By: Jane Sumerset
Submitted: 2009-12-21 09:40:11 | Word Count: 524
How far would your knowledge go? Do you know when to capitalize words? Although it sounds too common and we all know that schools often teach us what words are use to capitalize and which are not. However, not all people know when to capitalize certain words since there are different kinds of words that we should pay our attention to.
If you are going to read any reference material about learning English as your second language or any grammar and language skills improvement books, you will be able to determine that there are a lot of words that needs to be capitalize even you thought they’re not and there are also a lot of words that need not to be capitalize even if you think they should. Therefore, you should have to learn some words that needs to be capitalized and which are we commonly use it especially when we are going to write essays.
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It is very important that we should master words which are considered as nouns if they are going to be capitalized or not. Besides, most people’s first impression with nouns is that, all of these words can be capitalize; however, some nouns need not to be capitalized especially when they are place in the middle of your sentence. Aside from the fact that you can capitalize them when they are use in t he beginning of a sentence. In this content, you will be able to know some of the words in the English language where you should focus your attention to be able to use them correctly with your writings.
Here are some nouns that are a bit confusing whether you will capitalize the first letter or not. Should you write Mom or mom? Is it more correct to write Brother or brother? While we all capitalize proper nouns, when do we capitalize those used to refer to them?
As a rule, you should only capitalize relationship names when they are used as a substitute for the person’s actual name, such as in “Don’t go see Dad today, he’s not in the mood.” Conversely, no capitalization is required when there is a modifier in front of the relationship name, such as in “My mom is still in Puerto Rico.”
These two examples should help make those rules even clearer:
“Where’s Grandpa? I want to see my grandpa!” (In this case, the Grandpa [in the first sentence] substitutes for the man’s name, while grandpa [in the second sentence] is simply referring to the man that I want to see).
“I never believed a single thing Uncle said. Anyone who believes my uncle’s stories is quite the gullible sucker.” I won’t explain this anymore – hopefully, you catch the drift.
A common mistake in capitalization are terms of endearment. Under no conditions should these vocative nouns ever be capitalized (e.g. “I love you, honey”). Every day, I see plenty of writers guilty of these errors, so do watch out for them, especially since grammar software can only identify so many vocatives and will likely pass a few uncommon ones over.
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