A Military Writer's Handbook
Words

Capitalization

Capital letters have three basic uses: to distinguish proper nouns and adjectives, to highlight words in titles and headings, and to give emphasis. Follow the guidelines and examples of proper capitalization below when submitting written assignments at RMC or within DND correspondence.

Proper Nouns and Adjectives

Proper nouns and adjectives are always capitalized. A proper noun refers to a particular person, place, or thing, and often takes the form of a name or title, for example, Lieutenant Chris Saunders, HMCS Chicoutimi. A proper adjective employs a proper noun as an adjective, for example, Marxist. A common noun, which denotes a general class of objects or a concept, is only capitalized when it is a part of a proper noun, as in Main Street. Knowing whether a word is either "common" or "proper" will help you to determine whether or not it should be capitalized.

1. Person

a) Always capitalize the personal pronoun "I."
I wish great success and prosperity to Canadian Military Journal, and I look forward to reading future issues.
                         ~ Art Eggleton, MP, Minister of National Defence

b) Capitalize nationalities, language groups, and people.
The French are known as Francophones because they speak French, while the English are known as Anglophones because they speak English.

c) Capitalize corporate, professional, and governmental titles, as well as titles of office or rank, when they immediately precede a person's name.
While it may be true for the authoritarian management style of Prime Minister Chrétien, it certainly does not hold for past prime ministers, including Brian Mulroney, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, or Louis St. Laurent, all of whom ensured that defence policy was made through Cabinet consensus," writes Commander Hayden.

Do not capitalize when indirectly referring to the same person.
The commander observed that when Chrétien was elected prime minister, he instituted a more authoritarian management style than that of previous prime ministers.

d) Capitalize the names of sacred persons as well as the followers of a particular religion.
According to Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI is the head of both church and state.

2. Place

a) Always capitalize place names.
Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan;
Mozambique

b) Capitalize nouns and adjectives designating parts of the world, regions of a country, or compass points that have political or other connotations.
The situation in the Middle East is always in flux
The Arctic Human Development Report both identifies problems encountered in the North today and highlights success stories.

Do not capitalize compass points when referring to a simple direction.
The troops moved north for several miles until they came to a town on the east side
of the river.

3. Thing

a) Capitalize governments and government bodies.
the Commons and the Senate,
the Department of National Defence.

b) Capitalize the days of the week and holidays.
On Tuesday of next week, I plan to go home for Hanukkah.

Do not capitalize the names of the seasons within text.
Operations are set to begin in the spring.

c) Capitalize elements of hyphenated compounds only if they are proper nouns or adjectives.
Arab-Israeli negotiations.
Spanish-speaking people.

d) Capitalize terms that identify geological eras, periods, epochs, and strata.
The class studied the Mesozoic era.
All the students wanted to learn more about the Age of Reptiles

e) Capitalize nouns and adjectives designating philosophical, literary, musical, and artistic movements, styles, and schools if they are derived from proper nouns.
Chopin was a composer of the Romantic period.
In architecture, the Bauhaus school was highly influential in the early 20thcentury.

f) Capitalize the name of religions and sacred things.
Muhammad founded Islam.
the Shroud of Turin

g) Capitalize historical events, documents, periods, and movements.
The Battle of Ortona, in Italy, conducted by 1st Canadian Infantry Division in December of 1943, is surely one of the highlights of Canadian military history.

Do not capitalize nouns and adjectives designating political and economic systems and their proponents, unless derived from a proper noun.
The country's ideas of democracy originated in Greece.
Americans have a strong feeling of nationalism.
Some countries, however, lean toward Marxism.

h) Capitalize acronyms. With the exception of RSVP, CD, and ID, abbreviations are usually written out on first reference, with the acronym following in parentheses.
Since the early 1990s, there has been much debate in the military and defence policy literature as to whether the world is undergoing a ‘Revolution in Military Affairs' (RMA).

i) Capitalize the first word and all nouns in a salutation, but only the first word in a closing phrase.
Dear Madam
Yours truly

Titles and Headings

1. Capitalize and italicize (or underline) words in titles of books, long poems, magazines, newspapers, plays, movies, pamphlets, CDs, long musical compositions, radio and TV programs, and works of art.
Who Killed the Canadian Military? was reviewed by the journal.
 The Globe and Mail ran the story yesterday.

2. Capitalize and put in quotation marks the titles of short poems, short stories, essays, lectures, dissertations, book chapters, articles, grant proposals, and songs.
John McCrae's "In Flanders Fields" is a popular wartime poem.
According to CBC Radio, "Four Strong Winds" is the number one Canadian song.

3. Capitalize common titles of book sections when they refer to a section in the same book.
See the Appendix for further information.

Do not capitalize indirect references to the same.
I have not read the introduction to her book.

4. Where colons fall within titles of papers, articles, chapters, and books, the first word after a colon will always be capitalized.
Monuments of War: The evaluation, recording and management of twentieth century military sites.

6) Capitalize nouns used with numbers or letters to designate specific reference headings or titles.
See Table 3 for more information.
Refer to Chapter 7 for more details.

Capitalization and Punctuation

1. Always capitalize the beginning of a sentence.

2. After either a comma or a colon, the beginning of a quote is capitalized only if it begins a complete sentence.
But we should ask, "Can the government achieve its foreign policy objectives with a smaller naval capability?" This is a tough question. The political answer is probably "Yes," while the naval answer is almost certainly "No."

Emphasis

Phrases that appear in "all caps" (each letter capitalized) are understood to communicate emphasis and in some cases constitute shouting in print. A WebCT message in all caps, for example, suggests that the author is either angry or excited (THIS CONCLUSION IS WRONGHEADED!), while an order written in all caps from a superior might be meant to indicate that the phrase is noteworthy ("Proceed with EXERCISE RAPIER THRUST"). It is therefore important to know your audience's expectations when using capitals for emphasis.