Capitalization Woes

Today's topic: Capitalization Woes

When should you capitalize a job title?  The name of an academic program, department, or degree?  The name of a theory or model?  These can drive us crazy, so allow me to help.

Job titles:

• Capitalize a job title if it immediately precedes a person's name.  Example: We asked Interim Dean Howard to attend the meeting.
• Capitalize a job title if it immediately follows a person's name when the word "the" does NOT precede the job title. Example: Jane Doe, Director of Ad Sales, will lead tomorrow employee training workshop.
• When the word "the" precedes the job title, do not capitalize.  Example: Ms. Bishop, the faculty support associate, has worked here for 20 years.
• Capitalize job titles in signature lines (see my signature line at the end of this email).
• Do not capitalize a job title if you are using it descriptively.  Example: Michael Simpson, who is an editor at Knopf, is coming to the dinner party on Friday.

One caveat:  The ego of an employer or colleague may sometimes require you to flout these grammatical rules.  If someone (particularly your boss or supervisor) wants you to capitalize his or her job title, go ahead and do it.  MANY people do not know these rules, and you will frequently see them broken.

Academic departments and courses:

• Capitalize the name of an academic department if it refers to a specific department at a specific college or university (same goes for names of courses--capitalize if you are referring to a specific course).  Examples:  University of Kentucky College of Nursing, Nursing 234: Concepts and Theories, Women's Studies 204: Portrayal of Women in the Media.  A college of nursing in Delaware offers courses in...  Sarah wanted to take two psychology courses and one sociology course.  Jack chose an anthropology course, a German course, and a statistics course. (Note that German is capitalized because it is based on a proper noun, Germany--the same would be true for English, Spanish, French, etc.)

Academic degrees:  I should note that the rules for this do differ a bit from style guide to style guide.  The following rules are based on the AP (Associated Press) style guide, which is the standard for journalistic writing (newspapers and magazines, as well as a great deal of online content).

• Capitalize the names of an academic degree when it follows a name.  Example: Tonight's keynote speaker will be Mark Janowicz, Master of Fine Arts.  Note that some style guides say to capitalize the degree if it comes before the person's name as well.  Since style guides differ, the key is to choose a method and be consistent.
• Do not capitalize the name of an academic degree if you are using it descriptively.  Examples: John got his master's degree in theology and his bachelor's in history. Amelia is studying for her doctorate in nursing. Caveat: If the degree includes a proper noun, capitalize the proper noun.  Example:  Jana has a bachelor's degree in English with a minor in French.  Simon has a master's degree in biology and a bachelor's degree in Spanish.
• Do not capitalize the names of disciplines.  Example: I have a passion for nursing.  My goal is to teach high school science some day.

Contrary to popular belief, do NOT capitalize the title of:

• A theory or model (unless it contains a proper noun--in that case, capitalize only the proper noun, as in Doe's theory of blah).  Examples: We are studying the health belief model.  I read a fascinating paper on social support theory last week.
• A therapy or technique. Example: We practice patient-centered therapy.
• A disease or disorder (unless it contains a proper name). Examples: The patient suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder.  My grandfather had Lou Gehrig's disease (note that only the proper name is capitalized, not the word "disease").

And more...

Check out this fantastic resource from the APA Style Blog.  It offers quick reference charts which cover APA guidelines on whether to capitalize a wide variety of words, including hypotheses, variables, statistical procedures and tests, and more. http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2012/02/do-i-capitalize-this-word.html

I hope you found today's post helpful.  As always, happy scribbling!

Whitney Kurtz-Ogilvie, MFAW