Questions tagged [capitalization]
This tag is for questions about the use of capital letters in writing.
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Capitalization of acronyms - maybe there is no definite correctness for all cases?
Is it correct to capitalize the acronym when it is a name? Sometimes it is dubious whether it's a name or a word, for example SQL, ANSI, GNU and more would be considered a name so it should be ...
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Starting letter of itemization
Here is an example sentence:
"With the help of their company, (1) we will ... And, ... (2) they will ..."
There are whole sentences separated with . in (1) and (2). I would like to know if w ...
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"you" with a capital letter
After the death of the Queen, I wrote:
I am feeling blue without You.
Immediately, I got a word of criticism on the use of capital "y". Well, I was, sort of, addressing a monarch, and ...
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Why is chess written with a lowercase c whereas the game of Go is written with an uppercase G?
Both chess and Go are board games. Why the inconsistency in their spelling?
Here are two example usages with chess and Go:
It is sometimes called Western chess or international chess to distinguish ...
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Should "kingdom" be capitalized when used alone to refer to a country whose name has the word in it (e.g., the United Kingdom)?
For instance, if I mention the United Kingdom early in my paragraph and then I want to refer to it as "the kingdom," should I uppercase "kingdom" in this case?
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Using a capital letter at the start of a foreign surname
To mention, in English, the French mathematician Guillaume de l'Hôpital only with the surname, should I use De l'Hôpital or de l'Hôpital? Should I use other combination?
I would use the reference that ...
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When to capitalize (or not) the first letter in a question [closed]
Is it proper to capitalize the first letter in EVERY question or is it correct to NOT capitalize it when the question is preceded by a coma, colon, or semicolon within a sentence?
Many thanks!
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What are the capitalisation rules for prefixes in parentheses?
If you'd like to write (co)promotor at the beginning of a sentence, should both 'co' and 'promotor' be capitalised? For example, is it "(Co)Promotors are advised to ..."? Or is there another ...
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Should I capitalize the main topics of my degree? [closed]
I am currently writing a CV. When listing my degrees, I add two bullet points that go into more detail on the main focus of the program. I am unsure whether it is correct to capitalize my degree and ...
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Capitalization Rules for Ellipses [duplicate]
when you have ellipses in a text such as a novel, I was wondering what the capitalization rules are for the first word after the ellipsis. My understanding, which is not based on anything other than ...
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Should all words be capitalized when separated by an ampersand in a bullet list?
Should all words be capitalized when separated by an ampersand in a bullet list?
e.g.,
Department of Chemistry
Physics & Chemistry seminars <--- ?
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Pluralising abbreviations ending in S
From general Googling, I understand it is correct to add an 's' (lower case) if pluralising abbreviations ending in 'S' and this makes sense. However, I am surprised to have so far found no instances ...
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Capitalisation of a sacred object
I'm working in an Indigenous Australian context in which particular sacred trees and animals are capitalised. I'm aware that the specific name of the tree, for example, needs to be capitalised but ...
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Should I capitalize 'western' when it anticipates 'culture'
The following sentences are from the transcription of a BBC podcast
'In the Western culture, we have got a bit of an uphill – I would say - struggle because pre-conceptions around eating insects are ...
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Should "lecturer" be capitalised?
At work, I am sending notifications out to individual students about their lecturer contacting them. My boss keeps writing the phrase “Your Lecturer will be in touch soon”, however I thought in this ...
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Are job titles capitalized when they come after Mr. or Mrs.? [duplicate]
If someone is to call a person Mr. or Mrs. (insert their profession here), is the name of the profession capitalized? I've come across all sorts of rules for when to capitalize or not names of ...
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Capitalization of an article in a sentence
Can an article be capitalized, to cause emphasis of a subject. Specifically the indefinite article A or An. I tried researching this and found capitalization rules but none in regard to being used ...
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Should "aunt" be capitalized in this sentence?
Should "aunt" be capitalized in this sentence?
Jan's aunt Cindy took a ceramics class.
Should it be - Jan's Aunt Cindy or Jan's aunt Cindy?
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Is it orthographically ok to capitalize first letters of important phrases? [duplicate]
Say I am writing an article on something like the Riemann integral or morphogenesis. I have two questions regarding capitalization.
Is it allowed to capitalize the first letter of a composite name of ...
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Why is the A in "Article" capitalized in legal articles when referring to itself? [closed]
I looked at ten different law articles; when refering to itself, the letter A in Article is capitalized. For example, in the abstract it would say something like:
This Article proposes modifying the ...
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Why are only few letters in title of this poem in capital letters while others are not? [duplicate]
The poem is ‘Have you earned your tomorrow’ by Edgar Guest. In my textbook , only certain letters first word is in capital while others are not. My question is why is that ?
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Would You Capitalize a Part of Sentence That is After a Dialogue? [duplicate]
This something that I'm very confused about...
You see, here is one example of the sentence:
I ran ahead and said, "I don't want that," and crashed against a wall.
In this sentence, you ...
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Punctuating nested quotations
I am editing a novel and I have some questions on how to punctuate nested quotations (or quotations within quotations).
Here is the first example:
"I kept saying ‘it’s fake’ and ‘he did this’ ...
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Can you use "Lady" instead of "Miss"? [closed]
Is it possible to use the word lady instead of miss to show respect? And if I use it in front of a name, should I capitalize the word lady? For example, lady Mary Jane or Lady Mary Jane?
I know that '...
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What are the Capitalization Rules for Flowers in Scientific Writing? [closed]
I am editing a scientific writing piece that talks about a certain flower. The flower talked about in the writing is mostly not called by its scientific name (the flower is called Butterfly Pea Flower,...
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Is it a "Spanish-language movie" or a "Spanish language movie"?
As I understand it (please correct me if I'm wrong): "Spanish" is a proper noun and therefore must be capitalized; "Spanish-language" in this case is a compound adjective and those ...
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Does Bourbon-Dijon sauce need to be capitalized? [closed]
Wondering if Dijon needs to be capitalized in our menu. "...served with a bourbon-dijon sauce."
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Should I capitalize the second element in a hyphenated word if the first is a number? [closed]
I am adding a contest I attended to my CV. The official name (translated into English from another language) is '3-minute Physics' popular science competition. However, if I want to make my CV read ...
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Question about capitalization after a colon, as well as a few others going on in an otherwise-unimportant sentence I wrote [duplicate]
Not exactly a life-or-death situation here, it's just a YouTube comment I'm in the process of typing in a discussion on movies, the MCU, and the MCU's version of Spider-Man. Sometimes, I write a ...
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Should you capitalize run-in sentence? [duplicate]
So I come up with a question in narration, and here's a few example:
I know from her smile that she was saying "you look like an idiot" to me.
She was more likely than not dishing me out ...
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Capitalisation for emphasis?
Let's say we have a time card software system. In the help FAQ, is the second version grammatically correct, or preferable?
How can we locate time cards that had errors?
How can we locate Time Cards ...
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Is it appropriate to use "covid-19"/"covid" rather than "COVID-19"/"COVID"? Or should "Covid" be used? (Capitalization of COVID-19) [duplicate]
The COVID-19 pandemic, as many have heard of, has been around for nearly 2 years. In such, there has been an increased usage of the word "COVID". My question here is should it be capitalized ...
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Capitalize "the" when referring to publications as physical objects? [duplicate]
There are plenty of questions on Stackexchange and the web about when to capitalize "the" in titles like "The New York Times." But most of those questions have to do with referring ...
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Question: Is it social democracy or Social democracy or Social Democracy? AP style [closed]
Sentence 1:
Similarily though he carried out many useful administrative reforms, in a vain effort to combat Social Democracy he seriously interefered with the liberty of public meeting and attempted ...
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Capitalization rules for nicknames and name-replacing honorifics
My intuition is to capitalize any word that used in reference to a person in place of their name: Mother, Father, Grandma, Grandpa, Doctor, Captain, Professor, Sir, Ma’am, Boss, etc. But my research ...
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Why is the verb "Pilot" capitalized in Robinson Crusoe?
The following is an excerpt from Robinson Crusoe (Oxford World's Classics, p39).
my Business was to hold my Breath, and raise my self upon the Water, if I could; and so by swimming to preserve my ...
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What is the difference between "The X Society" and "The Society of X"? [closed]
What is the difference between the following?
"The Gilbert Keith Chesterton Society" vs "The Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton"
"The Last Mohican Society" vs "The ...
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Should you capitalize fantasy creatures?
I am currently writing a novel with a mix of sci-fi and fantasy setting.
So my question is that, I have one creature that is a cosmic beast with a species name "crossiax." Should I ...
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Which one is more correct, "White-eye Man" or “White-Eye Man”？
My son loves white-eyes, a kind of bird,very much. He wants name his storybook like spider man or iron man, so he decides to name it “white-eye man”.
I am not quite sure which one is correct if it is ...
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Does capitalisation change when a word moves from proper noun to adjective?
For the sake of this question I'll use the word Linux as an example, but I really want to ask about the principle generally.
The word Linux started as the name of an operating system kernel written by ...
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Is the adverb "of course" capitalized in the title of an article or story?
I have a story that includes "of course" in the middle of its title: "I will be there, of course, when you come home". Should the "of course" be capitalized like this (...
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Should I write 'Mechanical Engineering Graduate' or 'Mechanical Engineering graduate'? [closed]
Mechanical Engineering graduate looking for work... is how my personal statement starts.
Should I capitalize the word graduate or leave it as it is?
I have done research using google to see how it is ...
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Capitalise or not foreign demonyms when original language uses lower case and English has no equivalent?
In English we capitalise demonyms. Someone from Paris is a Parisian. When we insert words from other languages we indicate the non-English nature of the word with quotation marks or italics. "He ...
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Adjective capitalization of fictional species and nationalities
There exist a fictional nation called Elf Nation. (not a creative name but this is for a grammar experiment)
The species which inhabit this nation are called elf(singular) and elves (plural).
Would ...
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Capitalization of "neo-scholasticism" [duplicate]
Is the word 'neo-scholasticism' capitalized in academic writing, or not?
It is lowercase in the Merriam Webster dictionary, but capitalized in the Collins English dictionary. So in a thesis, which ...
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Is "the bar", as in the bar that barristers work at as lawyers, capitalised or not?
I'm applying for lawyer jobs and training, so I have to use the word "bar" a lot, and I've noticed that small and upper case B is used. I'm afraid my English isn't good enough to work out ...
paul
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Should you capitalize "Will" (as in a "Last Will and Testament")?
I had always assumed it would be lowercase, but it seems it's often capitalized. Presumably because it is the title of a document?
If you were to simply call it a "Will" then should it be ...
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Why isn't the word "white" capitalized when referring to the race? [duplicate]
I was surprised to find that there's a growing convention of capitalizing the word "black" when referring to the race, i.e.:
A Black person.
I thought this was wrong, because I thought it ...
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Should you capitalize the word young before a name?
So, let's say that there's someone named Zeth.
Now, an elderly he know call him with the word young before his name:
Should it be "young Zeth" or "Young Zeth"?
Truthfully, I just ...
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Capitalisation when talking about a proper noun [closed]
So when I write a sentence like for example:
The word europe originated from ...
should the word be capitalised or not? It seems logical not to capitalise because in this sense it's not talking ...
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