Capitalization Mistakes to Avoid in Your Business Writing

No matter where you are in your career or how technically brilliant you are in your field, you're judged by how well you communicate - especially by how well you write.

Don't worry, nobody expects you to be the Stephen King of business writing to be successful, but you need to avoid making a few common mistakes that can instantly ruin your credibility. Let's review some common capitalization errors and rules in business writing. 

One common mistake many people make is capitalizing as a way to emphasize words they think are important. This is not correct. There are rules. Overlook them, and it can cause customers or coworkers to miss information or make you or the organization you work for look bad. 

Clean, error-free writing will make you stand out. 

The 10 Rules of Capitalization

1. Capitalize proper nouns

• Names of individual people, organizations, and buildings
• Geographic locations such as countries, cities, and states
• Names of historical events, periods, and documents
• Government bodies or agencies

2. Capitalize most calendar events

• Do capitalize days of the week, months of the year, and holidays.
• Do not capitalize the seasons (e.g., spring, fall) unless they're part of the name of something

3. Capitalize names of geographic regions but not the cardinal directions

• Boston, the university hub of the Northeast, is about 200 miles northeast of New York

4. Capitalize people’s titles only when they appear before the name

• President and CEO Jill Marquez, but Jill Marquez is president and CEO
• The President of the United States is an exception to this rule
• Your company’s practice may vary

5. Capitalize all initials and acronyms, even if the name they stand for is not capitalized

• Write “information technology” lowercase but “IT” in all caps; “public relations” lowercase but “PR” in all caps.

6. Capitalize most names related to scholastic endeavors

• Education degrees: MA, Ph.D. (check your organization's style manual on the use of periods)
• Do capitalize names of specific courses: He registered for Organic Chemistry with Professor Carter.
• Don’t capitalize on general courses of study: He couldn’t decide between physics and chemistry.

7. Capitalize names of specific departments within a company, but not general department names

• Stephanie is head of the Marketing department.
• Stephanie works in marketing

8. Names of family relationships are sometimes capitalized

• Capitalize relationship names when used in place of a specific person’s name or come before a proper name: I asked Dad if I could borrow the car keys, but Uncle Jim gave me his.
• Do not capitalize on relationship names that do not name a specific person: Our employee handbook stated that “Immediate family” refers to parents, siblings, and children but not to uncles and aunts, cousins, or grandparents.

9. Capitalize important words of titles

• Titles of art use initial capitals; this includes books, journals, articles, newspapers and magazines, poems, songs, plays, TV and radio shows, and many more.
• “Important words” are not necessarily long words, but all nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs are. Do not capitalize prepositions and conjunctions unless they begin the title: To Have and Have Not. Mother Is Always Right.

10. When in doubt, check your company style guide!

It’s not just grammar snobs that spot mistakes. When you make capitalization errors, people may not mention it to you, but they definitely notice it! That is why you must make sure that everything you write is error-free!

 

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