1. Proper nouns — This is one of the primary capitalization rules in business writing: capitalize the name of a person, a place, or a thing.
Example: Luke Skywalker was from the planet Tatooine and helped defeat the Death Star.
This includes people with specific job titles and department names: Certified Financial Planner Bob Cash of the Investment Department. What if we refer to Bob by just his job title? The Certified Financial Planner said he wants the reports finished next week.
The Internet – Some language experts consider the Internet a proper noun — it’s a reference to a thing, and therefore, they capitalize it. But, nowadays, even the Associated Press Stylebook keeps it lowercase.
2. Sentences — Capitalize the first word at the beginning of a sentence, whether or not it’s complete, including the first word of each item in an outline.
3. The four seasons — Capitalize “fall,” “winter,” “spring,” and “summer” if they’re part of proper names.
Examples:
- Summer Olympics
- ABC Widget Co.’s Fall Income Report
4. Titles — Generally speaking, you should capitalize nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, and the first words in titles of books, movies, plays, songs, etc. This is also a matter of style. Some people prefer to capitalize the first letters of all words in a title.
Examples:
- movie: The Big Short
- newspaper: The Wall Street Journal
- website: Facebook
- TV show: Mad Men
- play: The Teahouse of the August Moon
- song and musical performer: Yesterday by The Beatles
- report or document: “The Science of Color”
- book: How to Win Friends and Influence People
- brand: Pitney Bowes
5. Acronyms and initialisms:
Acronyms – Acronyms are abbreviations that can be pronounced as words. When you refer to one used as a proper name, capitalize the letters.
Examples: FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid), NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)
Initialisms – Initialisms are words formed from the first letters of a phrase, but they can’t be pronounced as words. Capitalize them if they’re proper names, but if they aren’t, you don’t have to. In the following examples, “ETA” and “PC” aren’t proper names, so you shouldn’t capitalize the phrases they’re based on:
Examples: FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), ETA (estimated time of arrival), PC (personal computer)
Sources: Grammar Girl, The Elements of Grammar by Margaret Shertzer
Advice from someone who knows capitalization rules in business writing can help you improve your writing and make you look smarter and more skilled in your field.
Quotes
“The rules of capitalization are so unfair to words in the middle of a sentence.” ~ John Green, Paper Towns
“What we admire, we capitalize.” ~ Murray Munn
