-person pronoun (see T-V distinction).
7. Some Romance languages capitalize specific nouns; for example, French often capitalizes such nouns as l'État (the state) and l'Église (the church) when not referring to specific ones.
8. In French, accents are sometimes dropped from the uppercase letter of a capitalized word: l'Etat.
9. Many European languages capitalize pronouns used to refer to God.
10. Practice varies when the name starts with a particle 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). If the particle is written as two or more words, the same capitalization applies to both (De La or de la).
11. 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, and is always capitalized if the particle was not. A capital is also always used after Mc, and usually after Mac. or if the particle was Mc. Otherwise it may or may not be capitalized; there is no set rule.

The full rules of capitalization for English are complicated and have changed over time, generally to capitalize fewer terms; to the modern reader, an 18th century document seems to use initial capitals excessively. It is an important function of English style guides to describe the complete current rules.

For some terms a capital as first letter is avoided by avoiding their use at the beginning of a sentence, or by writing it in lowercase even at the beginning of a sentence. E.g., pH looks unfamiliar written "PH", and m and M may even have a different meaning, milli and mega. Brands are sometimes chosen to start with a lowercase letter, to be special, e.g. easyJet. A related oddity is including a punctuation mark in a brand name, e.g. "Yahoo!".

Some individuals choose not to use capitals with their names, such as k.d. lang. E. E. Cummings, whose name is often spelt without capitals, did not spell his name so; the usage derives from the typography used on the cover of one of his books.

Titles

The words in English titles are traditionally all capitalized, as mentioned above, except for internal articles, prepositions, and conjunctions. However, the complexity of this standard, which is frequently violated in practice, has lead to both formal and informal changes in this practice.

• American library indices typically list titles using sentence-style capitalization, in which the first word is capitalized and all others, except proper nouns and proper adjectives, are not. (Example: "The decline and fall of practically everybody : great figures of history hilariously humbled", by Will Cuppy.)

• The music recording industry typically avoids complicated capitalization rules by printing titles in one of three ways: all letters uppercase, all lowercase, or all words capitalized, regardless of the part of speech or "properness" of each word. This practice, though often done for stylistic effect, has contributed to increased use of the last pattern — capitalizing all words in a title — in other places.

See also

• Bicapitalization (CamelCase)