Mr. Grosskreuz/Mr. Richards – English 3 Collab.
Name: ______________________________
Grammar and Syntax
Period: ______ Date: _________________
Capitalization Rules
1. Use capital letters at the beginning of sentences.
Whenever you begin a sentence, the first word needs to be capitalized, as I have done in this sentence.
The first word of each line of a poem is also typically capitalized, even if the poem’s lines are not complete
sentences.
When a sentence appears in parenthesis within another sentence, the sentence in parenthesis should not
begin with a capital letter. For example:
 Some parents go so far as to have their children regularly tested for drugs (for example, Jeff’s
parents take him to a drug treatment clinic for testing every Friday) in order to keep them out of
drug court.
2. Use capital letters for significant words in titles.
Capitalize the first letter of every word in a title, except for articles (a, an, the), conjunctions (for, and, nor,
but, or, yet, so), and short prepositions (unless one is the first word of a title), as in the following:
 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
 The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
 “The Pledge of Allegiance”
 “Active Learning with Online Context-Based Modules”
3. Use capital letters for names, titles, and proper adjectives.
When referring to someone by name or title, you need to capitalize the first letter. However, if the title is
not being used as a proper noun, it is not capitalized. This holds true both for professional titles (such as
doctor or professor) and for family relationships (such as mom or uncle). Unless the word is part of the
person’s name, do not use a capital letter. Here are some examples:
 My physician, Dr. Janice Brown, is married to Dr. Paul Earnest, Jr. He is also a doctor who
specializes in family medicine.
 My advisor, Professor Thomas, has an aunt who is also a professor. My Aunt Mary wanted to be a
professor, but she never completed graduate school.
4. Use capital letters to indicate race, ethnicity, and languages.
You should use a capital letter when referring to a language, or a religious, national, or ethnic name. Here
are some examples:
Hinduism
Christianity
Islam
Hispanic
Asian
African-American
English
French
Russian
5. Use capital letters for proper names of directions, places, and geographic features.
You should use a capital letter for a place name or geographic feature (Detroit, the Missouri River). If you
are referring to a compass point (northwest, southeast), however, do not use a capital letter, unless you
are incorporating the direction as part of the proper name of the location. Here are some examples:
 North Dakota is a state bordering Minnesota in the Midwest.
 She lives to the northwest of us on Elm Street.
 Lake Erie is one of the Great Lakes.
6. Use capital letters for events, times, and eras, but not seasons.
You should capitalize the names of historic events.
 World War I, Dark Ages, Boston Tea Party
It is not necessary to capitalize the seasons of the year.
 spring, summer, fall, winter
You should capitalize the names of days, months, holidays, and eras.
 Friday, Christmas, the Neolithic Era
7. Use capital letters for organizations, companies, and products.
You should capitalize the names of organizations, companies, and products. For internal capitalization,
follow the convention of the company or organization, as in these examples:
the United Nations
Microsoft Corporation
University of Buffalo
Boeing 737
iPhone 6s
QuarkXPress
MS-DOS
Internet
Titles – Are they underlined, in italics, or surrounded by quotation marks?
1. Use quotation marks for titles of short works (poems, short stories, essays, skits, monologues, songs,
commercials, television episodes, 1-2 page handouts, articles in magazines, newspapers, and
encyclopedias).
“Blank Space”
“The Raven”
“Hillary’s lead shrinks”
“The Most Dangerous Game”
“Livin’ on a Prayer”
“Hot Fashion Deals”
2. When handwriting, underline titles of long works (epic/book-length poems, novels, collection of poems
and essays, albums, plays, films, television series, encyclopedias, magazines, newspapers, pamphlets).
When typing, italicize them.
The Life of Pablo
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Seventeen
Fresh Off the Boat
Newsday
The Diary of Anne Frank