What is Capitalisation?
Capitalisation is when the first letter in a word is capitalised. This can occur for many reasons - the start of a new sentence, to indicate a proper noun, in titles, and when the word appears in a professional context.
Let's have a look at some examples of when to use capitalisation.
Proper Nouns
Common nouns refer to a person, place, animal or thing, while proper nouns are special names for these.
For person we have girl (common noun) which could turn into Lauren (proper noun)
For place we have country (common noun) which could turn into England (proper noun)
For animal we have cat (common noun) which could be Bailey (proper noun)
This can be tricky; water, is not capitalised, it is a drink but not the name of a drink. Think of it in terms of movies. You wouldn’t capitalise the noun ‘movie’ but you would capitalise Harry Potter, Avengers Assemble and Cruella.
If we put this all together, the girl from a country has a cat and is watching a movie turns into Lauren from England and her cat Bailey are watching Avengers Assemble. While both sentences in essence mean similar things, the one using proper nouns allows for more specific detail and highlights the most important information in the sentence.
Titles
In a title, only nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are capitalised.
This means words like cat, he, run, friendly and fast.
These words could make a title that looks like:
He Runs Fast for a Friendly Cat.
The reason ‘for’ and ‘a’ are not capitalised is because they are not nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs. These will only be capitalised if they are the first word in the title e.g.
A Fast Cat Runs.
Professional Context
Company names and institutions, job titles, and brands will often begin with a capital letter.
Some examples of this are…
NHS
Paperchase
University of Derby
President
Dr, Mrs, Mr etc.