CHAPTER

Capitalization in English being what it is, it’s no wonder that so many of us find ourselves making errors, which an instructor is likely to indicate by writing CAP next to the mistake.

This isn’t the case for all languages.  In German, for instance, all nouns are capitalized – the end.  If students are asked, for instance, to look at a paragraph and to underline all the nouns, the students’ job is easy:  Every capitalized word is a noun!  In Portuguese, by contrast, words generally aren’t capitalized unless there’s a good reason to do so; indeed, as a Brazilian student of ours, frustrated with English capitalization once exclaimed, “In Portuguese it’s so much easier:  You capitalize just the important words!”  (We didn’t, however, ask how one determines which words are “important”!)

The fact that when one does and doesn’t capitalize in English seems so quirky and illogical is probably why so many writers seem to give up and – to use just titles as an example – just capitalize everything, or capitalize nothing!  Let’s consider some examples of capitalization problems:

• Your Grandmother makes a martini like nobody else’s.
• Last weekend I binge-watched the new series Cactus Wrestlers Of The American Southwest.
• They’ll travel West until they reach they border, where set up a bubble tea and dance instruction stand.
• In the Spring Ginevra likes to tiptoe through the tulips.
• “If you’re looking for good sources for your research essay on global weather change,” hissed Serafina to Brock, “what are you doing here in the young adults’ section of the library?”

Whew!  Where do we start?  We’ve admitted right up front, so to speak, that the fact of the matter is that capitalization in English is often inconsistent and arbitrary.  We can’t provide you with foolproof tips to correct your capitalization errors:  even a dictionary won’t be of much help, as capitalization depends upon context.  Nonetheless, we’re going to propose five general principles that should get you through most of your capitalization crises.

WHAT CAPITALIZATION IS AND HOW IT WORK

The single most important idea about capitalizing is as follows:  You capitalize proper nouns but not common nouns:

• (any) lake BUT                       Lake Stickamukee
• (any) restaurant BUT                       The Painted Lily
• (any) position BUT                       Vice Comptroller Calvin Smallpenny
• (any) structure BUT                       The National Mushroom Distributors Building
• (any) country BUT                       Munchkinland
• (any) physician BUT                       Daryl Fleischfresser
• (any) class BUT                       “Introduction to Underwater Basket Weaving”
• (any) book BUT                       Loving Hateful Men Who Hate to Love Loving Women

This rule applies to noun derivatives, too:

• Portuguese (derived from the noun Portugal)
• Reaganomics (derived from the name Reagan)

To help you make your decisions within this admittedly broad category, we propose five basic rules of capitalization:

1. PEOPLE: You capitalize the names of specific people, family members, offices and jobs, and deities.

• The Emperor of the Moon
• Brumella the Scourge of Dust Bunnies
• Aunt Tallulah
• Chancellor Wyman Crackdown
• Professor Alvina Cloudhead
• Erato the Muse of Poetry

2. TITLES: You capitalize the names of specific works of literature, movies, songs, courses, and brand names:

• War and Peace (a novel)
• Hamlet (a play)
• “The Lottery” (a short story)
• “The Battle-Hymn of the Republic” (a song)
• “Introduction to Underwater Basket Weaving” (a course)

(You’ve do doubt noticed that some of these titles require extra punctuation:  italics or quotation marks.  If you’d like to know more, see the chapter on punctuation.)

3. PLACE: You capitalize the names of specific buildings, cities, counties, states, countries, regions, continents, geographical features, and planets

• Sinkysand Tower
• Tuscaloosa
• Waukesha County
• Michigan
• The Land of Nod
• North America
• the Midwest
• the Ural Mountains
• Neptune

4. TIME: You capitalize the names of days of the week, months, and specific historical events and eras:

• Tuesday
• June
• The Franco-Prussian War
• the Renaissance

5. AMOUNT AND LOCATERS: You capitalize the names of specific noun-number combinations:

• Sector G
• Lot 14A
• Section 389-D
• Unit 14-A
• Volume 6
• Chapter 44

You capitalize a title of a person when it comes before a name but not when it follows:

• My good friend Professor Alvina Cloudhead will lecture today on the subject of underwater basket weaving.
• My good friend Alvina Cloudhead, a professor, will lecture today on the subject of underwater basket weaving.

However, certain high-ranking titles are usually capitalized, no matter what:

• It is true that you threw an egg at the Prime Minister?
• It’s bad form to juggle during an audience with the Pope.

Unlike titles, with places you capitalize after the name but not before:

• Wisconsin State                                 BUT                       the state of Wisconsin
• the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean BUT                       the Atlantic and Pacific oceans

The same is true for historical events:

• The Revolutionary War and the Civil War BUT       the Revolutionary and Civil wars

In noun-number designations, you capitalize the “big” divisions of a work – title, volume chapter – but not page or paragraph:

• I’ve found the spell to remove warts! It’s in The Idiot’s Guide to Incantations, Volume 4, Chapter 5, page 837, paragraph 13.

In the tile of a work – song, book, story, movie, show, and the like – you capitalize all words except articles (a, an, the) and short prepositions, usually those of four letters of fewer:

• The triplets love to sing along to the song “Let’s Trip the Light Fantastic Through Fresno.”

Now, let’s see what happens when we put these principles to work.

THE SOLUTIONS

• Problem: Your Grandmother makes a martini like nobody else’s.
• Solution: Your grandmother makes a martini like nobody else’s.

With the names of family members, capitalize whenever the word you’re using could serve in the place of the person’s name –  as when, for instance, you address that person directly:

• I wonder, Grandmother, if you’d make me a martini?

Assume for a minute that the grandmother’s name is “Cunegunda.”  Let’s substitute this name in the first sentence:

• I wonder, Cunegunda, if you’d make me a martini?

This sentence makes pretty good sense.  Now let’s try the same substitution in the second sentence:

• Your Cunegunda makes a martini like nobody else’s.

This second sentence is likely to strike our ears as a little odd.  In the first sentence, we capitalize “Grandmother” because we’re using the word in place of her actual name; in the second sentence we don’t capitalize “grandmother” because we’re not using it in place of her name.

You’ll find another sticky wicket here when it comes to “titles” of family members:  Mother, father, aunt, uncle, and the like.  You capitalize when your use the “title” alone; however, when you use a possessive pronoun – my, your, his, hers, etc. – you don’t capitalize (for the reasons above):

• Did you know that my aunt is an expert snooker player?
• Did you know that my aunt Simone is an expert snooker player?
• Did you know that Aunt Simone is an expert snooker player?

What about words in titles?

• Problem: Last weekend I binge-watched the new series Cactus Wrestlers Of The American Southwest.

• Situation: Last weekend I binge-watched the new series Cactus Wrestlers of the American Southwest.

Recall that in any title – that is, italicized, as here, or in quotation marks – that you want to capitalize everything except a, an, the within the title, and prepositions of four letters or fewer.  This principle is important:  Don’t, for example, leave a word uncapitalized simply because that word is short:

Problem: Easton titled his essay “Boar is not the Answer:  Living Without Pork.”

Solution: Easton titled his essay “Boar Is Not the Answer:  Living Without Pork.”

Neither “is” nor “not” is an article or a preposition, and thus they should be capitalized.

You might want to think of “titles” as extended to the name of any given course vs the name of any given field of study:

• In Writing the Paranormal we’re reading literature about ghosts, vampires, and werewolves.

The name of the course is capitalized; the name of the field isn’t – unless that field is a language (English, German, French, etc.).  In fact, you might even have a sentence such as this:

• In Literature 2 we’re reading literature.

The name of the course is capitalized; the name of the field isn’t.

• Problem: They’ll travel West until they reach they border, where they’ll set up a bubble tea and dance instruction stand.

• Solution: They’ll travel west until they reach they border, where they’ll set up a bubble tea and dance instruction stand.

You don’t capitalize the points of the compass.  However, if a point of the compass functions as the name of the region, then you do capitalize:

• They’ll live out West, where they’ve set up a bubble tea and dance instruction stand.

And on the topic of place, when you use the word “earth” in the sense of “world” or “ground,” you don’t capitalized it; when you use it as the name of a planet, you do:

• After soaring majestically for a few feet, the penguin fell to the earth [ = fell to the ground]
• I don’t know about other planets; I sometimes wonder if we’ll ever find intelligent life here on Earth. [ = the entire planet]
• Problem: In the Spring Ginevra likes to tiptoe through the tulips.
• Solution: In the spring Ginevra likes to tiptoe through the tulips.

Although you do capitalize the names of months, you don’t capitalize the names of seasons.

And finally,

• Problem: “If you’re looking for good sources for your research essay on global weather

change,” hissed Serafina to Brock, “what are you doing here in the young adults’ section of the library?”

• Solution: “If you’re looking for good sources for your research essay on global weather

change,” hissed Serafina to Brock, “what are you doing here in the Young Adults’ Section of the library?”

Here, you can see that because the sentence refers to a specific location – one section of many – the location should be capitalized.

ANALOGY

Capitalization is the process of granting either privileged status or immediate attention to certain words by starting them off with an upper case letter.

In the case of granting privileged status, using capitalization feels a little like bowing to someone whom you hold in esteem.  When you are bowing, the respected one is taller than you are.  When you capitalize a word, it is taller in its way than the rest of the words.  This marks it as particularly important.

You capitalize a person’s name to honor her or him.  Cynthia Cowslip is honored by capitalization, both for her personal self, Cynthia, and for her extended family, Cowslip.  You address her by this name.  It is her mark of individuality and esteem.  That example is an easy one because everyone knows that people’s names ought to be capitalized.

Now what about something different, like a place?

You know that cities have many buildings. Those buildings have names; in Chicago, for instance, you’ll find the Hancock Building, the Grain Exchange, the Sears Tower.  Normally we don’t capitalize the words “building,” “exchange,” or “tower.”  But when they are used to name a specific building, they are capitalized.  They give a stamp of particularity and importance to the building. However, just as critical to capitalization as importance is immediate attention.  You also capitalize the Hancock Building because it is the only building in town with that name.

In the same way, you use the Form 1040 from the Internal Revenue Service.  Although “form” is normally found in lower case letters, you’re using a specific form, and you capitalize so that your tax information will be processed without delay.

If you can stand in front of the person, place, or thing you want to capitalize, and even address it directly as a stand-alone entity you can probably capitalize it without much fear of contradiction.

Now, even though you might not want spotted talking to buildings and the like, imagine yourself looking at a building.  It looks pretty much like any other building.  But if it contains your future because in it you begin your career as a mushroom sorter – your dream job. You could address the building and say, “All right, National Mushroom Distributors Building, today we begin a career.” “National Mushroom Distributors Building” should be capitalized.

Likewise, entering the building you pass a woman in the hall, a woman who happens to be a medical doctor; this event requires no capital letters.   But when you address that person in particular and say, “Pardon me, Doctor; can you help me find the elevator?” that immediate particularity of direct address requires capitalization.

Remember the importance and immediacy verse:

If a noun has either of these two i’s,

Then you’d better capitalize.

LANGUAGE IN FLUX

We’ve tried to suggest to you some guidelines to live (or at least write!) by, but we’re the first to admit that capitalization doesn’t make a great deal of sense.  For instance, why these differences?

• My uncle Elmo is my godfather.
• My godfather, Uncle Elmo, always remembers to give me a little present on St. Swithin’s Day.
• In Ozaukee County it’s illegal to leave a cow unattended outside a bank.
• In the county of Ozaukee it’s illegal to leave a cow unattended outside a bank.

Why is “uncle” capitalized in the second sentence, but not the first?  And “County” in the first, but not the second?

We seem to recall a story about capitalization in English.  For most of the history of English capitalization was random; writers capitalized – or not – seemingly by whim.  In the middle of the 18^th century some authors attempted to regularize the system by capitalizing all nouns (along the lines of what we see in modern-day German) – you can see this for yourself if you pick up a copy of, say, Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, first published in 1749.  And this system might have caught on, if it hadn’t been for a printers’ strike.  As the letters were set by hand, those workers who filled in for the striking printers found that they could do their work much more quickly using small letters instead of having to use capital letters for every noun.

We can’t, unfortunately, corroborate this story, but it seems as good an explanation as any for our capricious capitalizing.  We’re hoping that the guidelines that we’ve just set out will prove helpful to you.

THE BASICS

• WHAT IS IT? You use capital letters to indicate proper nouns.
• WHEN DO YOU USE IT? You use it whenever you need to indicate a specific person, place, or thing.
• WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE? There are five basic rules for capitalizing:
• people: You capitalize the names of specific people, family members, offices and jobs, and deities.
• titles: You capitalize the names of specific works of literature, movies, songs, courses, and brand names.
• place: You capitalize the names of specific buildings, cities, counties, states, countries, regions, continents, geographical features, and planets.
• time: You capitalize the names of days of the week, months, and specific historical events and eras.
• amount and locators: You capitalize the names of specific noun-number combinations.

EXERCISE

Correct the capitalization errors in the following sentences.  Sentences contain more than one error!

1. While sipping leek and potato martinis, the guests were treated to great uncle rigoberto’s recitation of “the charge of the light brigade.”
2. You’ll find the headquarters of the confidence undergarment factory on the corner of bloomer boulevard and skivvy lane.
3. The motto of the factory is “always truss-worthy,” which is engraved over the main doors of the whalebone building.
4. “There!” announced Linnea proudly. “I’ve just finished the last chapter in my autobiography, grinning in a pinch.  And just in time for guy fawkes day!”
5. Last semester I studied botany, bulgarian, and boating.
6. My favorite class, though, was “boosting the business of bees”; the professor is an expert in apiculture.
7. His name is professor szysmansky, and you should consider visiting him in his office in the botany department on the second floor of long hall.
8. Jacinda insists that the sea of clouds on the moon is in fact fill with water, like the black sea.
9. Because fall doesn’t officially starts until the autumnal equinox, july is somewhat too early to start carving jack-o’-lanterns.
10. In chapter 6, “getting in dutch: paintings of the flemish masters,” we learned how to paint in the style of hieronymus bosch.

QUIZ

Capitalization Quiz and Key