Resist the urge: the simple rules of capitalisation
A common aphorism in journalism is when in doubt, leave it out i.e. if you’re not sure of a fact, don’t put it in your story.
Those merciless blue-pencilled sub-editors who taught me everything I know about journalism were a bit more trenchant – when in doubt, bloody well find out!
This applies to everything from the who, what, when where, why and how of a story to the spelling and punctuation of a sentence.
Which brings me to capital letters.
Next to apostrophes, mis-used capitals are possibly the second biggest cause of the editor picking up their (figurative) red pencil.
It seems people quickly forget the pretty straightforward rules they will have learnt in primary school i.e. capitals are for the names of things, including yourself, and at the beginning of a sentence.
These days, they pop up everywhere. If someone thinks something is important, they crown it with a capital, whether it’s entitled to one or not.
The rules are actually quite simple.
Always
The first letter in a sentence.
The personal pronoun I.
Names: people, places, countries, nationalities, addresses, religions, ethnicities, dates.
Proper nouns/titles – check out the government style manual for specific titles and the capitals that belong to them.
Acronyms and initialisms, but more about them later.
Capitalising titles
The place where many people have difficulty working out what to capitalise and what to not, is when it comes to official titles.
Right or wrong?
Which one of these is right?
Chief Sports Scientist Bluey Heeler gave a presentation on the best bats for backyard cricket.
The Senior Policy Advisor suggested Ms Heeler’s presentation be distributed to all members of the Parliament.
Hint: it’s the first one.
In this case, it’s because the title is directly attached to the person’s name and there is only one of her.
In the second example, the title is merely a generic descriptor, and is therefore not capitalised. Same goes for the world parliament in that sentence.
Thus: The senior policy advisor suggested Ms Heeler’s presentation be distributed to all members of the parliament.
Headings
Contrary to popular belief, and I mean very popular belief, the words in headings are not special and do not get capitals. They are treated like a normal sentence, The only places in a heading where you should see a capital letter is:
the first letter of the first word
the first letter of any proper nouns in the heading
letters of acronyms and initialisms.
Yes, and thereafter no
People tend to get hung up on the importance of things like institutions, particularly governments, and so capitalise their every mention.
You only give them capitals when you use the full proper title, and after that all references are lower case. So you get:
The Northern Territory Government but the government
also:
the Australian and New Zealand governments
the governments of Queensland and Western Australia
The Cairns Regional Council is the local government authority, but the council
The Arts Australia Board but the board, the arts board
General Manager Poopsie Cadwallader, and then the general manager and even the general manager, Poopsie Cadwallader
The Department of Grammar but the department
Bullet list rules
Bulleted lists in text are another minefield where people religiously bestow capitals on anything that sits still.
There’s a pretty easy way of working out what does, and doesn’t, get a capital at the start of an item in a bulleted list.
If you’re writing a bullet point list and each of the bulleted items form a sentence with the introductory phrase, but is not a complete sentence by itself, then:
don’t use capital letters except for proper names
don’t use semi-colons or commas to separate items
use hyphens - not en or em dashes - to expand on an item
don’t use etc, or and at the end of the second-last item
only use a full stop on the last item.
Exception
If you’re writing a list of things or text where each bullet point is a separate sentence not related to anything else, capitalise it as for a sentence and finish the sentence with a full stop.
This is a list of things to take on holiday.
This is a list of things to take to work.
This is a list of books I want to read.
I recently edited a massive report where the writer had bullet pointed every separate paragraph in a particular section. They weren’t a list, they weren’t related to each other, they were just following paragraphs in a piece of text. No bullet points needed!
And now back to acronyms and initialisms
These litter our written language more and more as we strive to reduce language to its shortest possible components for ease of texting. Shortening words to their lowest possible form seems to be an Australian sport, but that’s a topic for another day.
So what’s the difference between an acronym and an initialism?
They are essentially the same thing - the first letters of a phrase or term put together in a word-like unit.
It’s an acronym when the result can be pronounced as a word – ASIC, ANZAC, NAIDOC, SCUBA, NATO, AUKUS – while an initialism can’t, so you actually say the letters out individually – SES, ATO, NTG, ACT, JCU, AFL, RBT, USA and the old ironic favourite TLA – three-letter acronym - an initialism to talk about acronyms!
Sometimes you even get a combination of both – ACOSS, DFAT, ATODS.
So why do these non-words all get capitals? Firstly, they indicate they are made-up words, so you don’t confuse them with similar actual words. Originally, I’m guessing, it was because they stood for proper nouns or titles which consisted of capitalised words. Most of the above are examples of this.
What about when they aren’t proper nouns? For the rest you capitalise the acronym/initialism but not the words they stand for - TB but tuberculosis; EIR but environmental impact report but NSW = New South Wales. That’s all about clarity, and in cases like TB the initialism has come to replace the actual word in everyday speech.
One common mistake is the initialism CEO, which follows the rule of not capitals when it’s spelt out in full, unless it’s attached to a specific person’s name i.e. Chief Executive Officer John Doe but the chief executive officer, John Doe.
Capitals in the 21st century
In contemporary text speak, initialisms abound – ATM (and we’re not talking about a cash machine here), BTW, IDK, TTYL, LOL, IMHO, OMG, TBH – and more and more often they are appearing un-capitalised, as writing capitals is obviously just too much trouble.
Who knows what impact this will eventually have on formal written language.
In the meantime, use the little acrostic below to work out what you should and shouldn’t be putting a capital letter on.
