Capitalization

Description

History

Conventions

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

• 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(s), 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 articles and determiners#Definite article|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.

Adjectives

• In English, adjectives derived from proper nouns usually retain their capitalization: e.g. a Christian church, Canadian whisky, a Shakespearean sonnet, but not a quixotic mission nor malapropism. Where the original capital is no longer at the beginning of the word, usage varies: anti-Christian, and either Presocratic, pre-Socratic, Pre-Socratic or presocratic. Never preSocratica hyphen must precede a capital in a compound word.
• Such adjectives do not receive capitals in French, Spanish, Swedish, Polish nor partly in German. In German, if the adjective becomes a noun by using an article or numeral in front of it ), it is capitalized like any other noun, as are nouns formed from proper nouns. The same applies to verbs.
• Adjectives referring to nationality or ethnicity are not capitalized in many European languages such as German, French or Czech, 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.

Places and geographic terms

• In general, the first letter is capitalized for well-defined regions, e.g. South America, Lower California, Tennessee Valley
• This general rule also applies to zones of the Earth's surface
• In other cases, do not capitalize the points of the compass or other adjectives
• Capitalize generic geographic terms that are part of a place name
• Otherwise, do not capitalize a generic term that follows a capitalized generic term
• Use lower case for plurals of generic terms ; but "the Dakotas"
• Only capitalize "the" if it is part of the formal place name

By context

• In all modern European languages, the first word in a sentence is capitalized, as is the first word in any quoted sentence.
• * The first word of a sentence is not capitalized in most modern editions of ancient 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 written PH, and initial m and M may even have different meanings, milli and mega, for example 2 MA is a billion times 2 mA. 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".
• Traditionally, the first words of a line of verse are capitalized in English, e.g.:

• * Modernist poets often ignore or defy this convention.
• In the U.S., headlines and titles of works typically use title case, in which certain words are capitalized and others are not. In the U.K., titles of works use title case, but headlines generally use sentence case.

Special cases

Compound names

• In German, the separable affix, and at the same time preposition, von or wikt:genannt in a surname is not capitalized. Von is however often dropped within a sentence. The same applies to similar Italian and Portuguese affixes.
• In Dutch, the first affix, like van ; or de, or declensions of de; or contractions of a preposition and an article, like ter; in a surname are capitalized unless a given name, initial, or other family name. precedes it Other affixes in the noun phrase are left lowercase. However, in Belgium 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 of nobility or when use of the lower case has been granted to some noble family. An exception for the rule that a Dutch name starts with an uppercase letter under all circumstances is included in the general capitalization rule: "If the sentence begins with an apostrophe, the following full word is capitalized." This also applies to Dutch names that begin with a contraction that consists of an apostrophe and a letter.
• In English, practice varies when the name starts with a particle with a meaning such as "from" or "the" or "son of".
• * Some of these particles are always capitalized; others are usually capitalized; still others often are not. The compound particle de La is usually written with the L capitalized but not the d.
• * 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 is Mc, M, or O. In other cases, there is no set rule.
• Americans with non-Anglophone surnames often have not followed the orthographic conventions usual in the language communities of their extraction. 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 a living subject, prefer the spelling consistently used in the subject's own publications.

Titles

Acronyms

• Acronyms which have become regular words such as laser and scuba.
• Some acronyms of proper nouns in which function words are not capitalized, such as TfL and LotR.

"O"

• The English addressive particle O, an archaic form of address, e.g. Thou, O king, art a king of kings, is usually capitalised. However, lowercase o is also occasionally seen in this context.

Accents

Digraphs and ligatures

• An exception is the Dutch digraph IJ. Both letters are capitalized even though they are printed separately when using a computer, as in IJsselmeer. In the past the digraph was written as Y, and this still survives in some surnames.
• A converse exception exists in the Croatian alphabet, where digraph letters have mixed-case forms even when written as ligatures. With typewriters and computers, these "title-case" forms have become less common than 2-character equivalents; nevertheless they can be represented as single title-case characters in Unicode.
• In Czech the digraph ch can be capitalized in two ways: Ch or CH. In general only the first part is capitalized, unless the whole text is written in capital letters. In acronyms both parts are usually capitalized, such as VŠCHT for Vysoká škola chemicko-technologická. However, the practice is not unified when writing initial letters of personal names, for example Jan Chudoba can be abbreviated both J. Ch. or ''J. CH.''

Initial mutation

Case-sensitive English words

Capitalization styles

Sentence case

Title case

All caps