This post on breaking capitalization rules is part of our blog series on creatively breaking grammar rules. Visit our first post in this series to learn more about this series and its goals!
The focus of this post is one of the most basic conventions in the English language: capitalization. You know: making letters UPPERCASE instead of lowercase. When do writers break capitalization rules? When can and should writers break capitalization rules, and why should writers break capitalization rules?
There are three primary capitalization rules in English. Let’s address each of them one at a time while simultaneously discussing whether or not writers should break those rules.
Rule 1: The first letter of the first word of a new sentence is capitalized.
This rule exists because the uppercase letter at the beginning of a sentence alerts readers to the fact that a new sentence has begun. This makes the writing easier to follow along with and digest.
Here’s an example: “At the dog park, Mary let her husky play with a poodle.”
To break or not to break?
Breaking this capitalization rule is certainly a topic of debate, especially in modern times.
You’ve probably seen the trend on certain social media sites where users don’t use uppercase letters at all, including when they begin new sentences. (For an example of this, see the example from Wonder below.)
This trend is unpacked beautifully in the article, “the surprising reasons we turn off autocaps and embrace the lowercase.” Jess Joho, the cultural critic and editor who wrote the article, explains that the goals of this trend are multifold, and they include: 1) rebelling against “elitist” writing norms, 2) appealing to a certain aesthetic (both to stand out and fit in), and 3) conveying casualness and coolness.
Casual social media posts aren’t the only places where this trend has emerged; it has a place in more creative writing, as well.
Here is an excerpt from Wonder by R. J. Palacio. Wonder contains multiple points of view, and this excerpt comprises one character’s—Justin’s—point of view. Justin doesn’t use capital letters at all, and his section is the only section that does this:
the first time i meet Olivia’s little brother, i have to admit i’m totally taken by surprise.
i shouldn’t be, of course. olivia’s told me about his “syndrome.” has even described what he looks like. but she’s also talked about all his surgeries over the years, so i guess i assumed he’d be more normal-looking by now. like when a kid is born with a cleft palate and has plastic surgery to fix it sometimes you can’t even tell except for the little scar above the lip. i guess i thought her brother would have some scars here and there. but not this. i definitely wasn’t expecting to see this little kid in a baseball cap who’s sitting in front of me right now.
Palacio had a specific goal when she chose to use all lowercase (and to break various capitalization rules as a result) in Justin’s section, which she describes in her Tumblr blog:
Why is Justin’s part written without uppercase letters and without proper punctuation?
I played trombone for seven years through middle school and high school. And I remember thinking back then, especially when I would get into the really low notes, that notes on a musical staff looked a little like lowercase letters of the alphabet. I don’t play anything now but I can still read music, and I still think that way. Ascenders and descenders remind me of half note and quarter notes, depending on where they fall on the staff. The baseline of a letter is a bit like a ledger line. Certain serif faces even have strokes that call to mind that graceful little flag on top of the stem of a note. Maybe it’s because I’ve been a graphic designer for so many years, but I’m trained to see typefaces and fonts not just as communication devices, but as visual cues for other things. So when it came to writing from Justin’s point of view, because he’s a musician, someone who thinks in musical terms, it just seemed natural for me to use lowercase letters to represent his thoughts in a very visual way. He’s the kind of person who doesn’t talk a lot, because he’s naturally shy, but has a lot going on inside. The running monologue inside his head has no time for capital letters or punctuation: it’s like his thoughts are streaming inside his mind.
As shown in her post, Palacio has a creative goal for omitting uppercase letters: she wants to represent Justin’s thoughts in a “visual way,” demonstrating the way that his thoughts are “streaming inside his mind.” Because Palacio writes from the points of view of various characters in Wonder, I suspect that another reason she didn’t use uppercase letters in Justin’s section was to set that section apart from other characters’ sections. Regardless of her reasoning, Justin’s lack of punctuation certainly makes his writing look like that of a cool and casual modern kid.
Can you think of any other good reasons to break this rule?
Here’s the next major capitalization rule:
Rule 2: Proper nouns are capitalized.
This rule exists because the uppercase letters alert readers to the fact that the nouns are, in fact, proper nouns, which distinguishes them from common nouns.
Proper nouns are nouns that represent specific people, places, ideas, or things. For example, the name Rami Malek is capitalized, as Rami Malek represents a specific person. Olive Garden is capitalized, as Olive Garden represents a specific place. Harry Potter and the Halfblood Prince is a title that uses “title case”—a convention using mostly uppercase letters—because it represents a specific “thing” (a specific book).
While the explanation of what proper nouns are might seem straightforward, it really isn’t. There are times when it can be really difficult to understand when something is “specific” enough to be considered a proper noun and warrant capitalization.
To break or not to break?
In addition to conveying informality, breaking this capitalization rule is often done as a means of showing that something is not “proper” enough to be considered a proper noun. Writers sometimes refer to this process as “decapitalization.” In certain contexts, writers may choose to decapitalize proper nouns to downplay their uniqueness and emphasize their commonness. This can be done to convey a sense of familiarity or to avoid giving undue prominence to a specific entity. Decapitalization is a common process, and widely applied decapitalization, when adopted by style guides, effectively changes something from being a proper noun to being a common noun. The change usually reflects the fact that the word, which is usually a word that was initially used to describe something new and unique, has entered into common usage.
For example, scholars and journalists used to widely capitalize the word “Internet,” but many styles guides now prefer the decapitalized version of the word: “internet.” This is just one word that has gone through widespread decapitalization.
As the New York Times describes, “The term internet (short for internetwork) described any linked network of computers, so the capital ‘I’ served to distinguish the global network from other internets — a pointless distinction now…” (since nobody outside of the tech world ever distinguishes internets from the Internet).
Wired has a great article about the Internet → internet trend, including their own decision to stop capitalizing “internet,” along with insights on decapitalization in general. It talks about writers initially capitalize new entities to convey that they are unique entities. But as we talk about those entities more and more, they become common to us, and thus they enter into common usage. The article says that “decapitalizing internet is part of a universal linguistic tendency to reduce the amount of effort required to produce and process commonly-used words. Not only does decapitalization save a click of the shift key, but, as one marketing website put it, ‘Capital letters are speed bumps for the eyes when reading. They should be eliminated where possible.’ Reduction of effort is a powerful driver of decapitalization.”
The controversiality of this rule often boils down to controversies involved in whether or not something should be considered a proper noun or not. For example, whether to capitalize the words “black” and “white” when referring to race is a hugely fraught controversy, summed up neatly in an analysis by the Columbia Journalism Review. The analysis talks about how white supremacist sites often capitalize White but not black to reinforce their agenda, but many style guides capitalize Black but not white because of the strong sense of identity aligned with the Black identity marker, which isn’t equaled by the sense of identity aligned with white identity marker. Still, many style guides choose to capitalize neither black nor white to avoid making it seem like one is more proper than the other.
Another interesting case of decapitalization is the famous case of feminist scholar and writer bell hooks (yes, you read that right—her name is not capitalized). According to the Washington Post, bell hooks was “born Gloria Jean Watkins [and] wanted a way to honor her maternal great-grandmother while detaching herself from her work. She wrote dozens of books using her great-grandmother’s name but didn’t capitalize it.” The Post’s article also says, “During a 2013 visit to Rollins College, [hooks] told an audience that she always wrote her name in lowercase because she wanted people to focus on her books, not ‘who I am.’ (Ironically, the spelling of her name became a matter of public fascination.)” hooks’ reasoning for decapitalizing her name was practical, but many people view her choice as a political statement.
What other cases of decapitalization exist? When do you choose to intentionally decapitalize words?
Here is the final primary capitalization rule:
Rule 3: The personal pronoun “I” is capitalized.
One of the cases of of pronominal capitalization is the capitalization of the personal pronoun “I.” Here’s an example: “I went to the park, and I played with my husky and someone else’s poodle.” When you think about it, this rule doesn’t make very much sense. One could say the rule exists because “I” represents a proper noun, but if that is the case, then why are none of the other personal pronouns (like “you,” “we,” or “she”) capitalized?
English is the only language to capitalize the personal pronoun “I.” In other languages, equivalent pronouns are left uncapitalized.
Thesaurus.com says there are two theories historians have regarding the rule: 1) because the lowercase i is hard to read, and 2) because capitalization conveys a sense of importance about the writer. I also read somewhere that since the personal pronoun “I” was often used to begin sentences, it was always capitalized (as according to rule #1).
This capitalization has persisted, and there are arguments that it should cease to exist.
To break or not to break?
As shown above in the example from Wonder, in which Justin fails to capitalize i, creative writers can break this rule for the same reasons that writers don’t capitalize the first letters of sentences: to rebel against norms, to appeal to a certain aesthetic, and to convey casualness. Breaking this rule might even serve as a political statement, an act of rebellion against individualism and self-obsession.
I’ve also seen a fair amount of creative writers use lowercase i’s to reflect the reality of digital communication. For example, if a work of fiction contains text messages, the text messages might use lowercase i’s.
Also: the rule to begin all other personal pronouns with lowercase pronouns can be and is broken. For example, reverential capitalization is used (sometimes against the rules of style guides) for pronouns referring to deities, including the use of He and Him for God. (But even reverential capitalization is up for debate.)
What other reasons can you see for breaking this rule, particularly in creative writing?
Capitalization rules can be broken for all sorts of purposes, from personal to political purposes. Lowercase letters can be used in rebellion or in solidarity with others. Creative writers can break capitalization rules to create a certain aesthetic or capture certain setting or character traits.
Creative writers who do choose to break such rules should think carefully about the potential consequences. Recall the four-step process from the first blog post in this series:
- Understand the rule.
- Determine your goal(s) for breaking the rule.
- Determine your intended readers.
- Weigh the potential negative reader-focused consequences against the positive outcomes of your goal.
If you do break capitalization rules, will you unintentionally obscure the intended meaning of your sentence? Will readers believe you to be ignorant of the rule and punish you for it? Or will you turn off your readers?
Most importantly: will the positive outcomes of the broken rule—such as the aesthetic it creates, the rebellion it communicates, or the setting it captures—outweigh any negative reader-focused consequences?
I hope you enjoyed this post! Please feel free to share if you ever break capitalization rules and why. We’d love to hear from you!