Capital Idea

We do like our initial caps, don't we. (No question mark: it's a statement, not a question.) Despite abandoning them completely in texts and assorted other informal communication, so many people still feel the need to overuse them in more formal writing. (Perhaps not having used one's minimum daily requirement of capitals because of all those tweets and texts, one feels the urge to spend them before they expire. Fear not. They don't go bad.)

Although, as with all things Grammopticonical, there are nuances and special cases, I feel safe supplying a few guidelines.

Remember proper nouns? The nouns that refer to a specific instance of something as its name? Like Dubuque, Iowa (a specific instance of town, to wit, the one in Iowa that is named Dubuque), or Grammopticon (a specific instance of grammar blogger, not to be confused with Grammar Girl or your aunt the English teacher who lives in Dubuque).

Proper nouns are names. They get an initial cap. Dubuque and Grammopticon and the Parthenon and Suzy Snowflake.

Titles of works generally get initial caps (though there are matters of style at work here--but that can be a conversation for another day). The Sun Also Rises. The Great Gatsby. Transformers 2. (Note that I said "works," not "works of art.")

Trademarked product names should be capitalized. (There is an entire association dedicated to reminding you of that, not least because brand names that become commonly used to mean that type of product can lose their protection. Did you know that aspirin used to be a specific brand of acetylsalicylic acid pain reliever? No, of course you didn't. But now you do. Trot that one out the next time conversation flags at a party.) So one should write Kleenex, because that is a brand of tissue. 

However, if a product name is not capitalized, or is capitalized in an unusual way (I'm looking at you, iPhone, iPad, and all the rest of the iDevices), one should follow the style of that product's name. Same, for that matter, for personal names: we call people what they want to be called. Examples include the poet e. e. cummings. You would, however, cap the first e if it appeared at the beginning of a sentence. Similarly, iPhone used at the beginning of a sentence should have a capital I. In both those cases, that's going to look weird. Solution: Rephrase so the problematic name doesn't appear as the first word in the sentence. See what you nonconformists are making us do?

When does one capitalize job titles? This is a frequent source of confusion. Generally, a job is generic--not capitalized. However, if it is used as part of a person's name (Senator Jane Doe, President Smith, Dr. Jones), one caps it. One would also cap it if it's being used in direct address: "Senator Doe, what's your opinion on this?" However, when the title is used descriptively, it is not capitalized: "Jane Doe, the senator from Alabama, stated her opposition to the abuse of capital letters. Mary Jones, a doctor of literature, lauded her stance."

Family relationships work the same way (in terms of capitalization, at least; I cannot comment on your family relationships and their resemblance to job titles). One capitalizes when using the title as part of a name or entirely in place of a name ("Hey, Dad, pick up the phone. It's Aunt Matilda.") or in direct address ("Hi, Aunt Matilda!"). One does not, however, cap when using the relationship descriptively or generically. How do you know it's being used that way? The presence of a possessive is a good clue.: your mom, his dad, my aunt Matilda. Easy-peasy.

This is hardly a comprehensive list of situations in which one does or doesn't use initial caps. But I have to save something for future blog posts.