Capital letters

Capital letters tend to interrupt the flow of reading. They can also look pompous, so try to reserve them for their proper uses.

The basic rule is that capital letters should only be used for the first letter of a heading or sentence, eg for a heading: 'When to use capital letters' and not 'When To Use Capital Letters'.

Avoid putting whole words or chunks of text into capitals - it is much harder to read than lowercase letters. Use bold or italics if you need to emphasise text (see Emphasising text).

Names of departments should have initial capital letters, eg Adult Services Department. The same goes for specific job titles, eg Director of Children's Services, Printing Manager. General job titles such as social worker or architect do not need capital letters.

'The County Council' needs capital letters as it refers to a specific body. When writing about county councils or district councils in general, capitals are not necessary. This prevents confusion. 'County Council policy' means our policy in Hampshire; 'county council policy' means the approach of county councils in general.

'The Government' refers to a particular body and therefore needs a capital letter, but 'government policy' is standard English as 'government' is being used as an adjective.

As 'local authority' is not a proper name, it does not need capitals.

It is tempting to give capital letters to policies because their abbreviations take the form of capitals. However, while 'LMS' is perfectly correct, 'local management of schools' does not need capital letters.