Knowing which words to capitalize can be a tricky business since there are dozens of conventions governing these things, so nobody should feel bad about having to seek expert advice in this regard.
There are a few general tips you can follow here – most importantly, always check the relevant style guide and aim for consistent capitalization throughout your paper – but knowing when to capitalize is largely a matter of experience. Here are a few examples to keep in mind.
Every time you begin a sentence, it should start with a capital letter. This even applies to quotations in the middle of a sentence, as long as the quoted text is itself a complete sentence. For example:
My friend said, “The movie Charlie’s Angels is the greatest work of art in film history,” but I disagreed with him strongly on this point.
As the above example demonstrates via Charlie’s Angels, you may need to capitalize titles in writing. This applies both to titles of published works (articles, magazines, books, movies, etc.) and your own academic papers.
It’s worth checking your school’s style guide here, as institutions differ regarding whether you should capitalize all of the important words in a title (title case) or just the first word in the title and subtitle (sentence case).
The first person pronoun “I” should always be capitalized, as should contractions incorporating “I” (e.g., “I’m,” “I’ve” and “I’ll”). Other pronouns (“we,” “you,” etc.) are usually only capitalized at the beginning of a sentence.
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Proper nouns are words that name unique entities. So while the noun “egomaniac” applies to many of Hollywood’s leading lights, the proper noun “McG” refers uniquely to the director of Charlie’s Angels.
All proper nouns begin with a capital letter. Non-Charlie’s Angels related examples of proper nouns include:
This is far from an exhaustive list of proper nouns, though! Check the capitalization in a dictionary if you’re not sure about a particular word.
Other cases when it’s important to capitalize a word include:
And if you’d like any help making sure the capitalization in your writing is correct, our proofreaders can help.
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