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:

grammarbook

But you can also go to the APA and MLA Websites for good information.

apastyle
mla

Related posts:

1. How to Edit Christian Writing: God vs. god – Which is It?

Tags: capitalizations, Capitalize

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 at 11:04 pm and is filed under Editing Skills & Services, Proofreading, Writer's Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.