Capitalization Worksheets

Capitalization is when we place a letter in CAPITAL form. The use of capital letters varies greatly by language. Some languages don’t even have a set of capitals. The use of caps dates back to the days of Greek and Latin scribes. They are the ones to thank for most of today’s modern rules and acceptable practices. Veteran writers shy away from the use of capital letters, but there are some general rules of capitalization that we will explore below the worksheets. We have many different caps worksheets available for different topics below.

When do you go CAPS? When don't you go caps? This skill is normally reserved for lower elementary level students, but a new standard is currently being proposed to add a review of the skill for the 5th grade.


Using Correct Capitalization - This focuses on putting all the general rules into action.

Capitalization Rules - Students work with the standard rules and procedures.

Capitalizing Dates and Names - The focus on dates and names cannot be overlooked.

Capitalizing First Words and the Pronoun I - This is the first step in the process of this skill set.

Capitalizing Holidays, Products, and Geographic Names - More crazy nouns that have been thrown into categories.

Capitalizing Titles

Formatting Titles of Works - The use of formatting often confuses students.

Using Punctuation for Effect - When you punctuate well it can add a sense of emotion to a body of work.


Worksheets Ready To Print:

When Do You Capitalize? - Check off each situation in which a letter should be jacked up.

Words and Phrases - You are given a word or phrase that you must determine the proper letter case positioning of.

The First Letter - This is straight up practice activity to get you in the habit.

Should It Be? - Circle the proper nouns that need some fixing up.

First Letter of Sentences - We work a similar technique on shortened sentences.

Answer Keys - These are the answer keys to all the above worksheets.

Days and Months - The days of the week and the months of the year all begin with a capital letter. Rewrite each word below using correct capitalization.

Nationality - We focus our attention on words that point to certain cultures or geographic regions.

More Practice - Another round with words and phrases.

Titles of Books - When you write the title of a book, all of the important words in the title get capitalized. Small words like a, an, and the only get capitalized if they are the first word in the title.

Flat Sentences - Circle the words in each sentence that are not in the correct form.

Scavenger Hunt - Find at least 24 things in your classroom whose names should be capitalized. Write them on the lines.

Where Are Caps? - This is a basic recognition exercise.

Quiz - They are regular questions that you must answer in the proper case. We put everything into practice here.

Proofreading Time - Correct the capitalization errors in each sentence.

Names of Holidays - Rewrite the name of each holiday on the line.

The Rules of Capitalization

Everyone knows that the first letter of the first word of every sentence is always to be written in a capital letter. The remaining letters, in the same word, are left in all lower case form. What about when we look at direct quotes? If a quotation is a complete sentence, we capitalize the first letter of the first word. If it isn’t a complete sentence, the entire thing is lower case. We always capitalize the first letter of proper nouns. That means we are referring to a specific noun. For example in the sentence: John is travelling by plane to that country. There is only a need to capitalize the first letter of the sentence. It also helps that the first word just happens to be a proper noun (John). If the sentence specified a country, another capital would pop up. Take a look at the same sentence with a proper noun in place of the country: John is travelling by plane to Australia.


Have you writing any personal communications lately? All salutations (Dear John, Regards, Best Wishes) should be capitalized. Small words (a, an, as, but, or, the) in titles should not be capitalized. The last thing to keep in mind is the use of colons. We always capitalize sentences that follow a colon.


What Are the Most Common Capitalization Errors?

Here are some of the most common capitalization errors that people make.


Capitalizing Common Nouns


One of the major rules of capitalization is that common nouns should not be capitalized. They are regular day to day words that are used often in speech and text. They also hold no immense importance. This is the reason why you should always avoid capitalizing common nouns. However, there are some words that can be used as common nouns and proper nouns at the same time. This is why most people confuse and capitalize the word when it is being used as a common noun too. Here is an example,


Send the restaurant Bill to her house.
Here bill is a common noun and should not be capitalized.


Bill and his friends are going to a movie.
Here Bill is a name and a proper noun. Hence, it should be capitalized.


Capitalization of Acronyms


Acronyms also follow some certain rules of capitalization that are often misunderstood. Acronyms are supposed to be capitalized, but many make the mistake of not capitalizing them. In fact, all the letters in an acronym should be capitalized. However, there are certain acronyms that are not capitalized. There are also some acronyms that have become so common in our day to day speech and text that they are also written in lower case letters. For example, radar.


Capitalization of Titles


You are only supposed to capitalize the titles of a person when they appear before the name in the sentence. There is no need to capitalize it if it comes after the name. For example,


The President of the United States is performing his duties well.


Shelly has been appointed the new president of the club.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Meet the Vikings Preview