Better writing: Capital letters
Use capital letters for proper nouns. Avoid them for common nouns. Proper nouns are the names of things. So you’d use capitals for the names of people, places, months, days of the week, companies and so on. You wouldn’t use capitals for common nouns.
People often run into difficulty with capitals because there’s a temptation to use one for important words. In business writing people often use capitals as a way of avoiding offending someone or something by implying he or it isn’t important.
Another difficulty is with titles. Newspaper typically use a capital letter when the title is used with a person’s name but not otherwise.
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key is correct, but it would be the prime minister’s desk.
In his book Newsman’s English British newspaper editor Harold Evans says; “Avoid using them unnecessarily. The Parks Committee, but subsequently the committee. The South West Regional Hospital Board, but then the hospital board.”
One piece of advice I had early in my career as a journalist is: “If in doubt use lower case unless it looks wrong”.
Lastly, do not use capital letters for emphasis and avoid writing words in all capitals.
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Interested in your thoughts on whether the word “internet” should be capitalised. I think no, but can never defend that opinion when it is pointed out that there is only one internet and it should therefore be considered a proper noun…
Emily
15 Jun 09 at 3:08 pm
Newspapers and publishing companies have differing views on this. I’ve seen it appear both ways in style guides.
In the past we capitalised Internet – because, as you say, the word was used as a proper noun. Today it has become more generic. So it’s more commonly used in lower case.
It’s not an institution, organization or a person, so I’d say lower case is best. Incidentally, the number doesn’t come into it. There was only one common market and only one wild west. On the other hand there are lots of Catholics and Test matches.
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