CAPITALIZATION

Rule 1:
To Start a Sentence
There are no exceptions to this rule.
This means that, after a full stop, you always use a capital letter.
If the previous sentence ends with a question mark or exclamation mark, you
should also use a capital letter, and! Like full stops, indicate the end of a sentence.
However if in the sentence you have a clause in parenthesis (brackets) or
sequence separated by dashes, and if these end with a question mark or
exclamation mark, you should continue with lower case after the second bracket or
dash.
Is it always necessary to use capitals to start a sentence? The answer is definitely
yes.
She told herself was it acceptable to talk to oneself? that the answer was
obvious.
The use of a capital after a colon (:) varies depending on whether you are writing in
British or US English, just as the spelling of 'capitalization' and 'capitalization' are
different in British and US English.
You should use a capital letter after a colon with US spelling but not with UK
spelling.

Rule 2:
Titles
In titles, capitalize only the important words, not minor words such as and and
but.
Title Case, with all the important words capitalized, is rather out of fashion at the
moment. Most academic journals and standard referencing systems, for instance,
prefer what is known as sentence case, with a single initial capital.
However, its good to understand the rules, in case you are required to use title
case at any point.
Using the title of this article as an example:
Sentence case: When to use capital letters
Title case: When to Use Capital Letters

In title case, in this example, Use, although small, is an important word in the title,
and should therefore be capitalized. To, however, is not important and therefore
not capitalized.

Rule 3:
For Proper Nouns
Proper nouns name something specific, for example, Jane, John, Oxford
University, Denver, Quantas, Microsoft, Everest, Sahara. See our pages
on Grammar for more information.
Proper nouns (nearly) always start with a capital letter. There are exceptions to this
rule and in marketing sometimes lower-case characters are purposefully used for
some proper nouns. Examples include iPhone, eBay and oneworld Alliance.
However, in most cases, proper nouns start with a capital letter.
Caution is needed however, even when you are referring to a specific place or
thing. If you use the more general noun rather than the proper noun, this should
not be capitalized.
The text 'Historic University town' in this example is incorrect.
The word 'university' should not be capitalized as it is not specific.
The sign should read:
Historic university town
It would also be correct to use:
LAMPETER
Home of Lampeter University
Further examples:
I went to the University of Oxford today
I went to Oxford today and had a look at the university
Capitalising is correct in both sentences. In the first the proper noun 'University of
Oxford' is used.
In the second sentence, the more general noun university is used and so it is not
capitalised.
The word 'I' is not a proper noun, it's a pronoun. In English 'I' is always capitalised.
In many other languages the equivalent word is not capitalised.

Rule 4:
Acronyms
Acronyms generally work like title case: you capitalise the important words, and
not and, of, for and so on.
The easiest way to work this out is to write out the full title, and then you can see
which words dont need to be capitalised.
To make this clear, here are some examples:
British Broadcasting Corporation

BBC

Department for Education

DfE

Manchester United Football Club

MUFC

United Arab Emirates

UAE

Ministry of Transport [test]

MoT [test]

Head of Department

HoD

World of Warcraft

WoW

Rule 5:
Contractions
For contractions, capitalise the initial letters of words, but not subsequent letters
within the same word.
Contractions are like acronyms, but also include one or more letters from within the
same word. Examples of this include HiFi, which is short for High Fidelity, and
SciFi, short for science fiction.
The way to deal with these is to write out the phrase and have a look. Although the
words that are abbreviated may not be capitalised, as in science fiction, the
abbreviation always contains capitals for the start of each new word to make the
word boundaries and pronunciation clear. We frequently use SkillsYouNeed,
contracting the spaces but making the phrase easier to read.
WiFi

Many people wrongly assume that WiFi is a contraction of Wireless Fidelity. In fact
the word WiFi is an entirely made up word - a marketing invention and does not
stand for anything. It is, however, officially written as WiFi.

Rule 6:
Overusing Capitals is Rude
WRITING ENTIRELY IN BLOCK CAPITALS IS SHOUTING, and its rude.
Weve all done it: left the Caps Lock on while typing. But in email etiquette,
online chats and/or forum posts, writing in capitals is the online equivalent of
shouting. Its rude, so best not to do it unless you really do want to shout at
someone. Even then, consider whether youd really do it if that person was in
front of you, and also whether it will get you anywhere.
Although its usually best to avoid writing in capitals, it can be useful to write
odd words in capitals to give them empathise. HELP! You're going to LOVE the
surprise.
Its also much harder to read block capitals as all the letters are the same
height, so you will make your point much more easily if you use lower case.
Sometimes, especially when completing a handwritten form, BLOCK CAPITALS
are preferred since this can make data entry or automatic computer recognition
of handwriting easier and more accurate.

Find more at: http://www.skillsyouneed.com/write/capitalletters.html#ixzz3oCNvYQkS