Capitalization


Capitalization or capitalisation is the practice of writing a word with its first letter as a capital letter and the remaining letters in lower case, in writing systems with a case distinction. The term also may refer to the use of uppercase letters in general, or the choice between uppercase and lowercase.
The rules of capitalization vary between conventional writing systems and over time. The systematic use of capitalized and uncapitalized words in running text is called mixed case. There are various names for different capitalization rules, including sentence case and title case.

Description

Capitalization is the practice of writing a word with its first letter as a capital letter and the remaining letters in lower case, in writing systems with a case distinction. The term also may refer to the use of uppercase letters in general, or the choice between uppercase and lowercase.
The systematic use of capitalized and uncapitalized words in running text is called mixed case.

History

The rules of capitalization vary between conventional writing systems and over time. For instance, the full rules of capitalization in English are complicated and have changed over time, generally to capitalize fewer words; the conventions used in an 18th-century document will be unfamiliar to a modern reader of English.

Conventions

Orthographies have different conventions for capitalization, for example, the capitalization of titles. Conventions also vary, to a lesser extent, between different style guides. In addition to the Latin script, capitalization also affects the Armenian, Cyrillic, Georgian and Greek alphabets.
Owing to the essentially arbitrary nature of orthographic classification and the existence of variant authorities and local house styles, questionable capitalization of words is not uncommon, even in respected newspapers and magazines. Most publishers require consistency, at least within the same document, in applying a specified standard: this is described as house style.

Parts of speech

Pronouns

  • In English, the subjective form of the singular first-person pronoun, "I", is capitalized, along with all its contractions such as I'll and I'm. Objective and possessive forms are not.
  • Many European languages traditionally capitalize nouns and pronouns used to refer to God, including references to Jesus Christ : hallowed be Thy name, look what He has done. Some English authors capitalize any word referring to God: the Lamb, the Almighty; some capitalize "Thy Name". These practices have become much less common in English in the 20th and 21st centuries.
  • * In Baháʼí literature, singular and plural object, subject, and possessive forms are capitalized if referring to a Rasul, the Twelve Imams, or 'Abdu'l-Baha.
  • Some languages capitalize a royal we, such as in German.
    2nd-person pronouns
Many languages distinguish between formal and informal 2nd-person pronouns.
  • In German, the formal 2nd-person plural pronoun Sie is capitalized along with all its case-forms, but these words are not capitalized when used as 3rd-person feminine singular or plural pronouns. Until the recent German spelling reform, the traditional rules also capitalized the informal 2nd-person singular pronoun Du when used in letters or similar texts, but this is no longer required.
  • Italian also capitalizes its formal pronouns, Lei and Loro, and their cases. This is occasionally also done for the Dutch U, though this is formally only required when referring to a deity and may be considered archaic.
  • In Spanish, the abbreviations of the pronouns usted and ustedes, Ud., Uds., Vd., and Vds., are usually written with a capital.
  • In Finnish and Estonian, the second-person plural pronoun can be used when formally addressing a single person, and in writing the pronoun is sometimes capitalized as Te to indicate special regard. In a more familiar tone, one can also capitalize the second-person singular pronoun Sinä.
  • Similarly, in Russian the formal second-person pronoun Вы, and its oblique cases Вас, Вам etc., are capitalized ; also in Bulgarian.
  • Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian capitalize the formal second-person pronoun Vi along with its oblique cases and personal pronoun in formal correspondence. Historically, the familiar second-person pronoun ti and its cases were capitalized as well, but new orthography prohibits such use.
  • In Danish, the plural second-person pronoun, I, is capitalized, but its other forms jer and jeres are not. This distinguishes it from the preposition i. The less commonly used formal singular second-person pronoun is also capitalized in all its forms, distinguishing it from the otherwise identical third-person plural pronouns.
  • In Norwegian, both second-person singular and plural have a capitalized alternative form to express formality for both subject and object of a sentence, but is very rarely used in modern speech and writing.
  • In formally written Polish, Czech, Slovak and Latvian, most notably in letters and e-mails, all pronouns referring to the addressee are capitalized. This includes Ty and all its related forms such as Twój and Ciebie. This principle extends to nouns used formally to address the addressee of a letter, such as Pan and Pani.
  • In Indonesian, capitalizing the formal second-person pronoun Anda along with all references to the addressee, such as " Bapak/Ibu", is required in practice of Ejaan Yang Disempurnakan. However, some people do not know of or choose not to adhere to this spelling rule. In contrast, Malay orthography used in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei does not require the capitalization of anda.
  • In Tagalog and its standard form, Filipino, the formal second-person pronouns Kayo and Ninyo and their oblique form Inyo 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.
  • In Tajik, capitalization is used to distinguish the second-person formal pronoun Шумо from the second-person plural pronoun шумо.
  • In Swedish, since du-reformen, the second-person singular pronoun du may be capitalized as Du when addressed formally.

    Nouns

  • The various languages and dialects in the High German family, including Standard German and Luxembourgish, are the only major languages using the Latin alphabet in which all nouns are capitalized. This was also practiced in other Germanic languages :
  • * Danish, before the spelling reform of 1948
  • * Swedish, during the 17th and 18th centuries
  • * English, during the 17th and 18th centuries
  • * Some regional languages, such as Saterland Frisian
  • In nearly all European languages, single-word proper nouns, including personal names, are capitalized. Multiple-word proper nouns usually follow the traditional English rules for publication titles.
  • * Where place names are merely preceded by the definite article, this is usually in lower case.
  • ** Sometimes, the article is integral to the name, and thus is capitalized. However, in French this does not occur for contractions du and au. 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.
  • * 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 as k.d. lang and bell hooks. E. E. Cummings, whose name is often written without capitals, did not do so himself: the usage derives from the typography used on the cover of one of his books.
  • * Most brand names and trademarks are capitalized, although some have chosen to deviate from standard rules to be distinctive. When capitals occur within a word, it is sometimes referred to as camel case.
  • * Some speakers of Eastern Slavic languages associate capitalization with respect and decapitalize proper nouns to show disrespect.
  • In English, the names of days of the week, months and languages are capitalized, as are demonyms like Englishman, Arab. In other languages, practice varies, but almost all languages other than German and Luxembourgish do not.
  • 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. In French, street names are capitalized when they are proper names; the noun itself is normally not capitalized: rue de Rivoli, place de la Concorde.
  • In Italian the name of a particular concept or object is capitalized when the writer wants to emphasize its importance and significance.
  • Capitalization is always used for most names of taxa used in scientific classification of living things, except for species-level taxa or below. Example: Homo sapiens sapiens.
  • Controversially, some authors capitalize common names of some animal and plant species. As a general rule, names are not capitalized, unless they are part of an official list of names, in which case they have become proper nouns and are capitalized. This is most common for birds and fishes. Names referring to more than one species are always in lower case. Botanists generally do not capitalize the common names of plants, though individual words in plant names may be capitalized for another reason:. See the discussion of official common names under common 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. Other Romance languages such as French often capitalize such nouns as l'État and l'Église when not referring to specific ones.
  • Names by which gods are known are capitalized, including God, Athena, and Vishnu. The word god is generally not capitalized if it is used to refer to the generic idea of a deity, nor is it capitalized when it refers to multiple gods, e.g. Roman gods. There may be some confusion because Judaism, Christianity, and Islam rarely refer to the Deity by a specific name, but simply as God. Other names for the God of these three Abrahamic faiths, such as Elohim, Yahweh, and Lord, are also capitalized.
  • While acronyms 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, reserving all-caps for initialisms.
  • In life stance orthography, in order to distinguish life stances from general -isms. For instance, Humanism is distinguished from humanism.
  • In legal 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 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 as all-caps
  • Most English honorifics and titles 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.