A guide to capitalisation

When to capitalise can be a tricky concept to grasp with a large number of grammar 'rules' affecting the way you formulate a written sentence. We're here to help you get your head around capitalisation with a quick how-to guide!

Generally speaking, we use minimal caps, but always use a capital letter to start a sentence and for proper nouns. You can read more about what determines a proper noun here. 

Except in acronyms or brand names, there is no reason to capitalise an entire word. We shouldn’t need to shout at our audience to get a message across so headings, excerpts, newsletter subject lines, etc. shouldn’t have any all-caps words.

Regular segments - headings and body text

However, regular segments on your platform should be capitalised – we want to make our activations Proper Things. Use lowercase when referring to them in the generic sense. An example of this would include the heading of an event being '123 Smith Street's Virtual Easter Egg Hunt' but in the body of the text you can speak about the event like so 'the easter egg hunt will result in a small prize for everyone who takes part'. 

Titles of books, plays, songs or TV shows etc

These should use maximum capitalisation. Check the branding of a festival or venue to confirm how they capitalise their brand e.g.The Sound of Music, Fifty Shades of Grey, Bennie and the Jets.

After a colon 

You can also use a capital letter after a colon if you’re introducing more than one sentence or question. This applies to headings as well. See examples below:

• #PlatformPerks: Spend less on movie tickets with Spendless

• We should ask: What time does the class start? 

• This is what happened: I went to the shop. There was a dog out the front, so I patted it.

Names 

Capitalise names like ‘Mum’ when you’re referring to her directly (i.e. in place of her name), but lowercase when generic. An example could be 'I went for a run with Mum last night; you should bring your mum next time'.