Capital letters

When to use capital letters and when to avoid them.

Use sentence case

Sentence case is when you only capitalise the first letter of the sentence and the first letters of any proper nouns.

Use sentence case for all paragraph text, headings, page titles and link text.

Write:

Establishing green standards for financial markets

Do not write:

Establishing Green Standards for Financial Markets

Do not use capitals for emphasis

Do not use capitals to make a word stand out or to increase its importance on a page.

Write:

You must complete an application form to request laboratory access.

Do not write:

You MUST complete an Application Form to request laboratory access.

Use capital letters for proper nouns

Proper nouns are names of particular people, places, institutions, and so on.

Do not capitalise articles (‘a’, ‘an’ and ‘the’) or connecting words (such as ‘and’, ‘for’ and ‘of’). An exception is when they appear at the start of a sentence.

Names of institutions

For example:

  • the University of Edinburgh
  • the University

Referring to the University

Schools and colleges

For example:

  • the School of Biological Sciences
  • the College of Science and Engineering
  • the School was founded in 1713

Do not use capitals when you are referring to schools or colleges more generally.

For example:

  • There are seven schools in the College of Science and Engineering.

Subject areas

Capitalise subject areas when they are part of a programme or course title.

For example:

  • Accounting and Finance MA (Hons)
  • In your second year, you will take Advanced Financial Accounting.

Do not capitalise subject areas when referring to a general field of study.  

For example:

  • Our research focuses on financial accounting.

Job titles

For example:

  • the Deputy Head of Institute
  • the Building and Facilities Officer

Team and committee titles

For example:

  • the Website and Communications team
  • the Usher Institute Research Committee

Names of events

For example:

  • the Postgraduate Virtual Open Day
  • the Staff Recognition Awards

People

For example:

  • Mona Siddiqui  
  • the Duke of Edinburgh

Places

For example:

  • Glasgow Green
  • Nicaragua

Days of the week and months of the year

For example:

  • Monday
  • August

Seasons

Do not capitalise seasons.

For example:

  • summer
  • spring

Nationalities, languages, language communities and religions

For example:

  • American
  • Spanish
  • Francophone
  • Judaism

Also capitalise these words when using them as an adjective:

  • an American institution
  • a Spanish dictionary
  • a study of Francophone cinema
  • a Jewish holiday

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