English Grammar for the Utterly Confused - Laurie Rozakis 2003
Avoiding Capital Offenses: The Rules of Capitalization
Chapter 11 Capitalization and Abbreviations
Part 4 A Writers Tools
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Our system of capital and lowercase letters allows writers to point out specific words within a sentence and to signal the start of a new sentence. The rules may seem arbitrary, but you’ll soon discover that they function much as traffic signals to help travelers negotiate the highways of written language. This chapter explains the rules that govern the accepted use of capital letters and abbreviations.
Avoiding Capital Offenses: The Rules of Capitalization
Basically, capitalization falls into two categories:
• Capitalize all proper nouns. These include names, geographical places, specific historical events, eras, and documents, languages, nationalities, countries, and races.
• Capitalize the first word at the beginning of a sentence.
In everyday writing, the rules are clear-cut. However, if you are writing within a specific organization or company, capitalization is mostly a matter of editorial style. The important goal is always the same: Use capital letters consistently within a particular document.
Quick Tip
Today, professional writers and editors tend to use fewer capital letters than was the habit in the past. In the nineteenth century and before, many more nouns were capitalized, as novels from this period reveal.
Let’s look at these rules in detail. The proper nouns are divided into separate categories for ease of reference, starting with names and titles.