The Curse of the Capitals

The Curse of the Capitals has struck many a fine sentence. Why it strikes is a bit of a mystery. Maybe the writer is trying to sound important. Perhaps they’re trying to draw attention to key points. Or maybe they don’t know they’re doing it.

In any case, the problem is that a lot of capitals are used unnecessarily, which can make the writing look amateurish.

Five rules for using capital letters

There are many rules for using capital letters, and they can get quite confusing. But don’t worry – we’ve had a good old think and distilled everything down to five key points, to help you get your capitals back on track.

        1. The obvious ones

You will know these already, but for the sake of completeness we’ve written them out.

• To start a sentence: John stared helplessly at the blank screen.
• For people’s names: The best person to ask is Mike Green.
• For the pronoun ‘I’: I love fresh mint, but I don’t like mint chocolate.
• In abbreviations: Unidentified Flying Object – UFO
  

  
  2. In proper nouns

Proper nouns include things like the formal names of people, places and languages:

• To help him learn French, Steve decided to take a trip to a village next to the Loire in France.

However, you don’t need to capitalise generic or ‘common’ nouns, because they don’t name anything specific or unique:

• The minister addressed parliament about the new law.
• The internet has changed the way we communicate.

         3. The titles of books, films, plays etc

Here, capitals are used for significant letters. But they’re not used for the words in between (the, a, and, or and so forth):

• Sally couldn’t decide if her favourite childhood book was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, or The Magic Faraway Tree.

       4. Formal job titles and most company names

If you’re writing out a person’s job title next to their name, then you use capitals for the first letter of each significant word. Typically, you also write company/institution names with initial capitals*:

• David Brown, Senior Manager at Smith Brothers, gave us his viewpoint.

However, if you’re writing about a job role generically, you don’t need initial capitals:

• Smith Brothers has five regional senior managers who take care of operations across the country.

* Always check company names on the internet and follow that for guidance. A handful of companies – such as innocent drinks – spell their names completely in lowercase.

          5. …and nowhere else!

Capitals are hugely overused. If in doubt, don’t use one at all!