1. Always capitalize the first letter of the first word of a sentence.
The horses stood next to the fence and watched the cars go by.
2. Capitalize proper nouns, including names of people, places like countries, states and cities and names of companies or organizations. Be careful not to capitalize common nouns or pronouns like the word “brother” in the example below.
My brother Tom went to Boston to watch a Celtics game at the
Garden.
3. Capitalize names of published articles, books, songs, albums, websites and other official names of published things. In addition, capitalize names of organizations and musical groups.
One of the most famous songs by the Beatles is “Imagine,” written by John Lennon.
4. Capitalize all the important words in a title. For instance, in the title of this page, “Rules for Capitalization,” the word “for” is not capitalized.
Newspaper headline – “Summer Sizzles with Temperatures in the Nineties”
5. Capitalize brand names of products sold in the stores.
She bought a Coke, some Cheez-Its and a Hershey bar for a highly nutritious lunch.
6. Always capitalize the word “I” when writing in the first person. While it is acceptable in some types of communication to use the lower case “i,” your college professors expect you to capitalize “I” for your assignments.
I was hoping that I could eat that ice cream before it melted.
Created by Joanna S. Fortna, 2011
Revised by Joseph Dery, 2019
