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I always wonder whether 'today' and 'tomorrow' should be capitalised. Can anybody help me?

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Today and Tomorrow are not capitalized because they are not really names, nor are they proper nouns.

They are capitalized only if they appear at the beginning of a sentence, or if you are making a title for some sort of event such as "The Today News". Otherwise, it is a plain old regular word.

I have written this today and may or may not get an upvote for it tomorrow
:D

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The words today and tomorrow are only ever capitalized in titles:

The Today Show (TV program)

Tomorrow Never Knows (Beatles song)

But in everyday speech, these words are left lower-cased:

I'm going to take it easy today. I have a big day tomorrow.

Edit per Christian's comment:

English does not capitalize nouns unless they are so-called proper nouns, by which I do not mean proper in the British sense of being "in order" or "the way a thing should be done," but instead nouns that are used as actual names for people or places or ideas that are represented in titular form. The other variety of nouns are called common nouns, and they refer to everyday things that are not singled out for such special naming. Unlike German, in which every noun is capitalized, common nouns in English are not singled out for special treatment (unless, of course, they come at the beginning of a sentence, or are used as class identifiers in a poetic sense: occasionally you will see truth or beauty written as Truth or Beauty, signifying that these represent special philosophically representative uses of the terms).

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  • I'm pretty sure the OP is interested in the reason behind it as well...
    – Christian
    Commented Jan 31, 2011 at 10:58
  • They are also capitalized at the beginning of a sentence, but I'm pretty sure that's stating the obvious.
    – o0'.
    Commented Jan 31, 2011 at 12:18
  • @Lo'oris: I was noting that in my edit probably at the same time you were typing this comment.
    – Robusto
    Commented Jan 31, 2011 at 12:28
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The words today, tomorrow and yesterday are not capitalized.

However, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday are capitalized.

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"Today" is not a noun (name) pronoun proper noun, unlike "Monday" or "Friday", therefore, no, they're not capitalized. It's akin to "boy" and "Tom" (for example).

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    Today can be a noun. When I say "Today is going to be a great day", I use today as a noun. Unlike the names for days of the week though, it can be used on any day to refer to "this present day".
    – Tragicomic
    Commented Jan 31, 2011 at 8:24
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    Why is "today" in "Today is going to be a great day" any more of a noun deserving capitalization than "this" in "this is going to be a great day"?
    – RedGrittyBrick
    Commented Jan 31, 2011 at 11:35
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    About why the names of the days of the week are capitalized unlike, say, the names of seasons, I suspect the answer may lie in the etymology of these names (not sure, though).
    – Tragicomic
    Commented Jan 31, 2011 at 12:12
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    @Christian: my comment was a subtle hint that your answer seems to equate noun and name, which are not the same. The distinction you are looking for is that between common nouns and proper ones.
    – RegDwigнt
    Commented Jan 31, 2011 at 12:18
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    @Christian: thanks for the edit, but pronoun is something different yet again. Me, he, and ours are pronouns; Monday and Friday are not.
    – RegDwigнt
    Commented Jan 31, 2011 at 14:54

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