Capitalization - By Context

By Context

• In most modern European languages, the first word in a sentence is capitalized, as is the first word in any quoted sentence. (For example: Nana said, "There are ripe watermelons in the garden!")
  • The first word of a sentence is not capitalized in most modern editions of ancient Greek and, to a lesser extent, Latin texts. The distinction between lower and upper case was not introduced before the Middle Ages; in antiquity only the capital forms of letters were used.
  • For some items, many style guides recommend that initial capitalization is avoided by not putting the item at the beginning of a sentence, or by writing it in lowercase even at the beginning of a sentence. Such scientific terms have their own rules about capitalization which take precedence over the standard initial capitalization rule. For example pH would be liable to cause confusion if written PH, and initial m and M may even have different meanings, milli and mega, for example 2 MA (megamperes) is a billion times 2 mA (milliamperes). Increasingly nowadays, some trade marks and company names start with a lower-case letter, and similar considerations apply.
  • In Dutch, 't, 'n, and 's are never capitalized, even at the start of sentences. Capitalization (e.g. at the start of a sentence) is applied to the next word. Example: 's Avonds eet ik graag vis. "In the evenings I like having fish." (See Compound names below.) In German, if the first letter of a text or a sentence has been replaced by an apostrophe (usually to emulate spoken language), it will not be capitalised, and the following word will only be capitalized if it is a noun, as described above. Example: 's ist schade ... (similar to English "'tis a shame ...").
• Traditionally, the first words of a line of verse are capitalized, e.g.:
  Meanwhile the winged Heralds, by command
  Of sovereign power, with awful ceremony
  And trumpet's sound, throughout the host proclaim
  A solemn council forthwith to be held
  At Pandemonium, the high capital
  Of Satan and his peers. (Milton, Paradise Lost I:752–756)
  • Modern poets often ignore or defy this convention.
• In the U.S., headlines and titles of works typically use title case, in which certain words (such as nouns, adjectives and verbs) are capitalized and others (such as prepositions and conjunctions) are not.