My response, in summary, was that job titles don’t need to be capitalised although it is not technically wrong to do so. The exceptions being a title as part of a name (e.g. Doctor Jones) and someone in a key national role (e.g. Prime Minister, Treasurer).

I also noted that some companies list capital letters for extra words as part of their corporate style guide. Thus, we get companies writing about their Managing Director, Marketing Manager and Company when managing director, marketing manager and company would be perfectly acceptable and easier to read.

While I respect that each company can set their own brand, what annoys me is the inconsistency of such capitalisation. That is, most (maybe all!) of those companies would quite happily write about Jack the receptionist, Simone the cleaner and Justine the forklift driver while referring to Craig the Chairman and Mary the Operations Manager.

It annoys me because it is inconsistent (and therefore distracting and harder to read) but also because I find it disrespectful. Using capital letters is usually done as a sign of respect to the person in the job – does a receptionist, cleaner or forklift driver not deserve respect as well? And for anyone who says a Marketing Manager is more important than a receptionist, I ask if you could manager a busy switchboard or how you view companies you call where the receptionist doesn’t do a good job.

So, while I prefer to not use capitals for titles, if you do capitalise titles please be sure to capitalise them all.

The following are examples of the over use of keywords to remind us that the focus of promotional articles should be on giving information rather than making a sale or increasing website traffic (as much as we love those results!)

example 1 – a title for an article: 

Tractor Parts,Hydraulic Coupling,Hydraulic Pumps,Lubricating Oil Pump,Tractor Spare Parts,Tractorul UTB Spares 

Not a very interesting title is it?

example 2 – content of an article:

Just search on your computer with Keywords like Packers and Movers in Ahmedabad Packers Movers Ahmedabad, Relocation service provider in Ahmedabad, etc. Many service provider of that particular state will appear on your computer screen. Collect information from all the relocation Ahmedabad companies and hire the best one. You can also do the same work to find out service provider of other state and city.

There is nothing informative or interesting in that snippet, and its a lttle insulting as someone has probably already searched those keywords to have found the article in the first place!

example 3 – a bio box:

crib bedding, crib bedding sets

Apart from not doing much to promote their business, this bio box is boring and doesn’t develop trust or credibility.

Of course, the use of keywords (and avoiding over use of them) applies to blog posts, newsletters, website content and so on just as much as to promotional articles.

• for the word I – this word must always be written as a capital letter, to do otherwise looks out of place and attracts attention to the lack of attention to detail. As part of an SMS message, I might accept it, but I leave websites where they repeatedly use a lower case i
• to start a sentence – this helps make it clear it is a new sentence and this in turn makes it easier to understand the message and individual ideas
• for all proper nouns – that is, any word that is the name of something specific for example Tash, Melbourne, Australia, Australians and Word Constructions. It does not include generic names such as mothers, business owners, writers, city or students.* Note that the word I is actually a proper noun so my first point is covered here but it was worth a separate point!
• in acronyms – where just the first letter of each word is used to represent the name of something. For instance, the ATO represents the Australian Tax Office and ASAP represents as soon as possible. It doesn’t matter if the full title uses capitals or not, acronyms generally use capitals (sometimes a business may choose to brand themselves with a lower case acronym.)
• the start of speech, even if it is not the start of a sentence. For example, she said “We must pay attention to the use of capital letters.”
• days of the week and names of months, as well as names of specific periods of history (e.g. the Second World War, the Depression)
• titles of books, articles, movies and so on can be written in title case (e.g. Full Moon Rising) or just with a starting capital letter (e.g. Confessions of a supermom)

Capitals letters are sometimes also used within names (e.g. AvSuper, MacGregor), in scientific terminology (e.g. E. Coli, Eucalyptus, cyclone Tracy) and where two words have been abbreviated into one (e.g. eLearning.)

There are variations in some of these rules, especially if you travel to another country but using these guidelines will avoid any major errors!

* The use of a generic noun as a proper noun requires a capital letter, too. So while mothers is written in lower case, a capital letter applies in the following sentence: Mary said “Hello Mother. How are you?” Likewise, you may write about a library (generic) or the Ashburton Library (specific).

I once wrote the following as a guest blogger:

Quotation marks seem to be fashionable at the moment, which is a shame as they are being used so badly! “Recommended by doctors and mothers” makes me feel like they are telling me a lie – if it is a genuine statement, why does it need to be in quotation marks?

Quotation marks are correctly used to: 

- indicate you are quoting someone

- indicate speech (e.g. He said “How are you?”)- present a title of something

- show the text lacks credibility or truth, or at least is not verifiable (e.g. The media release stated the product was “superior”)

If you are tempted to use quotation marks for emphasis, try bold, italics, underline, colour, indenting or size of font instead – it will stand out more and not send any incorrect messages!

So I was rather amused when I came across a blog dedicated to silly use of quotation marks. I hope you enjoy seeing these grammatical blunders, as well as getting tips for your own writing!