During a class at church yesterday, I noticed the presentation on the screen at the front of the room had an abundance of capital letters in it. Far more than necessary.
I see this fairly often, and it’s one of the writing mistakes I correct most frequently.
You should capitalize words in basically only 3 situations:
- Proper nouns (like Canada, Jane, and Saskatchewan)
- First word in a sentence
- Main words in a title
I’m not sure why some people feel it necessary to capitalize words beyond this.
Here’s an example I saw on Facebook today:
Kinda busy celebrating my 20th Wedding Anniversary with my dear husband.
Notice that “Wedding Anniversary” is capitalized? It’s not a proper noun. It’s not the first word in a sentence. It’s not the main words in a title. “Wedding anniversary” should not be capitalized. This should have simply been written as “wedding anniversary”.
Remember the next time you’re tempted to capitalize a word to ask yourself if it’s a proper noun, if it’s the first word in a sentence, or it’s part of a title. Otherwise, just let it be.
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I think the recent propensity to capitalize inappropriately in English writing comes from two influences: business presentations, and the German language. Every noun thus becomes a title, bullet point, or German noun in order to (try) to be more meaningful or simply visible.
It’s possible. I worked at the local university for 9 years, and people there wanted to capitalize every subject, major, position, department, and anything else related to the university.