The capital letter "A" in the Latin alphabet, followed by its lowercase equivalent, insans serif andseriftypefaces respectively
Capitalization (North American spelling; also British spelling in Oxford) orcapitalisation (Commonwealth English; all other meanings) 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 acase 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 differentstyle guides. In addition to theLatin script, capitalization also affects theArmenian,Cyrillic,Georgian andGreekalphabets.
The full rules ofcapitalization 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".
Owing to the essentially arbitrary nature oforthographic classification and the existence of variant authorities and localhouse styles, questionable capitalization of words is not uncommon, even in respected newspapers and magazines. Most publishers requireconsistency, at least within the same document, in applying a specified standard: this is described as "house style".
In English, thesubjective form of the singular first-personpronoun, "I", is capitalized, along with all its contractions such asI'll andI'm.Objective andpossessive forms ("me", "my", and "mine") are not.
ManyEuropean languages traditionally capitalize nouns and pronouns used to refer toGod, including references toJesus Christ (reverential capitals):hallowed be Thy name,look what He has done. Some English authors capitalize any word referring to God:the Lamb,theAlmighty; some capitalize "Thy Name". These practices have become much less common in English in the 20th and 21st centuries.
InGerman, the formal 2nd-person plural pronounSie is capitalized along with all itscase-forms (Ihre,Ihres, etc.), but these words are not capitalized when used as 3rd-person feminine singular or plural pronouns. Until the recentGerman spelling reform(s), the traditional rules (which are still widely adhered to, although not taught in schools) also capitalized the informal 2nd-person singular pronounDu (and its derivatives, such asDein) when used in letters or similar texts, but this is no longer required.
Italian also capitalizes its formal pronouns,Lei andLoro, and their cases (even within words, e.g.arrivederLa "goodbye", formal). This is occasionally also done for theDutchU, though this is formally only required when referring to a deity and may be considered archaic.
InSpanish, the abbreviations of the pronounsusted andustedes,Ud.,Uds.,Vd., andVds., are usually written with a capital.
InFinnish andEstonian, the second-person plural pronoun can be used when formally addressing a single person, and in writing the pronoun is sometimes capitalized asTe to indicate special regard. In a more familiar tone, one can also capitalize the second-person singular pronounSinä (Sina in Estonian).[1]
Similarly, inRussian the formal second-person pronounВы, and itsoblique casesВас,Вам etc., are capitalized (usually in personal correspondence); also inBulgarian.
Slovenian,Croatian,Serbian capitalize the formal second-person pronounVi along with its oblique cases (Vas,Vam,Vami) and personal pronoun (Vaš etc.) in formal correspondence. Historically, the familiar second-person pronounti and its cases (tebe,tebi,teboj) were capitalized as well, but new orthography prohibits such use.
InDanish, the plural second-person pronoun,I, is capitalized, but its other formsjer andjeres are not. This distinguishes it from the prepositioni ("in"). The less commonly used formal singular second-person pronoun is also capitalized in all its forms (De,Dem,Deres), distinguishing it from the otherwise identical third-person plural pronouns.
InNorwegian, both second-person singular and plural have a capitalized alternative form (De,Dem,Deres inBokmål;De,Dykk,Dykkar inNynorsk) to express formality for both subject and object of a sentence, but is very rarely used in modern speech and writing.
In formally writtenPolish,Czech,Slovak andLatvian, most notably in letters ande-mails, all pronouns referring to the addressee are capitalized. This includesTy ("thou") and all its related forms such asTwój andCiebie. This principle extends tonouns used formally to address the addressee of a letter, such asPan ("sir") andPani ("madam").
InIndonesian, capitalizing the formal second-person pronounAnda along with all references to the addressee, such as "(kepada) Bapak/Ibu" ((to) Sir/Madam), is required in practice ofEjaan Yang Disempurnakan (Perfected Orthography).[2] However, some people do not know of or choose not to adhere to this spelling rule. In contrast,Malay orthography used inMalaysia,Singapore andBrunei does not require the capitalization ofanda.
InTagalog and its standard form,Filipino, the formal second-person pronounsKayo andNinyo and their oblique formInyo 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.
InTajik, capitalization is used to distinguish the second-person formal pronounШумо from the second-person plural pronounшумо.
In Swedish, sincedu-reformen, the second-person singular pronoundu may be capitalized asDu when addressed formally.
In nearly all European languages, single-wordproper nouns, including personal names, are capitalized (likeFrance orMoses). Multiple-word proper nouns usually follow the traditional English rules forpublication titles (as inRobert the Bruce).
Where place names are merely preceded by thedefinite article, this is usually in lower case (as inthePhilippines).
Sometimes, the article is integral to the name, and thus is capitalized (as inDen Haag,Le Havre). However, in French this does not occur forcontractionsdu andau (as inJe 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 ask.d. lang andbell hooks.E. E. Cummings, whose name is often written without capitals, did not do so himself: the usage derives from thetypography used on the cover of one of his books.[6][7]easyJet A319 atAmsterdam Schiphol Airport.
Some speakers of Eastern Slavic languages associate capitalization with respect and decapitalize proper nouns to show disrespect.
In English, the names of days of theweek,months andlanguages are capitalized, as aredemonyms likeEnglishman,Arab. In other languages, practice varies, but almost all languages other than German and Luxembourgish (which capitalizeall nouns) do not.[8]
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. InFrench, 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.[citation needed]
InItalian the name of a particular concept or object is capitalized when the writer wants to emphasize its importance and significance.[9]
Controversially, some authors capitalizecommon names of some animal and plantspecies. As a general rule, names are not capitalized, unless they are part of an official list of names, in which case they have becomeproper nouns and are capitalized. This is most common for birds[10] andfishes. Names referring to more than one species (e.g.,horse orcat) are always in lower case. Botanists generally do not capitalize the common names ofplants, though individual words in plant names may be capitalized for another reason: (Italian stone pine). See the discussion of official common names undercommon 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. OtherRomance languages such asFrench often capitalize such nouns asl'État (the state) andl'Église (the church) when not referring to specific ones.
Names by which gods are known are capitalized, includingGod,Athena, andVishnu. The wordgod is generally not capitalized if it is used to refer to the generic idea of adeity, nor is it capitalized when it refers to multiple gods, e.g.Roman gods. There may be some confusion becauseJudaism,Christianity, andIslam rarely refer to the Deity by a specific name, but simply asGod (seeWriting divine names). Other names for the God of these three Abrahamic faiths, such asElohim,Yahweh, andLord, are also capitalized.
Whileacronyms have historically been written in all-caps, British, Finnish, Swedish and some German usage has moved towards capitalizing only the first letter in cases when these are pronounced as words (e.g.Unesco andNato), reserving all-caps for initialisms (e.g. UK, USA,UNHCR).
Inlegal 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 asall-caps
Most Englishhonorifics andtitles 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 King is referred to as The King.
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".)
In English,adjectives derived from proper nouns (except the names of characters in fictional works) usually retain their capitalization: e.g. aChristian church,Canadian whisky, aShakespearean sonnet, but not aquixotic mission normalapropism. Where the original capital is no longer at the beginning of the word, usage varies:anti-Christian, and eitherPresocratic,pre-Socratic,Pre-Socratic orpresocratic. 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, butOhm'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 many European languages such as German, French orCzech, 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.
The capitalization of geographic terms in English text generally depends on whether the author perceives the term as aproper 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 areexamples of rules that some[which?] British and U.S. publishers have established in style guides for their authors:
This general rule also applies to zones of the Earth's surface (North Temperate Zone, theEquator)[13]
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)
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. ("TheTatra National Park is a tourist destination in Poland. Watch out for bears when visiting the national park.")[14][15]
In all modern European languages, the firstword in asentence 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 ofancient 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 writtenPH, and initialm andM may even have different meanings,milli andmega, 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 aline 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)
In the U.S.,headlines andtitles of works typically usetitle case, in which certain words (such as nouns, adjectives and verbs) are capitalized and others (such as prepositions and conjunctions) are not. In the U.K., titles of works use title case, but headlines generally use sentence case (or all caps intabloid newspapers).
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." The standard case used in Englishprose. 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 is not capitalized (unless it would be capitalized by another rule). This type of letter case is used for entries indictionaries.
"The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog." Also known asheadline case andcapital 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.[16] The standardization is only at the level of house styles and individualstyle manuals. (SeeHeadings and publication titles.) A simplified variant isstart case, where all words, includingarticles,prepositions, andconjunctions, start with a capital letter.
"THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG." Also written asall-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.[17][18] 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 theascenders anddescenders found in lowercase letters, which can aid recognition.[19][20] In professional documents, a commonly preferred alternative to all caps text is the use ofsmall caps to emphasize key names or acronyms, or the use ofitalics or (more rarely)bold.[21] 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.[22]
Compound names arenouns that are made up of more than onestem, or a stem and one or moreaffixes.[a]Names that are made up of several affixes and one or more nouns arenot compound names under this definition, butnoun phrases, that are made up of one or moreseparable affixes, and one or more nouns. Examples of the separable affixes may be found inList 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.
InGerman, the separable affix, and at the same time preposition,von (meaning "of", pronounced[fɔn]) orgenannt (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 similarItalian andPortuguese affixes.[c][23]
In Dutch, thefirst affix, likevan; orde, or declensions ofde; orcontractions of a preposition and an article, liketer; 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, inBelgium 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 ofnobility or when use of the lower case has been granted to some noble family.[24] 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][25]
In English, practice varies when the name starts with aparticle[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 particlede La is usually written with theL capitalized but not thed.[26][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 isMc,M, orO. In other cases (includingMac), there is no set rule (bothMacintyre andMacIntyre 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 likeEllis Island).[k] 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 aliving subject, prefer the spelling consistentlyused in the subject's own publications.[27]
TheChicago 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.[28] Additionally, most other words within a title are capitalized as well;articles andcoordinating conjunctions are not capitalized.[28] Sources disagree on the details of capitalizingprepositions.[28] For example, theChicago Manual of Style recommends rendering all prepositions in lowercase,[29] whereas theAPA 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.[30]
In other languages, such as theRomance languages, only the first word and proper names are capitalized.
The EnglishvocativeparticleO, an archaic form of address, e.g.Thou, O king, art a king of kings. However, lowercaseo is also occasionally seen in this context.
In most languages that usediacritics, 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).[31] 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,[32] although in France and Mexico, for instance, schoolchildren are often erroneously taught that they should not add diacritics on capital letters).
However, in thepolytonic orthography used forGreek 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. WhenGreek is written with the present daymonotonic 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). Thedialytika (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).
Some languages treat certaindigraphs as single letters for the purpose of collation. In general, where one such is formed as aligature, the corresponding uppercase form is used in capitalization; where it is written as two separate characters, only the first will be capitalized. ThusOedipus orŒdipus are both correct, butOEdipus is not. Examples with ligature includeÆrøskøbing inDanish, whereÆ/æ is a completely separate letter rather than merely atypographic ligature (the same applies in Icelandic); examples with separate characters areLlanelli inWelsh, whereLl is a single letter; andFfrangeg in Welsh whereFf is equivalent to EnglishF (whereas WelshF corresponds to EnglishV).[33] Presentation forms, however, can use doubled capitals, such as the logo of theNational Library of Wales (Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru). The position in Hungarian is similar to the latter.
An exception is theDutch digraphIJ. Both letters are capitalized even though they are printed separately when using a computer, as inIJsselmeer. In the past the digraph was written asY, and this still survives in some surnames.
A converse exception exists in theCroatian alphabet, where digraph letters (Dž,Lj,Nj) have mixed-case forms even when written as ligatures.[34] Withtypewriters andcomputers, 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).
InCzech thedigraph 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 forVysoká škola chemicko-technologická (University of Chemistry and Technology). However, the practice is not unified when writing initial letters ofpersonal names (first name and surname), for exampleJan Chudoba can be abbreviated bothJ. Ch. orJ. CH.[35]
In languages whereinflected forms of a word may haveextra letters at the start, the capitalized letter may be the initial of the root form rather than the inflected form. For example, inIrish, in the placenameSliabh na mBan, "(the) mountain of the women" (anglicized asSlievenamon), the word-form writtenmBan contains thegenitive plural of the nounbean, "woman",mutated after the genitive plural definite article (i.e., "of the"). The written B ismute 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 inMaltese that start with certain consonant clusters. For example,l-Istati Uniti (the United States) capitalize the epentheticI, even though the base form of the word — without the definite article — isstati.
In English, there are a fewcapitonyms, which are words whose meaning (and sometimes pronunciation) varies with capitalization. For example, the monthAugust versus the adjectiveaugust. Or the verbpolish versus the adjectivePolish.
^Example: theDutch nameVerkerk, which is made up of theprefixVer- and the nounkerk (church).
^Example: the Dutch nameVan der Kerk is made up of the prefixvan (which at the same time is apreposition); the articleder (which is adeclension of thedefinite articlede); and the nounKerk. The prefixVer- is acontraction of the separable affixes, that has "bonded" with the noun. However, the surnameVer Huell is an example of a case where the prefixVer has not yet become part of the name.
^Examples:Cornelis de Witt,J. de Witt, Maria de Witt-van Berckel. But: the brothers De Witt. However, inAlexander Willem Maurits Carel Ver HuellVer, though a separate affix, is not written with a lowercase letter, asVer is not a preposition or a definite article as the exception requires.
^Examples: Van der Duyn van Maasdam; Van Nispen tot Pannerden.
^Council of Science Editors, Style Manual Committee.Scientific Style and format: the CSE manual for authors, editors, and publishers, 7th ed. 2006. Section 9.7.3, P. 120.ISBN978-0-9779665-0-9.
^Ilene Strizver (2011)."ALL CAPS: To set or not to set?".Fonts.com. Monotype Imaging. Retrieved21 June 2011.;Cohen, Noam (4 February 2008)."Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC?".The New York Times. Retrieved29 January 2011.Jason Santa Maria, creative director of Happy Cog Studios, which designs Web sites, detected a basic breach of netiquette. "Hillary's text is all caps, like shouting," he said.
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.
