How to capitalise when you write for the web | Common issues

Why proper capitalisation matters

Misusing capital letters is a problem because proper capitalisation helps convey meaning and avoid misunderstandings. Along with punctuation and spelling, it helps to convey subtle but important details that would typically be picked up in the nuances of speech. When you misuse capitals, you risk introducing ambiguity to your writing, which makes it harder to read.

Take this sentence:

I love this new apple tablet.

Without context, the writer could refer to some new health food product containing apple extract.

But, when we capitalise 'Apple,' it becomes clear that the writer loves the new tablet from the company Apple Inc.:

I love this new Apple tablet.

So, how do you go about using capitals properly?

The basics

Like most aspects of writing, some basic rules always apply to capitalisation. You should always capitalise these things:

Tricky scenarios and edge cases

There are also some exceptions to these rules. Sometimes – like with titles and job titles – this is a matter of style and will change depending on your style guide. In other situations, capitalisation has evolved because of the changing nature of language. This can make it tricky to determine the correct usage. Here are some scenarios that often cause problems for people and how to deal with them.

Titles

Our company style guide recommends sentence cases for titles and subtitles. This means we only capitalise the first word and any proper nouns or words that would usually be capitalised.

The opposite of sentence case is called title case. We use sentence case because most people find it easier to read – especially on screens. So:

You'll Never Use Title Case Again After Reading This Shocking Study

becomes:

You'll never use title case again after reading this shocking study

It's easier to scan, looks less spammy and feels more friendly.

Note: Even though the style is called 'sentence' case, titles written in sentence case don't have to have full stops or be a proper sentence.

Your company style guide might recommend using title case in certain circumstances. The Mailchimp and Mozilla's Firefox style guides recommend using title case for section titles, for example.

Should you capitalise job titles?

We don't typically capitalise job titles. Again, omitting the capital letters makes job titles slightly easier to read.

In this sentence, the capital letters interrupt the movement of your eyes from one word to the next:

Ryan Bromley, Marketing Content Coordinator at Zengenti, takes a draconian approach to writing mechanics.

Removing the capitals makes the sentence far more accessible to read:

Ryan Bromley, marketing content coordinator at Zengenti, takes a draconian approach to writing mechanics.

You should capitalise a job title when it comes before a person's name. In this case, it is either part of an official title or replacing their first name, forming a proper noun. Take these two sentences:

Theresa May met President Trump in Washington.

Theresa May met Donald Trump, the president of the United States, in Washington.

The first sentence, 'President', is capitalised because it is an official title replacing Donald Trump's first name. In the second sentence, the word 'president' describes what Donald Trump does, so we don't need to capitalise it.

Programming languages and frameworks

The names of programming languages, frameworks or libraries, and proprietary technologies are usually capitalised. But fundamental programming terms and principles are not.

So, in 'Razor view', we capitalise Razor because it's the name of a view engine created by Microsoft. 'View' is not capitalised because view is a standard programming term.

Some people also get tripped up by capital letters in the middle of the names of languages and companies. This is known as camel case. Common traps like JavaScript, jQuery, and YouTube are always worth checking when proofreading.

Check Wikipedia or another reliable source, such as MDN, if you doubt a term.

Acronyms

Generally, acronyms and initialisms should be fully capitalised. These standard web development terms, for example, should always be capitalised:

However, sometimes, minor words in acronyms aren't capitalised. These are usually articles such as 'a', prepositions like 'as' or 'on', and the conjunctions 'and' or 'of'.

You can see this in acronyms like SaaS (Software as a Service) and DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service).

Some acronyms, like JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks), omit one minor word and capitalise another.

And a few, like NoSQL and npm, don't seem to follow any English language conventions.

Most of this is pretty arbitrary and comes down to whatever convention the creators or early users of the term settled on. So, once again, if you're in doubt, it's best to check Wikipedia or MDN.

Writing about software

Many people panic when writing about software in blogs, user documentation, or proposals. However, it's pretty straightforward if you follow the basic rules of only capitalising proper nouns. The easiest way to tell the difference between a proper noun and a common noun is that a proper noun refers to a specific thing.

Take these two sentences:

Open the application in your browser.

Open the application in Firefox.

In the first example, 'browser' is a common noun because it is non-specific – it refers to any browser. The second sentence refers to a specific browser, Firefox, which is a proper noun.

Buttons

When referring to button text in a user interface, capitalise words if they are capitalised in the button (e.g. Save, Submit & Approve). Our internal style guide for user documentation also states that button text should be bold. For example:

Press the Content Types & Entries button in the sidebar.

Features

Features, like content types and entries in Contensis, shouldn't be capitalised except when you are writing documentation and referring to a button or label in the UI that is itself capitalised.

What to do next

Capitalisation is a complicated subject, and it's an element of writing that continues to evolve. It's impossible to cover every situation where capitalisation deviates from the fundamental rules in just one article. If you're serious about improving your writing, consider these next steps: