Copy-editor's Corner: Capitalisation

Someone once said to me that they thought written German looked “scary” because of all the capital letters. I suppose I can see their point, since as English speakers we associate capital letters with Important Words and SHOUTING.

But once you’ve spent some time with the German language, the capitalisation of all German nouns seems to make perfect sense. And it’s helpful for learners when reading a text – you may have no idea what the word means but at least you know it’s a noun, which is a start.

When it comes to writing in German, the advantage is that there never needs to be any question about whether or not to capitalise a noun. In English it’s a different story. Obviously, nouns that begin a sentence take an initial capital, as do names of people (with some notable exceptions, e.g. bell hooks) and places. Beyond that, the rules – or lack of them – can be confusing even for native speakers.

An example of an unnecessary initial cap I’ve seen on a company website recently is “we also keep stock items for our Customers”. Perhaps the confusion arose here because the word “customer” may be capitalised in a legal document such as a contract. Also, I think there is a perception that important terms within a text need capitals.

As a copy editor, though, I would mark the C down to lower case. The same goes for the C, the H and the W in these examples, also spotted on commercial websites: “we contribute to Carbon removal” and “the item should be Hand Washed”. Generally, initial capitals should be used sparingly; as copy editors, we try to keep to a minimum those features that disturb the general visual harmony of a text, such as bold and italic type, quotation marks and asterisks.

As (classic copy-editing handbook) Hart’s Rules says, “Overuse of initial capitals is considered obtrusive”.