Capitalization
Academic writers often refer to such things as geographic locations, company names, temperature scales, and processes or apparatuses named after people, so it is helpful to learn to capitalize consistently and accurately. What follows are ten fundamental rules for capitalization. Check out the first rule. It gets fumbled in papers all the time.
Rule 1
- my Introduction
- see Figure 4
- Appendix A
- Airshaft X
- Table 1
- Graph
Rule 2
- Wheeling Township
- Clark County
- the Wheat Belt
- the French Republic
- the United States
- the Arctic Circle
Rule 3
- Highway 1
- Michigan Avenue
- Alton Railroad
- Herrin No. 6 seam
- Route 1
- the White House
- the Statue of Liberty
- the Queen Elizabeth
Rule 4
- Howard Pickering
- Chicago
- New York Harbor
- Rocky Mountains
- Aleutian Islands
- Great Britain
- American
- Gulf of Mexico
- New Mexico
- the Aleutian low
Rule 5
- the Second Amendment
- Congress
- Republicans/Democrats
- the Civil War
- Bureau of Mines
- Department of Energy
Rule 6
- Professor Walker
- Milky Way
- President Barron
- Venus
Rule 7
It’s helpful to note that the only way to be sure if a word derived from a person’s name should be capitalized is to look it up in the dictionary. For example, “Bunsen burner” (after Robert Bunsen) is capitalized, while “diesel engine” (after Rudolph Diesel) is not. Also, referring to specific geologic time frames, the Chicago Manual of Style says not to capitalize the words “era,” “period,” and “epoch,” but the American Association of Petroleum Geologists says that these words should be capitalized. I choose to capitalize them, as those who write in the geological sciences should by convention.
- Coriolis force
- English tweeds
- Hadley cell
- Boyle’s law
- Planck’s constant
- Middle Jurassic Period
- the Industrial Revolution
- Fourier coefficients
- Petri dish
- Klinkenberg effect
- Mesozoic Era
- the Inquisition
Rule 8
- 10 oF Fahrenheit degrees
- 22 oC degrees Celsius
Common Capitalization Errors
Just as important as knowing when to capitalize is knowing when not to. Below, I set forth a few instances where capital letters are commonly used when they should not be. Please review this advice carefully, in that we all have made such capitalization errors. When in doubt, simply consult a print dictionary.
Rule 9
- spring
- winter
Rule 10
- We traveled west.
- The sun rises in the east.
Rule 11
- navy blue
- pasteurizaion
- india ink
- biblical
Rule 12
- tungsten
- oxygen
- nitrogen
- californium
Rule 13
- north pole
- arctic climate
- midwesterner
- big bang theory (the event, not the TV show)