Capitalization

Capitalization Conventions

Writers often refer to geographic locations, company names, temperature scales, and processes or apparatuses named after people, all of which have capitalization conventions that go beyond the basics for proper nouns that you probably remember from grade school: the name of a person or place is capitalized. There are ten fundamental conventions for capitalization:

  1. Capitalize the names of major portions of your paper and all references to figures and tables. Note: Some journals and publications do not follow this convention, but most do.
    • Table 1
    • Appendix A
    • see Figure 4
  2. Capitalize the names of established regions, localities, and political divisions.
    • the French Republic
    • Livingston County
    • the Arctic Circle
  3. Capitalize the names of highways, routes, bridges, buildings, monuments, parks, ships, automobiles, hotels, forts, dams, railroads, and major coal and mineral deposits.
    • the White House
    • Highway 63
    • Alton Railroad
  4. Capitalize the proper names of persons, places and their derivatives, and geographic names (continents, countries, states, cities, oceans, rivers, mountains, lakes, harbors, and valleys).
    • British
    • Rocky Mountains
    • Chicago
    • Celia Easton
  5. Capitalize the names of historic events and documents, government units, political parties, business and fraternal organizations, clubs and societies, companies, and institutions.
    • the Civil War
    • Congress
    • Ministry of Energy
  6. Capitalize titles of rank when they are joined to a person’s name, and the names of stars and planets. Note: The names earth, sun, and moon are not normally capitalized, although they may be capitalized when used in connection with other bodies of the solar system.
    • Venus
    • Professor Covfefe
    • Milky Way
  7. Capitalize words named after geographic locations, the names of major historical or geological time frames, and most words derived from proper names.
    • Middle Jurassic Period
    • the Industrial Revolution
    • Petri dish
    • Coriolis force
    • Planck’s constant

    Note: The only way to be sure if a word derived from a person’s name should be capitalized is to look it up in the dictionary. For example, “Bunsen burner” (after Robert Bunsen) is capitalized, while “diesel engine” (after Rudolph Diesel) is not. Such inconsistencies are in the nature of conventions! Another inconsistency is that when referring to specific geologic time frames, the Chicago Manual of Style says not to capitalize the words “era,” “period,” and “epoch,” but the American Association of Petroleum Geologists says that these words should be capitalized. The takeaway is that academic writing is determined by disciplinary conventions rather than by universal rules.

  8. Capitalize references to temperature scales, whether written out or abbreviated.
    1. 10 ºF
    2. degrees Celsius
  9. Capitalize references to major sections of a country or the world.
    1. the Near East
    2. the South
  10. Capitalize the names of specific courses, the names of languages, and the names of semesters.
    • Political Science 211
    • Fall 2018
    • Russian

Common Capitalization Confusion

Just as important as knowing when to capitalize is knowing when not to. Below are a few instances where capital letters are commonly used when they should not be. When in doubt, look online or consult a dictionary, but one useful note to remember is that a proper noun is called a proper noun because it refers to something specific or particular, from the Latin proprius, meaning “one’s own,” or “special.” That’s why we say, “Second Street is a street in Geneseo,” not, “Second Street is a Street in Geneseo.”

  1. Do not capitalize the names of the seasons, unless the seasons are personified, as in poetry (“Spring’s breath”):
    • spring
    • winter
  2. Do not capitalize the words north, south, east, and west when they refer to directions, in that their meaning becomes generalized rather than site-specific.
    • We traveled west. [We traveled west to the West Indies.]
    • The sun rises in the east. [The sun rises in the east in East Rochester.]
  3. In general, do not capitalize commonly used words, even though their origins are in words that are capitalized. Some of these words have come to have quite specific meanings in their uncapitalized forms.
    • arctic [“Geneseo’s campus can be arctic in February” is not really asking you to think about the Arctic.]
    • biblical
    • india ink
    • pasteurization
  4. Do not capitalize the names of elements. Note: This is a common capitalization issue, and can often be found in published work. Confusion no doubt arises because the symbols for elements are capitalized.
    • oxygen
    • californium
    • nitrogen