Capitalization

The crash course continues today we are talking all about capitalization.

So again the first thing we capitalized always are proper nouns so specific persons places or things.

Example.

Mike Taylor rented an Audi on his vacation in Hawaii.

So here we have Mike Taylor.

Proper noun.

Audi.

Another proper noun and Hawaii the third proper noun all capitalized.

We also capitalize titles when those titles are part of a person’s name.

So let’s look at two sentences just to show the difference.

Yesterday I went to the doctor.

The doctor is not a part of anyone’s name it’s just simply the title.

So we don’t capitalize it in that sense.

However the next sentence yesterday I went to Dr. Jones.

It is part of the person’s name and we do capitalize it.

We also capitalize specific institutions and we capitalized the complete name of that institution.

So for example I will be attending Harvard University next year.

So we capitalized both Harvard and University speaking of universities.

We also capitalize specific courses so we can place the course names but not the general subjects.

So again two examples social difference.

I love math.

Math is not capsulized.

I love Math 101.

That’s the name of a specific course.

So we do capitalize math.

We also capitalize calendar events or time periods so days of the week months and holidays are all capsulized

but we don’t capsulize seasons.

So we always have a picnic on the first Saturday of spring Saturday.

So day of the week so it is capitalized.

Spring is a season so it is not capitalized.

We also capitalized brand names specific brand so not just general products.

So my favorite brand of jeans is Levi’s.

So jeans would be a general product.

So we don’t capitalize jeans but Levis is a specific brand name and so we capitalize Levi’s and other

main category that we capitalize our kinship names so we capitalize names like mother father uncle etc.

but only when those come directly before a proper name or when those are taking the place of someone’s

proper name.

You don’t simply you don’t capitalize.

And for example if you’re not referring to a specific relative or when the kinship name falls a pronoun

for example dad told me to visit Grandma and Aunt Jean before going to my uncle’s house.

So here we have Grandma and Aunt Jean.

Grandma is taking place of her proper name so it gets capitalized.

Aunt Jean aunt is preceding a proper name so it gets capsulized.

And then my uncle’s house.

I’m just talking about my uncles start replacing a proper name per se so uncle is not it capsulized.

We also need to remember to always capitalized cities states countries regions and other locations with

proper names.

We don’t capitalize directions like north south east and west but we do catalyzes.

Like I said cities states countries and so on example would be.

I live just north of Columbus Ohio in the Midwest north is not capitalized Columbus a city name capsulized

Ohio a state name capitalized Midwest the name of a specific region.

So it also is capitalized.

The final category of capitalization is for nationalities and languages.

So we always capitalized nationalities or languages.

Let’s look at this example.

All those parents are both French.

He can only speak English so French is a nationality.

Capsulized and English is the language that he speaks.

So it is also capitalized.

Finally this is not a category.

Something we need to remember that just like at the beginning of a sentence we always capitalize the

first letter of the first word at the beginning of a sentence.

We also capitalize the first letter of a quotation when it is set off from the rest of the sentence

with a punctuation mark.

And it is its own independent clause.

So for example an incorrect example would be the man yelled get out of my way.

So get out of my way is its own independent clause.

The quotation is separated from the quotation is separated with a punctuation mark so the the G and

get needs to be capitalized and we see that in the correct example another way of writing this correctly

would be to not separate it with a punctuation mark.

And then we don’t have to capitalize the G and get.

So here we have the man yelled that I should get out of his way.

So if you see that bracket in there I remember from our discussion about quotations brackets are to

change or to add things to the original quotation.

But here there is no punctuation to separate the quotation from the other part of the sentence so that

the first letter does not need to be capitalized.

And I know this was a quick run through of category’s capitalization but it’s very basic.

It’s mostly memorizing what needs to be capitalized and what doesn’t.

So you can memorize these categories I’ve provided today.

You’re on the right path.

And if you have questions let me know.

Otherwise turn back to this whenever you need it.

Use it as a resource to remind yourself what needs to be and what does not need to be capitalized.