Capitalization in English follows a handful of clear rules — and a few tricky cases that trip almost everyone. Get these right and your writing instantly looks more careful. Here’s the quick guide.
Always capitalize
- The first word of a sentence. “The meeting starts at nine.”
- The pronoun “I” — always, anywhere in a sentence.
- Proper nouns — specific names of people, places, brands, organizations: Maya, Jakarta, Phrasera, the United Nations.
- Days, months, and holidays — Monday, July, Ramadan — but not seasons (summer, winter).
- Languages, nationalities, and religions — Indonesian, French, Islam, Buddhism.
- Titles before a name — President Soekarno, Dr. Tan — but lowercase when standalone (“the president spoke”).
Titles and headings
Two common styles:
- Title case — capitalize the first, last, and all major words; lowercase short articles, conjunctions, and prepositions (a, an, the, and, of, in). “The Future of Work.”
- Sentence case — capitalize only the first word and any proper nouns. “The future of work.”
Pick one and stay consistent. (Our title generator outputs clean titles you can format either way.)
Do NOT capitalize
- Seasons: spring, summer, autumn, winter.
- Directions as general areas: “drive north” (but the North as a region is capitalized).
- Common nouns for emphasis — writing “our Company” or “this Product” just to feel important is wrong.
- The word after a colon, usually, unless it begins a complete sentence (styles vary).
The common slips
- Random Capitalization Of Important-Feeling Words. Resist it.
- Forgetting to capitalize proper nouns (brand and place names especially).
- Inconsistent heading capitalization across a document.
Catch them automatically
Capitalization errors are easy to miss, especially in headings and names. After drafting, run your text through the grammar checker — it flags sentence-start and proper-noun capitalization. For the related rules, see our guides to commas and common confusions.
Learn the always/never lists, pick one heading style, and capitalization stops being guesswork.
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