To Capitalize or Not to Capitalize?

To capitalize or not to capitalize. That really is the question.

Let’s look at how to capitalize on capitals.

In this post:

• Cases

• How much does it matter?

• The impact

• Common pitfalls

• Capitalize consistently

Cases

Before we can get into whether or not capitals apply to a word, we need to understand cases.

Most of us are familiar with the old standards—lower case and upper case—but there are a couple of other cases and related terms which are important to know in the great case caper. Here are the most common ones you’ll encounter:

• Capitalization: the first letter of the word is capitalized and the rest are lower case.

• Title case: all important words are capitalized. Prepositions and articles are in lowercase (e.g., The Wind in the Willows).

• Sentence case: the first word of the sentence (or even title) is capitalized and the rest are lower case (except for any proper nouns).

• Lower case: all words in the string are lower case.

• All caps: ALL WORDS IN THE STRING ARE IN UPPER CASE.

• Small caps: All words are in upper case, but there is a slight size difference between the initial letter and the rest of the letters in the word. Often seen in older or more formal texts.

How much does it matter?

It depends: what are you writing? If your piece is intended for a a particular kind of publication, you’ll want to find out what rules they adhere to.

If the choice is yours, you may wish to consult a style guide.

Otherwise, it’s up to personal preference. But any deviation will have an impact on your reader, whether it’s REALLY FREAKING THEM OUT or just Rubbing them The wrong way a Little. As ever, you’ll need to balance the demands of situation and artistry.

The impact

Capitalization affects all parts of writing. The three parts listed below are the most common considerations along with the typical rule for each. (We won’t get into indexes, pagination or tables of contents just yet.)

Sentences: sentences are most typically sentence case, of course, but there are the odd sentences in all caps (I won’t do it again, I promise) or lower case (perhaps for artistic reason).

Titles & Headings: while you’d think these are most often title case, they can also be in sentence case or all words might be capitalized depending on the style preference.

Proper Nouns & Titles: since proper nouns are actually names, these are always capitalized. Or, almost always, I should say. Maybe you stylize your company name in lower case like amazon, for instance, or eBay, which is stylized with a lower case “e” and a capital “B.”

Common pitfalls

Whether you are supposed to capitalize a word or not can a vexing question. It’s why using a style guide or noting down your particular style preferences in a style sheet are useful habits to develop.

Besides the variation amongst styles, there are some other common pitfalls that can escape a writer’s notice. For instance:

• Capitalizing roles: sometimes people will mistakenly capitalize a common role (e.g., “secretary”), or conversely, miss capitalizing a proper title (e.g., “Secretary of State).

• Missing small words in titles: small, but important words like the verb “be” are frequently missed when using title case.

• Capitalizing words for emphasis: though it may be a legitimate stylistic choice, there are often better ways to represent this through formatting choices like italics or bold font. If a word is capitalized outside of the standard rules, readers may confuse the word for a proper noun.

Capitalize consistently

Now, if I’d written the heading as, “Capitalize Consistently,” would that have looked strange? It might have to anyone who noticed that all other headings in this post are in sentence case.

As with most of the other rules in spelling, your goal should be a consistent application. If you stylize your headings in title case, then suddenly they’re in sentence case, it will look sloppy to anyone who sees it.

It might not seem like a big deal, but if you want your work to be taken seriously, it pays to play by the rules.

Mary Kehoe provides structural, stylistic and copy editing services for a variety of written works through her agency, Elixir Editorial. From time to time she dabbles in her own writing projects which tend toward the speculative genre.

She is a member of both Editors Canada and the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), as well as a founding member and former chair of the Toronto Arts & Letters Club writing group. A longtime lover of the English language, Mary is passionate about supporting writers on the journey to inspire the world.