McGraw-Hill Handbook of English Grammar and Usage, 2nd Edition (2013)

Part II. How to Find and Correct Mistakes

Chapter 15. Capitalization

Capitalization is simple in principle but messy in practice. We will divide the chapter into two main parts:

1. Capitalizing proper nouns

2. Other uses of capitalization

Capitalizing Proper Nouns

The general rule for capitalizing nouns is quite simple: capitalize proper nouns. Proper nouns are the names of specific, individual persons, places, and things as opposed to common nouns, which are generic names for categories of persons, places, and things. In general, the distinction between proper and common nouns is clear enough, as is seen in the following table, which gives somewhat analogous proper and common nouns:

However, the devil is always in the details. It turns out that determining what counts as a proper noun is not always straightforward. In the following section, we examine the categories of person, place, and thing in greater depth to sort out the conventions of capitalization.

Capitalization of Persons

The names and initials of persons are always capitalized, as are all other parts of their names (unless an individual chooses otherwise, as with k.d. lang and bell hooks):

John F. Kennedy

C. S. Lewis

George III

Martin Luther King Jr.

Parts of names of foreign origin follow the conventions of the native country and do not capitalize articles like al-, de, du, la, van, von, etc.:

Harun al-Rashid

Daphne du Maurier

Walter de la Mare

Charles de Gaulle

Ludwig van Beethoven

When civil, military, religious, and professional titles precede a name and are used as part of the name, they are capitalized:

President Johnson

Pope Pius X

Cardinal Newman

General Bradley

Professor Smith

If the title is used in place of a name in speaking directly to a person, it is capitalized:

Please come in, Senator.

However, if the title is used when referring to a person, it is not capitalized:

Ask the senator to come in.

Even if a noun refers to only one person, the noun is an uncapitalized common noun unless the noun is used as a title in speaking to the person. For example, compare these two uses of the noun mother:

In the first sentence, Mother is used as a title in directly addressing the person and is thus considered to be a proper noun. In the second sentence, however, mother is used to refer to a third person. Even though the person uttering the second sentence only has one mother, the noun is still a common noun because it is not used as a title in direct address.

If a title is used following a name, the title is not capitalized, for example:

Chief Justice Warren Burger

Warren Burger, the chief justice of the United States

Governor Jerry Brown

Jerry Brown, governor of California

Archbishop Frederick Temple

Frederick Temple, the archbishop of Canterbury

Professor William Smith

William Smith, professor and chair of the Economics Department

The names of groups of people (racial, linguistic, tribal, religious, etc.) are normally capitalized:

Afro-American

Latino

Catholic

Chinese

Capitalization of Places

Names of specific countries, cities, streets, buildings, rivers, lakes, mountains, oceans, etc., are capitalized:

Russia

Rome

Elm Street

Empire State Building

the Mississippi River

Lake Erie

Mt. Hood

the Pacific Ocean

Regions are usually (but not always) capitalized:

the Upper Peninsula (of Michigan)

North Pole

Southeast Asia

the Southwest (of the United States)

the Continent (Europe)

the Arctic

Particularly common regional names, at least in the United States, are North, South, East, and West. When these words are used to describe a place and/or a regional culture associated with the place, they are capitalized. It is easy to tell these four words apart from the same words used as directional words because the regional names are nouns and can be replaced by the pronoun it. Compare the following:

Proper noun: The West has always captured popular imagination.
It has always captured popular imagination.

In this next example, if we try to replace the directional words with it, the result will be ungrammatical:

Popular names of places are usually capitalized (and not enclosed in quotation marks):

Bay Area (San Francisco Bay and surrounding area)

Badlands (South Dakota)

Eastern Shore (Chesapeake Bay)

Fertile Crescent

Sunbelt

the Village (New York)

Normally, generic topographical terms such as lake, river, and valley are capitalized if they are part of a standard place name:

Bering Strait

Great Barrier Reef

the Red River

Rocky Mountains

Silver Lake

South China Sea

Walden Pond

the West Coast

However, when topographical terms are used descriptively rather than as part of the name, then the topographical terms are treated as common nouns and are not capitalized:

The Arizona desert covers most of the state.

The Mississippi valley is the country’s biggest drainage system.

The Italian coast south of Naples is world famous.

The Sierra Nevada mountains contain many active volcanoes.

Words derived from geographical names are not capitalized when they are used with a nongeographical meaning:

china (tableware)

french fries

scotch whisky

venetian blinds

Capitalization of Things

The complete names of private and public organizations of all kinds are capitalized:

United Nations

United States Coast Guard

Bureau of the Census

California Supreme Court

Xerox Corporation

Green Bay Packers

Cheney High School

Los Angeles Times

New York Philharmonic

The names of historical, political, and economic events are generally capitalized:

Boston Tea Party

Great Depression

Prohibition

Reformation

New Deal

War on Poverty

World War II

The names of acts, treaties, laws, and government programs are generally capitalized:

Declaration of Independence

Treaty of Paris

Monroe Doctrine

Marshall Plan

Federal Housing Act

Social Security

The one area that does not seem to fit the general pattern of capitalization is the names of cultural movements, such as schools of philosophy and styles of art and culture. (Cultural movements derived from proper nouns are an exception to the exception, for example, Gothic, Romanesque, and Victorian.) Even when the names refer to what seem to be specific, even unique, cultural movements, they are not capitalized:

baroque art

classical philosophy

cubism

jazz

naturalism

romanticism

transcendentalism

Summary

Proper nouns are the names of specific, individual persons, places, and things as opposed to common nouns, which are generic names for categories of persons, places, and things. The general rule is simple: capitalize all proper nouns. However, it is not always easy to identify proper nouns, and even then, there are a surprising number of special conventions that govern the capitalization of persons, places, and things.

• Capitalization of persons. The names, initials, and all parts of names are capitalized. The major exception is when a title follows the name. A following title is not capitalized. Compare the capitalization of the word governor in the examples below:

Governor Jerry Brown

Jerry Brown, governor of California

• Capitalization of places. Names of specific countries, cities, streets, buildings, rivers, lakes, mountains, oceans, etc., are capitalized. Names of regions are usually capitalized, for example: the West Coast and Southeast Asia.

Popular names of places are usually capitalized, for example: the Loop (Chicago) and the Valley (California).

Normally generic topographical terms such as lake, river, or valley are capitalized if they are part of a standard place name, for example: Golden Pond and Indian Ocean.

• Capitalization of things. The full names of private and public organizations of all kinds are capitalized, for example: Microsoft and the Chamber of Commerce.

The names of historical, political, and economic events are generally capitalized, for example: Cold War and Civil Rights Movement.

The names of acts, treaties, laws, and government programs are generally capitalized, for example: Equal Rights Amendment and Social Security.

Other Uses of Capitalization

There are a number of other places in writing that require the use of capitalization.

Capitalization at the Beginnings of Sentences

The beginnings of sentences are always capitalized.

Capitalization of Titles

The titles of works of literature, music, film, and art have their own special conventions of capitalization. The first and last word of all titles are capitalized. All nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs in the title are capitalized. It is actually easier to identify what is not capitalized in titles (unless, of course, they are the first or last word in the title): articles (a/an, the), prepositions, conjunctions, and the to in infinitives are not capitalized. Everything else is capitalized (though some style books recommend that prepositional phrases longer than four letters be capitalized):

The Portrait of a Lady

“Lovely to Look At”

In the Line of Fire

The same rules hold for the chapter titles and other major divisions of a work.

Capitalization of Quotations

Capitalize the first word of a directly quoted sentence (also see Chapter 14’s section “Quotation Marks with Direct Quotations and Paraphrase”):

Churchill said, “Never have so many owed so much to so few.”

First words of quoted fragments are not usually capitalized:

The future is always uncertain. It is “that unknown land.”

Capitalization After Colons

When an independent clause follows a colon, the independent clause can begin with a capital letter (though this is a little uncommon):

We simply could not reach a decision about the proposal: We [or we] couldn’t agree on the criteria for evaluating it.

Never use a capital after a colon when what follows the colon is not a complete sentence:

I made a list of what we would need: computers, office furniture, and telephones.

Capitalization in Poetry

The first word of each line of poetry is normally capitalized, even if the first word does not begin a sentence:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

—“To the Virgins, to make much of Time,” Robert Herrick

In contemporary poetry, however, this rule may not hold.

Summary

There are several other, highly conventionalized uses of captitalization.

The titles of works of literature, music, film, and art are capitalized according to the following rules: the first and last words are always capitalized, as are all nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns in the title. Articles, prepositions, and conjunctions are not capitalized.

The first words of directly quoted sentences are capitalized, but first words of quoted fragments are usually not capitalized.

Words or parts of a sentence following a colon are never capitalized. It is possible (though unusual) to capitalize the beginning of an independent clause that follows a colon.

In poetry, the general convention is to capitalize the first word of each line, even if the first word does not begin a sentence.