I am always checking my style and grammar books to ensure that I am capitalizing words properly! It is not easy to remember all of the rules and regulations regarding capitalization.
But, a helpful way to remember when to capitalize (in most cases) is to use this phrase: Proper nouns and words derived from them are capitalized. Common nouns are not.
Here are some examples:
Weekdays, holidays and months are capitalized:
- Monday
- Tuesday
- Labor Day
- An exception is the Fourth of July. You would use the fourth of March.
Seasons, directions and events are not capitalized:
- summer
- north
- northwest
- my birthday
- my anniversary.
Titles are capitalized when used with a name:
- Example - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
But, it is not capitalized in this example:
- The hearings for the secretary of state appointment begin today.
Capitalize the first, last and all major words of a title:
- “The Long Hot Summer”
- “Frannie and Zooey”
- “The Red and the Black”
Capitalize the first word after a colon if it begins an independent clause: This may depend on whether you are using MLA Style or APA Style.
- I found myself in an unusual position: My husband was not the man I thought he was. (APA)
- I found myself in an unusual position: my husband was not the man I thought he was. (MLA)
Here are some other examples:
- God (when used as a name)
- god (when used as a description)
- Aunt Judie
- my aunt
- English, French
- history, mathematics, physical education
- The World Wide Web and Web Site
- a home page
- Work War II
- the war, a war
- a Republican, a Democrat
- an independent (but a member from the Independence Party)
- I went to the game with Father.
- His father was often at work on Saturdays.
- The South (as an area)
- the southern point
- a southern state
If you have a question about capitalizing a word, look in the stylebooks in the index for “capitalization.” Most stylebooks provide exceptions.
You can also use a search engine on the Web to help you reference these types of questions. I have one site I like to use as well:
http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/capital.asp
But you can also go to the APA and MLA Websites for good information.
http://www.apastyle.org/
http://www.mla.org/
Tags: capitalizations, Capitalize
