Capitalization of Common or Proper Nouns
1. During the battle of the bulge, pope Paul signalled to the masses
gathered at the vatican that he was indeed praying for the messiah to liberate
us from evil.
Corrected version: During the Battle of the Bulge,
Pope Paul signalled to the masses gathered at the Vatican that he was indeed
praying for the Messiah to liberate us from evil.
Explanation:
a) the Battle of the
Bulge should be capitalized because it is the name of a particular historical
battle (see military terms below)
b) Pope Paul names
a specific person by title (see titles and offices below)
c) the Vatican names a specific place (see
place names below)
d) the Messiah should be capitalized because it
names a specific deity/person (see religious names and terms below)
All of the following should always be capitalized in English:
- personal names: Reginald B. Lewis
- titles and offices (when
they immediately precede a personal name or part of the name): (civil) President Wilson; (military)
General Ulysses S. Grant; (religious) Pope
John Paul; (professional) President White;
(titles of nobility) Prince Charles; (academic degrees and honors) John. H. Haverstock,
Doctor of Law; (epithets--when a characterizing word
is used in place of a personal name) the Great Communicator.
- nationalities, tribes and other groups of people:
Afro-American, Berber, Oriental
- place names: (regions)
Upper Michigan or Northern Hemisphere; (popular names)
Badlands or the Bible Belt; (political divisions)
Cook County, Jackson Township or the Fifth Ward of Chicago, (topographical
names) Appalachian Mountains, the Strait of Gibraltar or the Black
Hills
- structures and public places: (buildings)
the White House; (all
avenues, boulevards, bridges, churches, fountains, hotels, parks, rooms,
squares, streets and theaters) Golden Gate Bridge, Lake Shore Drive
or Piccadily Circus
- names of organizations: the International
Monetary Fund, the State Department, the Supreme Court,
- names of political organizations: Green
Party, the Tories
- institutions and companies: the University
of Iowa, Microsoft Incorporated
- associations and conferences: The Society
for the Preservation of Cruelty to Animals
- historical and cultural periods: the Reformation;
(archaeological terms) Bronze Age; (events) Battle of the Bulge
- acts, treaties, and government programs:
the Stamp Act, the Magna Carta, the McCain-Feingold Bill
- legal cases: Roe v. Wade. Plessy
v. Ferguson
- awards: the Academy Awards
- calendar and time designations: (days of the week) Monday; (holidays)
Ash Wednesday; (time zones) Greenwich Mean
Time
- religious name and terms: (gods,
deities and revered persons) Christ, Buddha, Pan, the Messiah; (religious bodies) Roman Catholicism, Sufism, Anthroposophy;
(historic councils, synods or meetings) Council
of Nicaea; (books) Bible, the Torah; (all chapters of the Bible) Ezekiel, Genesis; (sections of the Bible) the Gospels, the Epistles;
(events and concepts) the Pilgrimmage, the Crucifixion; (religious
services) Holy Communion,
- military terms: (forces
and groups of participants) the Allies; the Luftwaffe; (wars,
battles, campaigns, and theaters of war) Shays's Rebellion, the
Battle of the Atlantic, the European Theater; (military
awards and citations) the Congressional Medal of Honor
- ships, aircraft and spacecraft: the USS
Missouri, Sputnik 3
- scientific terminology: (for
scientific names of plants and animals, the genus name is capitalized,
the species name is not--also the name should be used in italics)
Escherichia coli; (geological terms)
the Mesozoic Era; (astronomical terms) Alpha Centauri, Mercury, the Milky
Way;
- medical terms: (diseases
and syndromes associated with people) Down syndrome, (physical
and chemical terms associated sith people) Bernoulli's theorem;
(the mass number of an atomic element) C-14,
- trademarks: Volkswagen, Xerox, Gore-tex
- titles of works: (the
first word and all major words--excluding articles and most prepositions--
should be capitalized within a title [books,
periodicals and long musical compositions are set in italics]) The
New York Times, Ma Vlast; [titles of motion
pictures, poems, plays amd short musical compositions are usually set in
quotations] "The Waste Land," "So What"
- paintings and sculpture: [italicized]
Whistler's Mother, The Thinker
- notices: (specific
wording of short signs or notices that appear in a text should be capitalized)
The man saw the No Shoes, No Service sign.
- computer terms: (programming
languages) COBOL, FORTRAN
For more rules on capitalization, see Purdue's
Online Writing Lab