Capitalisation

Capitalisation

Sentences

Where a full stop ends one sentence, a capital letter begins another.

His shoes were polished to a shine.

The only exception to this rule (at least in formal writing) is when a sentence begins with a proper noun that uses a lowercase letter as its first.

eBay has just about anything you could want.

Proper
Nouns

Particular people, places or things require an uppercase first letter to signify they refer to specific things.

Fido

Led Zeppelin

Africa

Prime Minister of Australia

The exception is, again, when a commercial term requires it.

iPad

YouTube

nbn

Titles

Style guides differ in their treatment of titles. The Australian Government Style Manual recommends capitalising the first word only. This is called ‘sentence case’ or ‘minimal caps’.

Green energy key issue among voters

Other style guides require ‘maximal caps’, which capitalises each word.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Note: When writing a title in maximal caps do not capitalise the following

Articles: a, an, the

Prepositions: at, out, by, to, in, up, of, yet

Conjunctions: for, or, and, yet, nor, so, but

The ‘to’ in infinitives: How to Train Your Dragon; HighCourt to Indict Magnate

Abbreviations

Abbreviations typically follow the same rules for capitalisation that the root word does.

Mr Bond (Mister Bond)

Vic (Victoria)

cont (continued)

Acronyms and
Initialisms

For the most part each letter of an acronym (a pronounceable word that is made up of the first letters of a series of words) and initialism (the first letter of a series of words that forms a string of letters) is capitalised. If in doubt refer to your style guide or capitalise each letter.

Qantas (Acronym: Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Service)

KPI (Initialism: Key Performance Indicator)

NASA (Acronym: National Aeronautics and Space Administration)

RSPCA (Initialism: Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals)

ASIO (Acronym: Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation)

scuba (Acronym: Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus)

Note: As with the last example do not capitalise acronyms that have fallen into common usage.