Capitalisation in English

COME HOME NOW. DINNER IS READY I have to hurry home, mum is shouting. Shouting? How? She wrote it in big letters.

In the alphabet we use for writing English, the Latin alphabet, the letters come in two versions. One larger, uppercase version, and one smaller, lowercase version. They often look a little different from each other: A B C D E F... Look at these words: England, cat, King, Michael, rollercoaster, troll, Norwegian Notice how some of them are written with the first letter uppercase? This is called a capital letter.

They are capitalised. There are rules about which words should be capitalised. It partly depends on where in a sentence the word is placed: The first word of a new sentence is always written with a capital letter. This way we can easily see when a new sentence begins. Come home now.

Dinner is ready. But certain words are capitalised no matter where in the sentence they are: I The word “I”, the personal pronoun that’s used when talking about oneself, is always capitalised in English. “I want to read” “So do I” Another example is names. First names and family names are both capitalised: Michael is reading a book by J. K. Rowling.

It’s called “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”. Lina is reading a book called “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking. Names of books, movies, and so on — titles — are also capitalised, often in a quite specific manner: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone Notice that only words like nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and other bigger words are capitalised. Small words such as articles, prepositions, and conjunctions are written with a lowercase first letter. Place names are also always capitalised, for example cities, regions, countries, rivers, mountains, and buildings.

Brittany in France the River Ganges in India, Mount Everest in Nepal, the Empire State Building in New York City. ...this also includes planets and other places in space: Jupiter, the Moon, the Crab Nebula To describe that something or someone is from a place, the noun or adjective is created from that place name: America – American Ireland – Irish In English such words are also capitalised. He’s a Canadian on French soil. She’s a famous South African singer. The same goes for languages, whether they come from a place or not: I speak Japanese, Finnish, and Xhosa There are a few more things that are always capitalised: Days, and months: I’ll see you on Monday the 1st of December Also holidays and festivals, both religious and non-religious, such as: Christmas, Eid al-Fitr, and New Years Eve ...but never seasons such as winter, spring, summer, and autumn. Religions, gods, and royal persons, are also capitalised: Hinduism God almighty The Queen ...and when someone is writing in all capitals, it is typically understood as shouting.

Oh, sorry, I don’t know why it came out all in capitals. See you soon sweetie, and say hello to Michael from me.