Capital Ideas

As I kick off a new series of grammar and punctuation articles to kick off the new year, I figured we might as well start at the top. Based on a suggestion on Twitter from Tami, aka @tami_moore, I’m going to tackle capitalization: when, how, and where.

The Rules

There are some conventions to be followed when using capitals. As far as I can tell, there are no differences between American and British usage; however, if any of my non-American readers are aware of any, please let me know. One thing to keep in mind is that for all the rules below, in general I’m talking about initial capital letters; i.e., the first letter in a word. If I address ALL CAPS, I’ll make that quite explicit.

1. Capitalize the first word in a sentence.

2. Capitalize proper nouns. “Proper nouns” include names of people (Steve, Kestrel) and places (Rapid City, England, Mount Rushmore).

• Capitalize titles when used as a form of address or part of a name. Senator Thune, Father O’Malley, Pastor Jones, but “the senator” or “the pastor.”
• Capitalize full forms of university degrees. This is a subset of the previous rule. Bachelor of Arts or Master of Science, but “bachelor’s degree” or “master’s degree”

3. Capitalize the “key words” in a title. Or not. This is a matter of style, and as such, is somewhat open to interpretation. I put this as a “rule” because the question will come up (in fact, it did, from Krizzlybear and @JustAnna), so I want to address this when we talk about specifics below.

4. Capitalize other stuff as appropriate. Such as abbreviations. But not all of them.

Getting Down to Cases

(See what I did there?)

Capitalize the first word in a sentence.

The only people who get this wrong are lazy, or e.e. cummings (but he’s a poet, and poetry is a completely different species). If you break this rule, I’m going to assume you missed the shift key. (Caveat: If you get to be as famous as e.e. cummings, you, too, may do any thing you damn well please with regard to style. Until then, however, it’s probably best if you follow the rules. Such as they are.)

Nevertheless, there is a special case we should address: the first letter following a colon. In this case, the rule is quite simple: If what follows the colon forms a complete sentence, then capitalize the first word. Look closely at the preceding two sentences: Each of them has a colon. In the first, what follows the colon is, in effect, a sentence fragment, hence, no cap. In the second, the colon separates two complete sentences; thus, a capital is used to start the part following the colon.¹ Incidentally, the only time you capitalize after a semicolon is if the word is a proper noun.

After a colon, capitalize the first letter only if the words form a complete sentence.

Capitalize proper nouns.

If the preceding rule was the first one we learned, this one was second. Or vice versa. About the only time names aren’t capitalized when they should be (which is always) is the result of a typo. Again, though, there are some areas where people just aren’t sure whether to use a capital.

Capitalize President Obama, but not "the president"

• A title preceding a proper name requires a capital: Senator Thune, Queen Elizabeth II, Mayor Bloomberg. However, if you’re discussing the senator, the queen, or the mayor, lowercase is the way to go.^{2, 3}
• The formal names of university or college degrees are capitalized, such as Master of Science or Doctor of Philosophy. But don’t capitalize master’s degree in history or bachelor’s in political science. And then there is my graduate degree, properly called Master of Business Administration. Yeah, I agree: “MBA” is so much easier.

The Internet and the Web are places, just as the Matrix is. Caps, please!

• A few specific cases: The Internet is a “great big place” but it’s still a place, so capitalize it. Similarly, the Web is a shortened alternative, so if you’re using it to refer to the Internet, capitalize it as well. However, “website” can refer to any of millions of places on the Web, so it’s a nonspecific, uncapitalized noun.⁴
• And finally, Earth, Moon and Sun. Or are they the earth, the moon, and the sun? The dirt you plant flowers in is earth, or contains earth, which is a generic term for ground. When discussing our home planet, however, things get a bit more confusing. If you’re planning a trip from Earth (or the Earth) to Mars, Earth is almost always seen capitalized. But if you’re talking about earth’s escape velocity, you’ll see the word capitalized sometimes, and sometimes not. My personal preference is to capitalize Earth when I’m referring to the planet, without the preceding “the.” And to be consistent, our Sun and our Moon (but not the sun or the moon) should be capitalized, but that’s even less common. (And why is it “the earth”? We don’t talk about “the Saturn” or “the Mars.” The answer of course, is that “earth” is a synonym for “world.”) Isn’t English wonderful?

Capitalize “key words” in a title.

Hoo boy…this is probably the area where the most questions arise. Each time I asked friends if they had questions about capitalization (and in Tami’s original tweet suggesting this topic), this question was asked. As I stated at the top, determining how to capitalize titles is a stylistic decision. Grammar Girl has a good, short podcast on the topic. The extremes, of course, are to treat a title as a sentence and capitalize only the first letter, to capitalizing the first letter of each word, to CAPITALIZING EVERY LETTER IN THE TITLE. That last may be fine for the cover of a book, but it’s a bit much for day-to-day writing, methinks.

For Titles of Creative Works, Pick a Style and Stick With It

So, let’s address the middle case, and the exceptions to this “rule.” Most of us were probably taught in school to capitalize all the words in a title except articles (a, an, the) and the prepositions “for” and “of.” The exceptions to that, however, are when such words are the first or last words of the title. According to writers.com tips for title capitalization:

The U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual offers one easy style: "Capitalize all words in titles of publications and documents, except a, an, the, at, by, for, in, of, on, to, up, and, as, but, it, or, and nor."

That’s good enough for me!

But what about subtitles? What about subordinate elements such as sections, paragraphs, chapters, and the like? You can apply the same rules as for main titles (such as they are), or you can use a different style entirely. For example, for my blog (at least from this point forward) I intend to use the GPO style for article titles. But subsections may (and as is the case in this article) get an entirely different treatment. The most important thing to remember is to be consistent within each type of title in a given document. Not that anyone will break your fingers if you aren’t, but it will certainly give your work a more polished and professional appearance if you do maintain that consistency.

Capitalize other stuff as appropriate.

That’s nice and specific, isn’t it? Let’s look at abbreviations, as an example. Generally speaking (and please note the emphasis as connoted by the italics), if something is capitalized when written out, its abbreviation is similarly capitalized. If it’s not normally capitalized, don’t capitalize the abbreviation.

• a.m. and p.m. These are abbreviations for ante meridiem and post meridiem, Latin terms for before and after noon, respectively. They are not capitalized.⁵ Thus, 8:00 A.M. (or 8:00 AM) is incorrect. (So, too, is 8:00 am.) Incidentally (and I’m going to hate myself later for putting this here, because I won’t be able to find it later), noon and midnight are not capitalized unless they are the first word of a sentence. *sigh* And as long as we’re on the topic, try to avoid 12:00 a.m. or 12:00 p.m. Instead, use midnight and noon, respectively.⁶ Look at that: A whole post compressed into one paragraph and two footnotes. The things I do for you, dear readers!
• State abbreviations. In the United States (U.S. or US; I much prefer the former, but USA over U.S.A. Once again, stylistic convention, but be consistent!), there are almost as many ways to abbreviate state names as there are states.
  
  

  Reserve post office abbreviations for envelopes; use 3-5 letter state abbreviations elsewhere, if you must abbreviate.

  • Take my home state of California, for instance: Cal., Calif., or, per the U.S. Postal Service, CA. N.B.: “Cali” is not, never has been, and never will be an acceptable shortening of the name of the state of California.⁷ Ahem…where was I? Oh, yes….
  • The two-letter postal abbreviations for states (and Canadian provinces) have both letters capitalized; e.g., AB (Alberta), BC (British Columbia), CA (California). Postal abbreviations do not have periods at the end; however, it might be acceptable to abbreviate some states such as Ca. or Co. (Of course, an abbreviation for Canada is Ca. and for county, Co. So why confuse matters?)
  • Finally, while SD is the postal abbreviation for South Dakota, S.D. is perfectly acceptable as well (similarly, N.C., N.D., S.C., R.I., etc.). Generally, postal abbreviations should be reserved for envelopes; other writing should use more conventional abbreviations, if you must abbreviate.
• Multi-word abbreviations. Up above, I mentioned a.m. and p.m., and alluded to U.S. vs. US. Note there is no space after the periods in an abbreviation. This of course begs the question, are periods required in abbreviations? Short answer: It depends. Once again, it’s a stylistic choice. The New York Times, for example, abbreviates National Football League as N.F.L., which, when I read it, sounds like “enn…eff…ell.” “NFL,” on the other hand, which is how it’s abbreviated everywhere else that I know of, sounds like “eneffell.” Similarly, to me, U.S.A. and USA sound like “You. Ess. Ay.” and “YouEssAy,” respectively. But that’s just me. Once again, take your pick, but be consistent. Consistency counts!

Are we done yet?

I hope so, but I doubt it. I’m sure I’ve left out everything you’ve wondered about capitalization, and included only those items that make you go, “Well, DUH!” Ohh…see? What about CAPS FOR EMPHASIS? I realize that in text chat, this is a simple convention to observe. But in serious (or even not-so-serious) writing, realize we live in the age of computers: It’s not that hard to hit Control-I (or Command-I, Mac users) to italicize for emphasis.⁸

If there are other areas of capitalization I omitted, or if you want to take issue with my position on any of these, let’s discuss in the comments!