Business Writing Center

Tools

Capital Letters

Capital letters (also known as upper case letters) indicate proper nouns and proper adjectives.  A proper noun is the name of a specific person, place, or thing.  (Ex. Delgado Obdilla, Mary Clark, Michael Wu, Goizueta Business School, Spain) A proper adjective is the adjective formed from the proper noun. (Ex. Spanish, English)

Use capital letters to indicate the most important words in a title.  (Ex. Dr. Lativaski lectured on the book, How the New Economy Will Fail in the New Millennium.)

Use upper case letters for courtesy and professional titles only when referring to specific people.  (Ex. Professor Alavi, Dean Robertson, Judge Dorough) (Ex. The professor set the testing schedule for the course.)

Use a capital letter for a word that begins a sentence, even if that sentence is a quotation within another sentence. (Ex. Start the consulting workshop at 10:00 on Tuesday morning.)  (Ex. Did you also want copies of e-mail when you said, “Place copies of all memoranda in my office.”?)

Capitalize the first word after a colon when it begins a complete sentence. (Ex. Look for the following:  How does the company plan to take charges against third quarter profits?)

Use upper case letters for North, South, East, and West only when they refer to specific geographical areas.  (Ex. The South has enjoyed an economic renaissance.) (Ex. The graduate is looking for employment somewhere north of the city.)

Use upper case letters for nouns that are followed by numbers. (Ex. Office 410, Exhibit B, Figure 1.3, Model #21100)