{"id":306,"date":"2008-04-20T10:24:28","date_gmt":"2008-04-20T00:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/?p=306"},"modified":"2013-08-12T18:15:23","modified_gmt":"2013-08-12T08:15:23","slug":"capital-letters-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2008\/04\/capital-letters-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Capital letters"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_6158\" style=\"width: 280px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/capital_letter_or_not.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6158\" class=\" wp-image-6158 \" alt=\"to CAPITAL or not to capital, that is the question\" src=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/capital_letter_or_not-300x149.gif\" width=\"270\" height=\"134\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/capital_letter_or_not-300x149.gif 300w, https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/capital_letter_or_not-150x74.gif 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 270px) 100vw, 270px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-6158\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pardon changing the Bard&#8217;s words, but this is a question that needs asking much more often &#8230;<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I suspect the increased use of <a title=\"SMS shorthand\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2008\/01\/sms-shorthand\/\">SMS and chat shorthand<\/a> is a major factor, but it seems that many people aren&#8217;t sure about when to use <a title=\"Capital letters\u2026\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2008\/01\/capital-letters\/\">capital letters<\/a> in their writing. So here is a quick summary of when to use a capital letter:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>for <strong>the word I<\/strong> &#8211; this word must always be written as a capital letter, to do otherwise looks out of place\u00a0and\u00a0attracts 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<\/li>\n<li>to <strong>start a sentence<\/strong> &#8211; this helps make it clear it is a new sentence and this in turn makes it easier to understand the message and individual ideas<\/li>\n<li>for <strong>all proper nouns<\/strong> &#8211; that is, any word that is the name of something specific for example Tash, Melbourne, Australia, Australians\u00a0and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wordconstructions.com.au\" target=\"_blank\">Word Constructions<\/a>. It does not include generic names such as mothers, business owners, writers, city\u00a0or 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!<\/li>\n<li><strong>in acronyms<\/strong> &#8211; where just the first letter of each word is used to represent the name of something. For instance, the ATO represents the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ato.gov.au\" target=\"_blank\">Australian Tax Office<\/a> and ASAP represents as soon as possible. It doesn&#8217;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)<\/li>\n<li>the <strong>start of speech<\/strong>, even if it is not the start of a sentence. For example, she said &#8220;We must pay attention to the use of capital letters.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><strong>days of the week and names of months<\/strong>, as well as names of specific periods of history (e.g. the Second World War, the Depression)<\/li>\n<li><strong>titles of books<\/strong>, articles, movies and so on can be written in <a title=\"definition of title case\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2011\/05\/what-is-title-case\/\">title case<\/a> (e.g. <a href=\"http:\/\/savetimeonline.com.au\/blog\/2008\/full-moon-rising-by-kerri-arthur\/\" target=\"_blank\">Full Moon Rising<\/a>) or just with a starting capital letter (e.g. <a href=\"http:\/\/savetimeonline.com.au\/blog\/2008\/confessions-of-a-supermom-by-m-l-hauser\/\" target=\"_blank\">Confessions of a supermom<\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Capitals letters are sometimes also used within names (e.g. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.avsuper.com.au\" target=\"_blank\">AvSuper<\/a>, MacGregor), in scientific terminology (e.g. E. Coli, Eucalyptus, cyclone Tracy) and where two words have been abbreviated into one (e.g. <a title=\"eBooks from Word Constructions to aid your business writing\" href=\"http:\/\/www.wordconstructions.com.au\/ebook.php\" target=\"_blank\">eBooks<\/a>, eLearning.)<\/p>\n<p>There are variations in some of these rules, especially if you travel to another country but using these guidelines will avoid any major errors! Or call upon someone to <a title=\"Proofreading tips\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2010\/07\/proofreading-tips\/\">check your writing for you<\/a>\u00a0&#8211;\u00a0errors that\u00a0requires conscious effort for you to find often are quite obvious to others, especially to someone like me who spots such things without trying.<\/p>\n<p>Edited to add:\u00a0I came across\u00a0a <a title=\"capital letter poster\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zeekszoo.blogspot.com.au\/2012\/03\/what-gets-capital-letter.html\" target=\"_blank\">fun poster<\/a> with the basic capital letter uses, which is great for kids and anyone struggling to remember these rules.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/writing-tips-ebook\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Writing well eBook from Word Constructions\" alt=\"Learn more writing tips from the Writing Well eBook\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wordconstructions.com.au\/images\/bannerimages\/writingtips_banner1.gif\" width=\"468\" height=\"60\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>* 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 &#8220;Hello Mother. How are you?&#8221; Likewise, you may write about a library (generic)\u00a0or the <a title=\"Ashburton Library\" href=\"http:\/\/www.boroondara.vic.gov.au\/libraries\/contact\/ashburton\" target=\"_blank\">Ashburton Library<\/a> (specific).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I suspect the increased use of SMS and chat shorthand is a major factor, but it seems that many people aren&#8217;t sure about when to use capital letters in their writing. So here is a quick summary of when to use a capital letter: for the word I &#8211; this word must always be written [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[205,163,204,164,203,166,167,202,168,165,193],"class_list":["post-306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grammar-details-2","tag-acronyms","tag-capital","tag-generic","tag-letters","tag-names","tag-nouns","tag-proper","tag-scientific","tag-sentences","tag-start","tag-title"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6160,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions\/6160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}