Capital offence
First, the title: no, it isn’t a mistake. I live and work in Britain, and we spell lots of nouns with a ‘c’ – advice, defence, practice etc. This essay is mainly intended to help fellow users of British English; users of English in other contexts may find my views even more extreme than fellow Brits do.
Initial capital letters (which I’ll call ICLs – read my note towards the end of this article on abbreviations) are really useful things. In a wonderfully efficient way, they alert the reader to words of a special kind – generally, words that are the names of someone or something.
But in my business of editorial consultancy, ICLs cause more pain than any other single aspect of the copy we work on. Business clients send us copy that is full of Managing Directors, Random Access Memory chips and Management Award Schemes; we send it back with all of these words taken to lower case, and wait for the phone to ring.
Sometimes the clients simply insist that they want their capitals back, and since we have cleverly kept an alternative version of the document with the capitals still in place, this is not a problem. But if we detect any sign of weakness, we send them this essay. It is an attempt to convince sceptics by explaining why our policy is to cut capitals to the minimum.
The general position
The use of ICLs is largely a matter of convention and partly a matter of fashion. There are very few hard and fast rules. There are some conventions that are so widely shared that they can be regarded as rules. But they don’t deal with 99% of the instances of unnecessary capitalisation. For example, the managing director of our client company can’t argue that ‘Managing Director’ is ‘right’, and we can’t argue that it is ‘wrong’.
What we can do, though, is argue that if you use ‘Managing Director’ and lots of other unnecessary capitalisation you are flying in the face of professional editorial wisdom; you are giving out an undesirable message about your organisation – that it is backward-looking; and you are making your text more difficult to read.
Ignoring professional wisdom
We are not engaged in a lone, eccentric campaign to rid the world of capitals. Our aversion to excessive capitals is widely shared in professional publishing. At the end of this essay are extracts from the editorial style guides of the Times, the Guardian, the Economist and the Financial Times, all of which support the case for lower case.
An undesirable message
The conventions and fashions affecting capitalisation change over time, and the modern trend is firmly away from unnecessary capitals. Excessive use of ICLs makes your text look dated. Pick up a volume of magazine articles dating from 1912, as we did recently, and you may quickly find references to ‘the Middle Class’, the level of ‘Income Tax’ and the impact of ‘the latest Coal Strike’. Not even the most enthusiastic user of ICLs would advocate these uses today. (The Guardian style guide quoted at the end of this essay has more to say along these lines.)
The resistance to the shift away from unnecessary capitals is, not surprisingly, strongest in relatively old-fashioned, bureaucratic organisations. The accounting section of a government department will refer to its staff as Data Entry Supervisors and Junior Management Accountants. An ad agency probably has copywriters and graphic designers.
Difficult to read
There are practical arguments against excessive ICLs. If capitals are reserved for special purposes – identification of special sorts of words, and the start of new sentences – comprehension of text is speeded up. If they’re used indiscriminately, recognition of key elements in your text is impeded.
The black-and-white bit
The basic convention – let’s say it’s a rule, even – is that proper names take initial capitals. One dictionary even refers to capitalisation in its definition of ‘proper name’:
‘a name used for an individual person, place, animal, country, title etc, and spelt with a capital letter, eg Jane, London, Everest.’
We would add ‘brand’ and ‘organisation’ to the list of categories, and a fuller list of examples might then run: ‘Jane, London, Lassie, France, Mister, Persil, Unilever’.
It’s clear what the capitals are doing here: they’re announcing that the word you have arrived at is not an ordinary word, with an ordinary meaning; it is a name, arbitrarily allocated to or adopted by somebody or some entity, which can be understood properly only if you see it in that light.
Without the capitals, it’s difficult to figure out the meanings of the words in the list above. If you substitute some other examples, lack of capitals changes the meaning rather than obscuring it. Compare ‘Rose, Bath, Red Rum, New Guinea, Lady, Virgin, Allied Distillers’ with ‘rose, bath, red rum, new guinea, lady, virgin, allied distillers’.
We are so convinced of the value of ICLs for proper names that we believe they should be applied to all individuals and companies – regardless of the style adopted by those individuals and companies. So we don’t allow ee cummings, kd lang, adidas. We are dealing here with the sacred business of communication, and we’re not going to let individual whims interfere with that.
We make one small concession in this area: where a company or brand name is composed of two words run together (a fashion possibly going back to the venerable word processing program WordStar), we allow it. Why? Because it helps. (You might otherwise read Wordstar as WordsTar, for example.)
Of course, logos (where there is a graphic design element involved as well as a spelling issue) are different, and cannot be tampered with. When the Adidas logo is reproduced, for example, there is no choice in the matter of capitalisation.
Along with personal names, personal titles take caps – Mr, Ms, Lord etc.
The grey matter
When this article was first written around the turn of the century, there was near-universal acceptance in British publishing that the use of capitals on personal titles should extend to impersonal honorary titles such as the Queen, the Lord Chancellor, the Prime Minister and the Mayor of Taunton. This is now a very grey area, with many style guides ruling that lower case should be used.
Many people instinctively capitalise job titles – particularly senior ones such as Managing Director. The tendency is understandable, because the capitals suggest importance and dignity. But that doesn’t make the tendency respectable. Really it’s just a description of a job, like housewife, street-sweeper or copy-editor. Why the fuss?
It’s natural to use capitals on job titles within a large organisation. To a personnel manager, the role of Personnel Manager is a highly defined thing; to know what the role involves, you have to look at a piece of paper which is headed Personnel Manager, or perhaps refer to an index in a book of such things where Personnel Manager comes after Patent Lawyer (Junior Grade). No problem: the personnel managers of this world can use ICLs in whatever way they find useful. It doesn’t mean that we (or you) should follow suit.
This is part of a general tendency in any working environment to use capitals to identify certain entities as important, with an enduring meaning. In these individual environments, it’s harmless enough. (This is of course standard practice in
A tool manufacturer’s product list might include a Forged Steel Hammer, which may even be manufactured in conformity with an international standard that clearly distinguishes such a hammer from a Wrought Iron Hammer. An accountant will want to identify a client’s Net Relevant Earnings for tax-relief purposes. A builder will want his customer to agree when a major project has reached the stage of Practical Completion, so that he can get paid.
The question is not what style should be used in the internal documents of a company – whether Stanley Tools should be allowed to write ‘Forged Steel Hammer’ – but what style should be used in publications for general consumption. In all these cases, ICLs serve no useful purpose because the words are perfectly intelligible without them, and capitals just clutter up the pages of a publication.
As I’ve said, the names of organisations – companies, government departments, charitable trusts, whatever – deserve to be capitalised like the names of people. But organisations are often referred to by one or two descriptive words which may or may not be part of the formal name; there is no point in capitalising these words. We call this our descriptive abbreviated name policy.
So it’s sensible to refer to the Super Widgets Company Limited in one sentence, but to ‘the staff of the company’ and not ‘the staff of the Company’ in another. NB: even those who don’t go along with this policy should be able to see that a company called Super Widgets Limited (with no ‘Company’ in its name) has no basis whatever for littering its annual report with references to ‘the Company’.
(Although we’re mainly concerned here with ICLs, it is worth recording that company and brand names that appear in all capitals in logo form should, in our view, normally be typeset in upper and lower case. Where the letters are or appear to be initials themselves – SBC Human Resources, PCS Typesetting – of course they should be left as capitals. But PROMOTE! becomes Promote! And VISA becomes Visa.)
The rules we apply to companies apply also to the public sector. You can and should refer to the Department for Education in one sentence, but to ‘the department’s activities’ in the next. Which brings us on to government, and related administrative concepts.
At this point I should recognise the publication in 2013 of welcome guidance on these matters from the UK government itself, about which there is more information at the end of the article.
The concept of government gives some people a lot of trouble. Britain has no organisation called The Government, or even Her Majesty’s Government. Government in Britain is an ill-defined seamless function, which can get along perfectly well without the burden of capitalisation. We don’t capitalise the people or the citizens of Britain (who are governed), so we don’t capitalise the government (the band of citizens who at the moment govern).
Local government is associated with many of the worst excesses of capitalisation. Somerset County Council is an organisation and its name needs capitals but, when used separately, the words county, council and county council are perfectly understandable without them.
There is no reason to write about the County of Somerset, just as there is no reason to write about the Country of Great Britain, or the Village of Beckington. But people do, probably because people are used to talking about things being funded or controlled by ‘the county’ when they mean funded or controlled by ‘Somerset County Council’.
To generalise: the names of streets, villages, towns, cities and counties routinely get capitals; but these words themselves do not need capitals when not used in a formal title.
The points of the compass do not normally get capitals, and this needs to be borne in mind when referring to parts of a larger area.
The matter of which geographical entities need or deserve capital status is something that changes, and all that we can hope to do is to consistently reflect current ideas. Capitals should be used when they will help the reader to recognise an established geographical entity, but not when referring to an area in ordinary descriptive terms.
Thus, Britain is in western Europe, but is a member of an alliance for the defence of the West. The first draft of this essay was written on a train which passed through the city of Birmingham, which is in the Midlands, on its way to an area that can be referred to as the north of England or (notably on road signs) as the North. Somerset is in the West Country; but it is in the west of England. The Essex base of one of our business partners is certainly in eastern England, just outside east London, almost in East Anglia and nowhere near the West End. It is, as I have said, a matter of current convention.
So is the capitalisation of time. In English (but not, note, in French), days of the week and months of the year take capitals. But the seasons are not conventionally capitalised, even though it would be logical if they were.
Abbreviations
Abbreviations deserve a special mention. There is no serious alternative to capitalisation of abbreviations composed of the initial capitals of the words in a name or concept. At the start of this essay I introduced the concept of the initial capital letter (ICL), and I acknowledge that this is a legitimate technique. Without the capitals, you try to read the string of characters as a word; in this case, you can’t, and even if you can you’ll get the wrong meaning.
The big danger with this arrangement is that people reverse-engineer the abbreviation, and start writing Random Access Memory as well as North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Not allowed.
Published style guides on capitals
Those who are sceptical about my position on capitals should note the very consistent advice given by the major published style guides quoted below, especially the fallback advice highlighted. Where the guide is available online, a link is provided. Regrettably, my extracts from guides that are not available online may be somewhat out of date.
The Guardian
The Guardian’s advice is quite short, so it is reproduced here in full. There are some interesting policies here – notably the different treatment of the Queen and the pope.
Times have changed since the days of medieval manuscripts with elaborate hand-illuminated capital letters, or Victorian documents in which not just proper names, but virtually all nouns, were given initial caps (a Tradition valiantly maintained to this day by Estate Agents).
A look through newspaper archives would show greater use of capitals the further back you went. The tendency towards lower case, which in part reflects a less formal, less deferential society, has been accelerated by the explosion of the internet: some web companies, and many email users, have dispensed with capitals altogether. Our style reflects these developments. We aim for coherence and consistency, but not at the expense of clarity. As with any aspect of style, it is impossible to be wholly consistent – there are almost always exceptions, so if you are unsure check for an individual entry in this guide. But here are the main principles:
jobs all lc, eg prime minister, US secretary of state, editor of the Guardian, readers’ editor.
titles cap up titles, but not job description, eg President Barack Obama (but the US president, Barack Obama, and Obama on subsequent mention); the Duke of Westminster (the duke at second mention); the Queen, but the pope.
Financial Times
The FT believes that the fewer capital letters we use the better. Places and organisations begin with a capital; personal titles generally do not. When in doubt, use lower case unless the result looks silly or is confusing.
The Times
The first extract below comes from a printed Times guide some years old, but offers a more coherent view than the second extract, from the current online guide.
Capitalisation is the source of great tribulation. Please adhere to the following guidance. Too many capital letters are ugly. Capitals interrupt the passage of the eye along a line. They are often unnecessary, especially with non-proper nouns such as government or ministry. Struggle to avoid them unless to do so looks absurd. If in doubt use lower case. In general, the proper names of people, their formal titles and names of well-known and substantial institutions require titles.
capitalisation in general, the proper names of people and places, formal titles or titles of important offices, and the names of well-known and substantial institutions, all require capitals. As a rule of thumb, cap specifics (eg, the French Foreign Minister), but l/c non-specifics (eg, EU foreign ministers). But some terms, eg, Act, Bill, Cabinet, Civil Service, always cap.
The Economist
A balance has to be struck between so many capitals that that eyes dance and so few that the reader is diverted more by our style than by our substance. The general rule is to dignify with capital letters organisations and institutions, but not people. More exact rules are laid out below. Even these, however, leave some decisions to individual judgement. If in doubt use lower case unless it looks absurd. And remember that ‘a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds’ (Emerson).
Daily Telegraph
The Telegraph’s advice on caps is short and sweet, and reproduced below. But be aware that its style guide also includes staggeringly detailed advice on `correct’ presentation of names and titles.
Capping up: the general presumption is against using caps. Their use should be to denote something that is unique. The Pill immediately spells the contraceptive pill and the Forces indicates that we are talking about Britain’s military and not the forces of light.
UK government website
The recently published style guide for gov.uk sites includes the following.
Don’t capitalise:
government – never Government, even when referring to an elected administration, (so not the Afghanistan Government) unless part of a specific name, eg Local Government Association, or Inside Government
civil service
minister, never Minister, unless part of a specific job title, eg Minister for the Cabinet Office
department or ministry – never Department or Ministry, unless referring to a specific one, eg Ministry of Justice
white paper, green paper, command paper, House of Commons paper
sections or schedules within specific named acts, regulations or orders
director general (note no hyphen), deputy director, director, unless in a specific job title
group and directorate, unless referring to a specific group or directorate, eg the Commercial Directorate
departmental board, executive board, the board
policy themes eg sustainable communities, promoting economic growth, local enterprise zones
general mention of select committees (but DO cap specific ones – see above)