Capital letters – the where, when, and why

The incorrect use of a capital letter is guaranteed to tie someone’s knickers in a knot.  Capitals are missed out where they should be used, and used in abundance where they shouldn’t.

So if capital letters are your stumbling block, here’s an explanation which might help …

Capital letters at the start of sentences

The first word in a sentence must start with a capital letter. That’s not just because we’re picky copywriters, it actually serves a purpose.  The capital letter helps people to scan read the information.  It helps identify where a new sentence starts.  That way, we can understand what we’re reading.  Without the capital letter, all the sentences appear to run into each other and you end up with gobbledegook.

Proper nouns

No matter where it is used in a sentence, a proper noun should always be started with capital letter.  If you’re unsure, a proper noun might be someone’s name or the name of a place.  For example: Fred and Thelma live in Manchester.  Fred, Thelma, and Manchester are proper nouns.

Using a capital at the start of someone’s name is about recognition and respect.  We are all unique and individual, so to omit the capital suggests that person is like all the other Freds or Thelmas in the world.

Proper nouns are used when describing something specific.  For example: if we write about the British Government, the word ‘Government’ is describing a specific establishment, so it needs a capital letter.  However if we were to write about governments in general

... ‘and governments today are expressing concern about …’

we wouldn’t use a capital G.  That’s because we are not referring to a specific government.

The personal pronoun – I

If you’re writing about yourself, the word ‘I’  should always be a capital.  Sadly, text speak is creeping into our language and all too often people don’t bother.  That might be OK among friends, but if you’re writing for your business, it looks sloppy.

Abbreviations

Capital letters are always used in abbreviations: BBC, AA, RAC, etc.   But just to muddy the water, this does depend on the abbreviation.

For example: MiDAS stands for ‘Minibus Driver Awareness Training.  The letter ‘i’ is not a capital because it is the second letter of the word ‘minibus’.  It has been used to make the abbreviation more user-friendly.  Because the ‘i’ doesn’t stand for a separate word, it doesn’t warrant a capital letter.

Capital letters and search engine optimisation

In today’s world, everyone wants to get their website on the first page of Google.  And a frequent mistake is using capital letters on keywords in the hopes it will help.  Sorry folks … it won’t.  Google and the rest of its search engine cronies won’t score you extra points for popping in unnecessary capital letters.

Instead, using capital letters on random keywords on your website might do more harm than good. The search engines won’t care one way or another.  But doing this actually makes it harder for your human visitors to read what you’ve written.

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