Common English Writing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them. Mistake #4: Incorrect capitalization
The rules of capitalization
in English may seem confusing, especially to non-native speakers. Issues with
incorrect or missing capitals in English writing are regularly seen. Stick to
these basic rules:
–
Always capitalize “I”
– Capitalize proper nouns, which include
names of people, places and organizations
– Do not capitalize common nouns (for
example: car, pen, school)
– Always capitalize the first letter of a
new sentence
– Capitalize weekdays, holidays and months
of the year
Here is an example of these
bad capitalization issues:
“This year i will
be going to london to study at University. my
visa application still has to be accepted but i have been told to expect it to
arrive in january.”
The correct capitalization would
be:
“This year I will
be going to London to study at university. My
visa application still has to be accepted but I have been told to expect it to
arrive in January.”
Practical tip: Be
conscious of the differences between proper nouns and common nouns as these
represent the most common capitalization issues amongst English learners. For
example, “car/truck/lorry/van” are common nouns, while
“BMW/Mercedes/Ford/Toyota” are proper nouns.
