How to Capitalize Correctly

Capitalization signals the start of a sentence also provides a is distinction between common nouns and proper nouns. Follow these steps to know when to use this weapon from your writers' arsenal.

Instructions

1. Capitalize the first word of every sentence. It does not matter if it is a regular sentence, a question or an exclamation.

2. Capitalize words in a title that are the first word in the title, an important word in the title and any word with more than three letters. For example, "Gone With the Wind."

3. Capitalize "I" in a sentence when it is used as a pronoun to designate the person who is speaking or writing. Example: "I just wrote that sentence."

4. Capitalize proper nouns, which includes a person's first and/or last name, the name of a specific place, days of the week, months of the year, holidays, historical events, historical periods, names of specific organized groups, races, religions, nationalities and languages.

5. Capitalize brand names.

6. Capitalize titles that come before proper names, such as Doctor Joe Smith or Mrs. Ann Brown.

Tips & Warnings

• Spell check and grammar check on most word processing programs are good at catching capitalization flubs, especially with the first word in a sentence and proper nouns.