Which nouns have capitals

In case you need a little more clarity on the difference between common and proper nouns , spend some time reviewing the difference between these two types of nouns and how they are written with regards to capital or lowercase letters.

Example: The w oman in the r estaurant lives in the c ity. The common nouns woman , restaurant , and city in the sentence need to be written in lowercase. Proper nouns are specific; they do refer to a particular person, place or thing by formal name or title. The rules of capitalization are very specific. Most of the time, words that require capitalization are proper nouns. However, grammar always has a bit of complication. Expand the quality of your work by mastering correct usage of the many punctuation marks used in English grammar.

All rights reserved. Which Nouns Should Be Capitalized? Simple Proper Noun Capitalization Rules The basic rule for capitalizing proper nouns is that the first letter of a proper noun should be capitalized no matter where it appears in a sentence or how it is being used.

My favorite author is Jane Austen. Have you met my dog, Boomer? Names are proper nouns. The names of cities, countries, companies, religions, and political parties are also proper nouns, so you should capitalize them, too. We experienced some beautiful Southern California weather last fall when we attended a Catholic wedding in San Diego. You should also capitalize words like mom and grandpa when they are used as a form of address.

Just wait until Mom sees this! My mom is not going to like this. Grammarly can save you from misspellings, grammatical and punctuation mistakes, and other writing issues on all your favorite websites. I have one true passion: wombat racing. There are a couple of common exceptions. Here is a confirmatory test for this lesson. This test can also be: Edited i. Printed to create a handout. Sent electronically to friends or students.

Did you spot a typo? 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.

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 'capitalisation' and 'capitalization' are different in British and US English. 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 capitalised. Capitalising is correct in both sentences. In the first the proper noun 'University of Oxford' is used.