Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters

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Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization. In English, capitalization is primarily needed for proper names, acronyms, and for the first letter of a sentence.[a] Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia.

There are exceptions for specific cases discussed below.

Do not use for emphasis

Initial capitals or all capitals should not be used for emphasis. If wording alone cannot provide the required emphasis, italics, or, preferably, the <em>...</em> HTML element (or its {{em}} template wrapper), should be used:

Use: It is not only a little learning that is dangerous.
Avoid: It is not only a LITTLE learning that is dangerous.
Avoid: It is not only a Little learning that is dangerous.
Avoid: It is not only a little learning that is dangerous.

This includes over-capitalization for signification, i.e. to try to impress upon the reader the importance or specialness of something in a particular context. Introduction of a term of art may be wikilinked and, optionally, given in non-emphasis italics on first occurrence. Example: use The community of researchers in a field may produce a scientific consensus, not ... may produce a Scientific Consensus.


On Wikipedia, most acronyms are written in all capital letters (such as NATO, BBC, and JPEG). Wikipedia does not follow the practice of distinguishing between acronyms and initialisms. Do not write acronyms that are pronounced as if they were a word with an initial capital letter only, e.g. do not write UNESCO as Unesco, or NASA as Nasa.

  • Some acronyms (mostly trademarks like Yahoo! and Taser) conventionally or officially use a mixture of capitals and lower-case letters, even non-letters; for any given example, use the spelling found in the majority of reliable, independent sources (e.g., LaTeX, M&Ms, 3M, and InBev). Do not mimic trademark stylization otherwise (see WP:Manual of Style/Trademarks).
  • Non-trademarked acronyms that have become assimilated into English as everyday words may be written as common nouns when it is conventional to do so (e.g. scuba and laser, but ZIP Code and bank PIN).

Use only source-attested acronyms; do not make up new ones (for example, the World Pool-Billiard Association is the WPA, and it is not referred to as the "WPBA").

"Also known as", when abbreviated on second or later occurrences, or in a table, should be given as a.k.a. or AKA (whichever reads easier in the context). Do not use aka, A/K/A, or other unusual renderings.

Expanded forms of abbreviations

Do not apply initial capitals in a full term that is a common noun phrase, just because capitals are used in its abbreviation.

Incorrect  (not a proper name):    We used Digital Scanning (DS) technology
Correct:   We used digital scanning (DS) technology
Correct: (proper name): produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

Similarly, when showing the source of an acronym or syllabic abbreviation, emphasizing the letters that make up the acronym is undesirable:

Incorrect: FOREX (FOReign EXchange)
Incorrect: FOREX (foreign exchange)
Correct: FOREX (foreign exchange)

If it seems necessary to do so (for example, to indicate a potentially unclear etymology) use italics: BX (from "base exchange").

After hyphenation

In article text, do not use a capital letter after a hyphen except for a proper name: Graeco-Roman and Mediterranean-style, but not Gandhi-Like. Letters used as designations are treated as names for this purpose: a size-A drill bit. (For cases involving titles, see § Titles of people, and § Composition titles.)

All caps and small caps

Avoid writing with all caps (all capital letters), including small caps (all caps at a reduced size), when they have only a stylistic function. Reduce them to title case, sentence case, or normal case, as appropriate.

  • Reduce newspaper headlines and other titles from all caps to title case – or to sentence case if required by the citation style established in the article. For example, replace the headline or title "WAR BEGINS TODAY" with "War Begins Today" or, if necessary, "War begins today".[b]
  • Reduce track titles on albums where all or most tracks are listed in all capitals. For which words should be capitalized, see WP:Manual of Style/Titles § Capital letters.
  • Reduce court decisions from all caps. Write Roe v. Wade, even though the decision as issued read ROE v. WADE.[1]
  • Reduce proclamations, such as those for the Medal of Honor, from all capitals.
  • Reduce text written in all capitals in trademarks – see WP:Manual of Style/Trademarks.
  • Reduce Latin quotations and terms from all capitals,[c] and put it in italics as non-English. As this is a form of transliteration, the Latin V should be normalized to v or u, as appropriate, per modern conventions for rendering Latin. (See below for a linguistics exception. See also WP:Manual of Style/Text formatting § Foreign terms.)
  • Do not write with all capitals for emphasis; italics are preferred (see § Do not use for emphasis, above). In quoted material, all caps or small caps for emphasis can be replaced with {{strong}} (or HTML <strong>); see WP:Manual of Style/Text formatting § STRONG.

Certain material may be written with all capitals or small capitals:

  • Acronyms and initialisms (see § Acronyms, above); these are given in all caps not small caps.[d]
    • There are some exceptions on Wikipedia, such as the presentation of post-nominal letters after persons' names; the {{post-nominals}} template styles these in small caps to help distinguish from the name itself. Acronyms that have been fully assimilated into English as words are given in lowercase (laser, scuba), as are various Latinisms like pm; see WP:Manual of Style/Abbreviations for details.
    • Some uses of small caps that are common in the house styles of particular publishers are not used on Wikipedia; the most common are for Roman numerals (use XIV, not XIV) and for acronyms for eras (use BCE, AD, etc., not BCE, AD).
  • In religion, renderings of the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) – but not of Adonai – can be formatted with the templates {{LORD}} and {{GOD}}, when the distinction is important. These employ a mixture of all caps and small caps common in many Bible editions: LORD. Do not use styling tricks to render this or any other such material in colored text.[e]
  • Certain citation styles (e.g. those of the Linguistic Society of America, and Bluebook) require that certain parts of a citation, such as author names in alphabetical reference sections, be written in small caps. If an article has been consistently using such a citation style, it should be respected, absent a consensus to change the style. For readability, this should be done with the template {{sc1}}, which distinguishes the case of the input, giving uppercase full-size and lowercase in a readable small-caps size; this makes the output both more accessible and accurate to copy-paste: {{sc1|DeVoto}} produces DeVoto. However, if such a citation style is not already established at an article, it is better avoided, as it is difficult to read and complicates the markup.
  • The names of Unicode code points are conventionally given in small caps (tip: enter the name in all caps into the template {{sc2}}). Example: the character (U+2053, SWUNG DASH). This is only done when presenting tables of Unicode data, and when discussing code point names as such. Otherwise prefer unstyled, plain-English character names (whether they coincide with code point names or not): the hyphen and the en dash, not the HYPHEN-MINUS and the EN DASH.
  • Textual excerpts, inscriptions, example words, and letterforms in classical Latin, Greek, and other unicase scripts may be given in all caps or preferably small caps (the template {{sc2}} is intended for this purpose) to reflect the letterforms of that era. This should only be done when it is contextually useful, as in linguistic material and descriptions of artifacts. Examples: letterforms at Gaulish language § Orthography, and excerpts at Duenos inscription. This usage should preserve the original orthography to the extent possible in Unicode (e.g., use of V in Latin for both v and u). When rendered this way, such material need not be italicized as non-English.[f] When it is not possible to render such material as text, a photograph may prove useful, if a free one is available.
  • In linguistics and philology, glossing of text or speech uses small caps for the standardized abbreviations of functional morpheme types (e.g. PL, AUX; this is done with the linguistics template {{gcl}}, or by feeding a lowercase value to the generic template {{sc}}.[g] On first occurrence, use a piped link around the template: [[Plural|{{sc|pl}}]]. This style is not used for lexical glosses of content morphemes; these go in single quotes in a linear (inline) gloss (e.g., the English word dog in Spanish perro, 'dog'), but no markup at all in an interlinear gloss.

Anglo- and similar prefixes

Most words with prefixes such as Anglo-, Franco-, etc., are capitalized. For example, Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-French and Anglo-Norman are all capitalized. However, there is some variation concerning a small number of words of French origin. In French, these words are not capitalized, and this sometimes carries over to English. There are variations, and since editors often refer to only one dictionary, they may unwittingly contravene Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Varieties of English by changing a usage to that which is more common in their own national dialect. The main (but not mandatory) exceptions to the capitalization rule are the following.[5]

  • anglicism, gallicism, etc.: These words are often, but not always, capitalized. Anglicism is less likely to be capitalized in Canada.
  • anglicize (anglicise), gallicize (gallicise), etc.: Anglicize is often capitalized in the US, and sometimes in other countries. Gallicize is often capitalized in the US, and usually capitalized in other countries.
  • anglophile, francophile, etc.: Words in this category are usually capitalized both as nouns and adjectives, except in Canada, where they sometimes are.
  • anglophone, francophone, etc.: These words are often capitalized in the US as adjectives, and usually as nouns. They are usually not capitalized in other countries, whether as nouns or adjectives.
  • anglophobe, francophobe, etc.: Words in this category are usually capitalized in all countries except Canada, where they sometimes are. The same applies to anglophobic.

Romanize, Latinize, and related words are sometimes lowercased in a linguistic context in particular, but more often capitalized; italic[s], in the typography sense, is always lowercase.

Animals, plants, and other organisms

Scientific names

Scientific names including genus and species (sometimes also subspecies, or other infraspecific names) have an initial capital letter for the genus, but not for the [sub]species (and are always italicized): the tulip tree is Liriodendron tulipifera; all modern humans are Homo sapiens. More specifically:

  • The names of genera are always capitalized (and italicized), even when not paired with a species name: Allosaurus, Falco, Anas.
  • The second part of a binomial species name is never capitalized, even when derived from a proper name (but is always italicized), and is always preceded by either the genus name, or a capitalized abbreviation of it if the full version has occurred previously in the same text: Thomson's gazelle is Eudorcas thomsonii or E. thomsonii.
  • In zoology, the same applies to the third part of a trinomial name: the arctic wolf is Canis lupus arctos or C. l. arctos.
  • In botany, the third part of a trinomial is preceded by an indication of rank which is not italicized: Poa secunda subsp. juncifolia, Acanthocalycium klimpelianum var. macranthum.

Cultivar and cultivar group names of plants are not italicized, and are capitalized. Cultivar names appear within single quotes: Malus domestica 'Red Delicious'. Cultivar groups do not use quotation marks, but do include and capitalize the word "Group" in the name: Cynara cardunculus Scolymus Group. While the ICNCP has recently preferred the term "Group" (used by itself and capitalized) to refer to the cultivar group concept, please use the lower-case phrase "cultivar group" (aside from "Group" within an actual scientific name), as it is both less ambiguous and less typographically confusing to the average reader.

Orders, families and other taxonomic ranks above genus level have an initial capital letter (and are not italicized): bats belong to the order Chiroptera; rats and mice are members of the family Muridae and the order Rodentia. However, there is generally an English form derived from the Latin name, and this should not be capitalised (nor italicized): members of the order Chiroptera are chiropterans; members of the family Muridae are murids and members of the order Rodentia are rodents.

Common names

Lower-case initial letters are used for each part of the common (vernacular) names of species, genera, families and all other taxonomic levels (bacteria, zebra, bottlenose dolphin, mountain maple, bald eagle), except where they contain a proper name (Przewalski's horse, Amur tiger, Roosevelt elk), or when such a name starts a sentence[a] (Black bears eat white suckers and blueberries). If interpretation could be ambiguous, use links or rewording to make it clearer.

As of 2017, wikiprojects for some groups of organisms are in the process of converting to sentence case where title case was previously used. Some articles may not have been changed yet (this may still be true of some insect articles and some plant ones, as well as a few on amphibians and reptiles).

Names of groups or types

The common name of a group of species or type of organism is always written in lower case (except where a proper name occurs):

  • New World monkeys, slime molds, rove beetles, great apes, mountain dogs, Van cats

This also applies to an individual creature of indeterminate species.

Calendar items

Capitalize the names of months, days, and holidays: June, Monday, Fourth of July, Michaelmas, the Ides of March. Seasons are uncapitalized (a hot summer) except when personified: soon Spring will show her colors; Old Man Winter.

Celestial bodies

The words sun, earth, moon and solar system are capitalized (as proper names) when used in an astronomical context to refer to a specific celestial body (The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System; the Moon orbits Earth). They are not capitalized when used outside an astronomical context (The sky was clear and the sun felt warm), or when used in a general sense (Io is a moon of Jupiter). However, they are capitalized in personifications, as in Sol Invictus ('Unconquered Sun') was the ancient Roman sun god.

Names of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, stars, constellations, and galaxies are proper names and begin with a capital letter (The planet Mars can be seen tonight in the constellation Gemini, near the star Pollux). The first letter of every word in such a name is capitalized (Alpha Centauri and not Alpha centauri; Milky Way, not Milky way). In the case of compounds with generic terms such as comet and galaxy (but not star or planet), the generic is retained at the end of the name and capitalized as part of it (Halley's Comet is the most famous of the periodic comets; astronomers describe the Andromeda Galaxy as a spiral galaxy). However, Milky Way galaxy is a descriptive phrase, without capitalized "galaxy", and should usually be reduced to the actual name, Milky Way, because that name is not ambiguous. If it is unclear what the Milky Way is in the context, consider using something clearer, like our galaxy, the Milky Way. Do not capitalize descriptive terms that precede the name of an astronomical object: comet Bradfield 1, galaxy HCM-6A.

Compass points

Points of the compass (north, north-east, southeast, etc.), and their derived forms (northern, southeasterly, etc.) are not generally capitalized: nine miles south of Oxford, a northern road. They are capitalized only when they form part of a proper name, such as Great North Road.

Doubts frequently arise when referring to regions, such as eastern Spain and Southern California. If one is consistently capitalized in reliable sources (as with North Korea, Southern California or Western Europe), then the direction word in it is capitalized. Otherwise it is not, as with eastern Spain or southwest Poland. If you are not sure whether a region has attained proper-name status, assume it has not.

Follow the same convention for related forms: a person from the Southern United States is a Southerner.

Compound compass points are usually fully compounded in American English, for example northwest, while in British English they are sometimes written as separate words or hyphenated, as in north-west. This also affects names of regions such as Southeastern United States and South East England. Finer compass points take a hyphen after the first word, regardless, and never use a space: south-southeast or south-south-east, but not south-south east, south southeast, etc.

Geological periods

The names of formally defined geological periods and the rock layers corresponding to them are capitalized. Thus the Devonian Period or the Late Cretaceous Epoch are internationally defined periods of time, whereas the late Cretaceous is an unspecified time towards the end of the Cretaceous. Do not capitalize outside a complete formal name: thus the Devonian is a period rather than the Devonian is a Period.

Headings, headers, and captions

Use sentence case, not title case, capitalization in all section headings. Capitalize the first letter of the first word, but leave the rest lower case except for proper names and other items that would ordinarily be capitalized in running text.

Use: Economic and demographic shifts after World War II
Avoid: Economic and Demographic Shifts After World War II

The same applies to the titles of articles, table headers and captions, the headers of infoboxes and navigation templates, and image captions and alt text. (For list items, see next section.)

Linking is easier if titles are in sentence case. It is easier for articles to be merged or split if headings resemble titles.

Initial letters in sentences and list items

The initial letter in a sentence[a] is capitalized. This does not apply if it begins with a letter which is always left uncapitalized (as in "eBay"; see § Items that require initial lower case, below), although it is usually preferable to recast the sentence.

When an independent clause ends with a dash or semicolon, the first letter of the following word should not be capitalized, even if it begins a new independent clause that could be a grammatically separate sentence: Cheese is a dairy product; bacon is not. The same usually applies after colons, although sometimes the word following a colon is capitalized, if that word effectively begins a new grammatical sentence, and especially if the colon serves to introduce more than one sentence. See WP:Manual of Style § Colons.

In a list, if each item of the list is a complete sentence, then it should be capitalized like any other sentence. If the list items are sentence fragments, then capitalization should be consistent – sentence case should be applied to either all or none of the items. See WP:Manual of Style § Bulleted and numbered lists.

Items that require initial lower case

In contexts where the case of symbols is significant, like those related to programming languages, mathematical notation (for example, the mathematical constant e is not equivalent to E), or the names of units of physical quantities or their symbols, the correct case should always be retained, even in situations where normal rules would require capitalization, such as at the beginning of a sentence.[a] Try to avoid putting such lowercase symbols (or any non-alphabetic ones) at the start of a sentence within running text. (See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Mathematics.)

Some individuals do not want their personal names capitalized. In such cases, Wikipedia articles may use lower case variants of personal names if they have regular and established use in reliable third-party sources (for example, k.d. lang). When such a name is the first word in a sentence, the rule for initial letters in sentences and list items should take precedence, and the first letter of the personal name should be capitalized regardless of personal preference.

For proprietary names such as eBay, see Trademarks § Notes, below.

If an article title begins with such a letter that needs to be in lower case (as in the above examples), use the {{lowercase}} template or equivalent code. Note that it is not currently possible to make categories display with an initial lowercase letter in an article's category box. Hence the link to Category:eBay at the foot of the article eBay must display as "EBay". Similarly the article title eBay will be displayed as "EBay" in the category listing.


  • Full names of institutions, organizations, companies, etc. (United States Department of State) are proper names and require capitals. Also treat as a proper name a shorter but still specific form, consistently capitalized in reliable generalist sources (e.g., US State Department or the State Department, depending on context).
    • Avoid ambiguous use of terms like "city"/"City" and "state"/"State" to indicate a governing body. Write clearly to indicate "the city council", the "state legislature", or "the state government".
    • The word the at the start of a title is uncapitalized, regardless of the institution's own usage (researchers at the Ohio State University not researchers at The Ohio State University).
    • If you are not sure whether the English translation of a foreign name is exact or not, assume it is rough and use lower case (e.g., the French parliament).
  • Generic words for institutions, organizations, companies, etc., and rough descriptions of them (university, college, hospital, church, high school) do not take capitals:
Incorrect (generic): The University offers programs in arts and sciences.
Correct (generic): The university offers programs in arts and sciences.
Correct (title): The University of Delhi offers programs in arts and sciences.
  • Political or geographical units such as cities, towns, and countries follow the same rules: As proper names they require capitals; but as generic words and rough descriptions (sometimes best omitted for simplicity) they do not.
Incorrect (generic): The City has a population of 55,000.
Correct (generic): The city has a population of 55,000.
Correct (title): The City of Smithville has a population of 55,000.
Correct ("city" omitted): Smithville has a population of 55,000.
Exception ("City" used as proper name for the City of London): In the medieval period, the City was the full extent of London.

Military terms

The general rule is that wherever a military term is an accepted proper name, as indicated by consistent capitalization in sources, it should be capitalized. Where there is uncertainty as to whether a term is generally accepted, consensus should be reached on the talk page.

  • Military ranks follow the same capitalization guidelines as given under § Titles of people, below. For example, Brigadier General John Smith, but John Smith was a brigadier general.
  • Formal names of military units, including armies, navies, air forces, fleets, regiments, battalions, companies, corps, and so forth, are proper names and should be capitalized. However, the words for types of military unit (army, navy, fleet, company, etc.) do not require capitalization if they do not appear in a proper name. Thus, the American army, but the United States Army. Unofficial but well-known names should also be capitalized (the Green Berets, the Guard).
    Correct: the Fifth Company; the Young Guard; the company rallied.
    Incorrect: The Company took heavy losses. The 3rd battalion retreated.
  • Accepted full names of wars, battles, revolts, revolutions, rebellions, mutinies, skirmishes, risings, campaigns, fronts, raids, actions, operations and so forth are capitalized (Spanish Civil War, Battle of Leipzig, Boxer Rebellion, Action of July 8, 1716, Western Front, Operation Sea Lion). The generic terms (war, revolution, battle) take the lowercase form when standing alone (France went to war; The battle began; The raid succeeded). As a rule of thumb, if a battle, war, etc. has its own Wikipedia article with capitalized name, the name should be capitalized in articles linked to it as it is in the article name.
  • Proper names of specific military awards and decorations are capitalized (Medal of Honor, Victoria Cross).
  • Terms, such as soldier, sailor, airman, marine, and coast guardsman, are to be written in the lower case when referencing to an individual or a group of individuals. This guidance does not apply when the term is used as a rank (see above in such a case) but rather, when applied to identify the service to which the individual|s belong.
    Correct: the soldiers landed on the beach.
    Incorrect: John Doe is a Marine (would be correct with lowercase marine)

Musical and literary genres

Names of musical or literary genres do not require capitalization at all, unless the genre name contains a proper name such as the name of a place. For example:

Incorrect: The Rouge Admins are a Goa Trance band.
Incorrect: The Rouge Admins are a goa trance band.
Correct: The Rouge Admins are a Goa trance band.
Incorrect: The French Boys are a Psychedelic Rock band.
Correct: The French Boys are a psychedelic rock band.
Incorrect: Asimov is widely considered a master of Science Fiction.
Correct: Asimov is widely considered a master of science fiction.

Radio formats such as adult contemporary or classic rock are also not capitalized. Nor are dance types, genres, styles, moves, or social activities (ballets de cour, ballroom dancing, traditional square dance, rock step, line dancing). Proper names, as always are excepted: St. Louis shag.

Dance genres and styles are treated the same; see § Sports, games, and other activities.

Proper names

Proper names of specific places, persons, terms, etc. are capitalized in accordance with standard usage: Winston Churchill, John de Balliol, Wales, Tel Aviv, Three Great Gardens of Japan, etc.

Most adjectives derived from proper names should be capitalized, e.g. the English people, the Kantian imperative, with occasional established exceptions such as teddy bear.

Some terms contain personal names used in a way that does not refer to any specific individual; these are not proper names, and are lower-cased: jack in the pulpit, round-robin, nine men's morris.[h]

Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines, and their adherents

Names of organized religions (as well as officially recognized sects), whether as a noun or an adjective, and their adherents start with a capital letter. Unofficial movements, ideologies or philosophies within religions are generally not capitalized unless derived from a proper name. For example, Islam, Christianity, Catholic, Pentecostal and Calvinist are capitalized, while evangelicalism and fundamentalism are not.

Proper names and titles referencing deities are capitalized: God, Allah, Freyja, the Lord, the Supreme Being, the Messiah. The same is true when referring to important religious figures, such as Muhammad, by terms such as the Prophet. Common nouns not used as titles should not be capitalized: the Norse gods, personal god. In a biblical context, God is capitalized only when it refers to the Judeo-Christian deity, and prophet is generally not capitalized.

Transcendent ideas in the Platonic sense may also begin with a capital letter: Good and Truth. Nouns (other than names) referring to any material or abstract representation of any deity, human or otherwise, are not capitalized.

Pronouns for deities and figures of veneration are not capitalized, even if capitalized in a religion's scriptures: Jesus addressed his followers, not Jesus addressed His followers (except in a direct quotation).

The names of major revered works of scripture like the Bible, the Qur'an, the Talmud, and the Vedas should be capitalized (but are often not italicized). The adjective biblical should not be capitalized. Koranic is normally capitalized, but usage varies for talmudic, vedic, etc. Be consistent within an article.

Do not capitalize terms denoting types of religious or mythical beings, such as angel, fairy or deva. The personal names of individual beings are capitalized as normal (the angel Gabriel). An exception to the general rule is made when such terms are used to denote races and the like in science fiction or fantasy, in which case they are capitalized if the work capitalizes them (the Elves of Tolkien's Middle-earth).

Spiritual or religious events are capitalized only when referring to specific incidents or periods (the Great Flood and the Exodus; but annual flooding and an exodus of refugees).

Doctrines, philosophies, theologies, theories, movements, methods, processes, systems of thought and practice, and fields of study are not capitalized, unless the name derives from a proper name: lowercase republican refers to a system of political thought; uppercase Republican refers to a specific Republican Party (each being a proper name). Even so, watch for idiom: Platonic idealism but a platonic relationship. Doctrinal topics, canonical religious ideas, and procedural systems that may be traditionally capitalized within a faith or field are given in lower case in Wikipedia, such as virgin birth (as a common noun), original sin, transubstantiation, and method acting.

Science and mathematics

In the names of scientific and mathematical concepts, only proper names (or words derived from them) should be capitalized: Hermitian matrix or Lorentz transformation. However, some established exceptions exist, such as abelian group and Big Bang theory.

Sports, games, and other activities

Trademarked sports and games are capitalized like any other trademarks. Those that are published works (board games, roleplaying games, video games) are italicized like titles of other major works: Scrabble, Dungeons & Dragons, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Non-stand-alone add-on publications, such as RPG modules and DLCs are minor works and take quotation marks. Sport and game rule books and rule sets are also capitalized, italicized works; named chapters within them take quotation marks, and may be given in sentence case or title case as appropriate for the context, as with chapters of other works. (For more information on titles of works, see WP:Manual of Style/Titles.)

Sports, games, and other activities that are not trademarked or copyrighted are not capitalized (except where one contains a proper name or acronym, or begins a sentence). This includes groups of sports or games (winter sports, carom billiards, trick-taking card games), traditional sports including modern ones (field hockey, triathlon, BASE jumping), traditional games (Texas hold 'em poker, chess, spin-the-bottle), folk and social dances and dance styles kołomyjka, Viennese waltz, line dancing), and other such group and solo activities (flash mob, hackathon, birthday party, workout, biology class, political rally, binge-watch, speed dating, tweeting).

Likewise, venue types, sports equipment, game pieces, rules, moves, techniques, jargon, and other terms relating to sports, games, and activities are given in lower-case (with the standard exceptions), and do not receive other special stylization such as italics or boldface: football pitch, pool cue, queen of diamonds, infield fly rule, triple Lutz, semi-massé, spear tackle).

There are occasional, conventionalized variances, e.g.:

  • Standardized chess openings are capitalized (Queen's Gambit, Neo-Grünfeld Defence).[i]
  • The McTwist, an aerial skateboarding move, is named for its inventor, Mike McGill, and would be confusing as "mctwist".[j]
  • Olympic[s] and Paralympic[s] are capitalized, including when used as adjectives; eSports is commonly rendered camelcase, though e-sports is also frequently seen.

Specific titles and events (or series thereof) are capitalized: WPA World Nine-ball Champion, Tour de France, Americas Cup. Generic usage is not: a three-time world champion, international tournaments. None take italics or other special markup.

The above rules of thumb should also be applied to glossary entries; they are collectively an exception to the general practice of starting all list items with a capital letter. (For our most-developed example of a sports and games glossary article, see Glossary of cue sports terms.)

Plans for specific sports/games MoS pages mostly faltered, but much that is in the surviving ones generalizes – writing about players, governing bodies, events and sponsors, competitive divisions, etc.:

There are also three related naming-conventions guidelines:

Various games- and sports-related wikiprojects also provide advice essays that often include topical style, naming, and layout tips (however, many aren't well-maintained, and may conflict with some current guideline and policy wording; remember that they are essays).

Capitalization of "The"

Do not ordinarily capitalize the definite article after the first word of a sentence;[a] however, some idiomatic expressions, including the titles of artistic and academic works, should be quoted exactly according to common usage.

Correct (generic): an article about the United Kingdom
Incorrect an article about The United Kingdom (a redirect)
Correct (title): J. R. R. Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings.
Incorrect J. R. R. Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings. (a redirect)
Correct (title): Homer wrote the Odyssey.
Incorrect Homer wrote The Odyssey. (a redirect)
Correct (exception): public transport in The Hague[k]
Incorrect public transport in the Hague (a redirect)
Correct (exception): competed in The Open Championship (a specific golf tournament conventionally styled this way)
Incorrect competed in The British Open (a redirect from a description not a name)

Titles of people

The key capitalization-related points from the main guideline are summarized below.

  • Apply lower case to titles when used to describe a position, such as: (de Gaulle was a French president; Louis XVI was a French king; Three prime ministers attended the conference).
  • When preceding a person's name as a title, begin such words with a capital letter (President Lincoln, not president Lincoln). A standard or commonly used name (not description or rewording) of an office is also capitalized when used with a name (The British Prime Minister is Theresa May; Hirohito was Emperor of Japan; Louis XVI was King of France) or when it is the subject itself (The Lord Mayor of Brisbane is ...).
  • A title used as a stand-in for a specific person's name is capitalized: when the Queen and the President met on 22 April 2016.
  • Do not capitalize after a hyphen (Vice-president of Marketing Chris Chung). If an unhyphenated compound title is capitalized (unless this is simply because it begins a sentence),[a] each major word begins with a capital letter: Vice President of the United States Spiro T. Agnew.
  • Do not add academic or professional titles to names, as in Professor Colombo or Sam O'Brien, PhD. An occasional exception is made for clarifying that person's qualifications with regard to a claim attributed in an article, but this is better explained in descriptive text. Follow WP:Manual of Style/Abbreviations as to the rendering of academic degree abbreviations. Words like "professor" and "doctor" are not capitalized except when attached to names or as part of a proper name such as an endowment (the Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunication Systems at the University of Pennsylvania).
  • Post-nominal letters signifying honours are capitalized, being acronyms. Notable ones may be added sparingly to a subject's lead sentence, but are avoided otherwise. The {{postnom}} template exists for this, and various biographical infoboxes also support a parameter for it.
  • Noble styles and ecclesiastical honorifics are capitalized when mentioned (Her Majesty; His Highness, His Holiness), but are not used in Wikipedia's own voice as honorifics.

Particulars and exceptions may apply for specific titles; the main guideline provides additional detail.

Titles of works

In English-language titles, every word except for articles, short coordinating conjunctions, and short prepositions is capitalized, as are the first and last words within a title (including a subtitle). This is known as title case. Capitalization of non-English titles varies by language.

This is not applied to Wikipedia's own articles, which are given in sentence case:[a] capitalize the first letter, and proper names (e.g., List of selection theorems, Foreign policy of the Hugo Chávez administration).


For trademarks, editors should choose among styles already in common use (not invent new ones) and, among those, use the style that most closely resembles standard English text formatting and capitalization rules. For trademarks that are given in mixed or non-capitalization by their owners (such as adidas), follow the formatting and capitalization used by independent reliable sources. When sources are mixed, follow the standard formatting and capitalization used for proper names (in this case, as in most, Adidas). The mixed or non-capitalized formatting should be mentioned in the article lead, or illustrated with a graphical logo.

Trademarks beginning with a one-letter lowercase prefix pronounced as a separate letter, followed by a capitalized second letter, such as iPod and eBay, are written in that form if this has become normal English usage for that name. For considerations relating to such items, see § Items that require initial lower case, above.


  1. ^ a b c d e f g Wikipedia uses sentence case for sentences, article titles, section titles, table headers, image captions, list entries (in most cases), and entries in infoboxes and similar templates, among other things. Any instructions in MoS about the start of a sentence apply to items using sentence case.
  2. ^ E.g.: "Troops Use Machine Gun on Boston Mob: 5,000 Guarding City as Riots Continue – City Acclaims Parade of Fighting First". The New York Times. September 10, 1919. Retrieved January 8, 2009. 
  3. ^ The alphabet in which Latin and related languages were originally written had no lower case.
  4. ^ While some (primarily news) publishers prefer small caps over all caps for acronyms and initialisms, this is not the majority usage. As a more practical concern, Wikipedia has tens of millions of acronyms in its articles, and marking up all of them in small caps would be a nearly endless drain on editorial productivity, while complicating the wikicode for no clear reader or editor benefit.
  5. ^ Various bible editions put "Lord", "God", "Jesus", and even all words attributed to Jesus in red or otherwise highlighted text. This is not done on Wikipedia.
  6. ^ As with non-Latin-based scripts like Cyrillic and Chinese being automatically distinct from English, the presentation of ancient Latin, Gaulish, etc., in small caps makes italicizing it as non-English a superfluous over-stylization, and may even be misinterpreted to imply that the original inscription was slanted, defeating the attempt at fairly faithful reproduction.
  7. ^ Template {{sc}} reduces input to all lowercase (when copy-pasted), but displayed as smallcaps: {{sc|AbCdEF}} produces ABCDEF, copy-pastes as abcdef. The actual rule in linguistics has been expressed as "Put glosses of grammatical morphemes into a font which contrasts some way with the font used for glosses which translate lexical morphemes."[2] While small caps is often recommended,[3][4] not forcing these abbreviations to uppercase permits reusers of our content to use whatever styling suits their purposes.
  8. ^ Nine men's morris is actually a "false friend" case; the morris in this is not Morris/Maurice, nor the Morris (alteration of Moorish) in Morris dancing, but a corruption of Latin merellus, 'gamepiece'. Wikipedia does not capitalize non-names simply because they look like names.
  9. ^ Chess openings are usually capitalized even in non-specialist works such as newspapers and novels, and near-universally in chess-specific ones, so this meets the Wikipedia "consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources" standard.
  10. ^ McTwist is consistent with camelcase treatment of similar words derived from Mc- names, e.g. McJob, McMansion.
  11. ^ The capitalized "The" in The Hague is an exception because virtually all reliable sources consistently make this exception, and it is listed in major off-Wikipedia style guides and dictionaries as conventionally spelled this way.


  1. ^ Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
  2. ^ Macaulay, Monica Ann (2006). Surviving Linguistics: A Guide for Graduate Students. Cascadilla Press. 
  3. ^ Beck, David; Gerdts, Donna, eds. (24 May 2017). "Style for the formatting of interlinearized linguistic examples" (PDF). International Journal of American Linguistics. University of Chicago Press. Retrieved 26 November 2017. 
  4. ^ Committee of Editors of Linguistics Journals (31 May 2015). "The Leipzig Glossing Rules: Conventions for interlinear morpheme-by-morpheme glosses" (PDF). Max Planck Institute / University of Leipzig. Retrieved 26 November 2017. 
  5. ^ Sources have been consulted for the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, but not for Ireland or South Africa. Sources: US: Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th ed., The New Oxford American Dictionary. Canada: The Canadian Oxford Dictionary, Gage Canadian Dictionary. UK: The Oxford Dictionary of English (2nd ed., revised), The Concise Oxford-Hachette French Dictionary (English–French). Australia: The Australian Oxford Dictionary. New Zealand: The New Zealand Oxford Dictionary.
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