Mechanics of Writing

• Capitalization in Academic Writing

• Capitalize the names of days, months, and holidays:
Wednesday, May, Memorial Day, Independence Day
• Do not capitalize the seasons of the year:
fall, spring, summer and winter
• Capitalize the first word of every sentence and of every
sentence within a quotation:
A voice from the speaker at the drive-through window said, “How
may I help you?”
• Do not capitalize quoted words that are not a complete
sentence:
A voice from the speaker asked if I wanted “cream sugar or
dessert.”
 Capitalization
• Capitalize the names of specific people, institutions, religions,
and places, including the names of cities, states, regions of a
country, and countries and their languages:
The famous poet from Ireland, Seamus Heaney, spoke at Richland
College in Dallas, Texas. Living half of each year in the East
while he teaches at Harvard University, he rarely travels to the
Southwest. He spoke about the roots of the Catholic and
Protestant conflict.
• Do not capitalize directions:
Turn east at the stop light.
 Capitalization
• Capitalize people’s titles and their abbreviations:
Mr. Heaney was introduced by Professor Dr. Jerry
McElveen.
• Capitalize a personal title when it is used before a
name. Do not capitalize titles used without names or
institutions, or organizations without names:
The president greeted the distinguished guest.
The distinguished guest was greeted by President Barack Obama.
Heaney had been invited to our college for five years.
Heaney had been invited to Kings College for five years.
 Capitalization
• Capitalize the names of specific courses:
George, who is Russian, is registered for sixteen hours.
He is taking Spanish history, a computer course,
political science, and English. In History 101 and
Political Science 201 he will study American history
and government.
• If the writer had left out the course numbers, then the
course names ‘history’ and ‘political science’ would
not be capitalized. ‘Spanish’ and ‘English’ are
capitalized as languages, not as the names of courses.
 Capitalization
• Capitalize the first the last, and the major words, and
the first word after a colon in a title. Do not capitalize
articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (and,
or, for), and prepositions under five letters long (of,
by, on) within titles:
Beauty and the Beast (movie title)
“The Last Laughs: The Best and Worst of 1992” (essay title)
No Jacket Required (album title)
“Another Day in Paradise” (song title)
Sports Illustrated (magazine title)
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” (poem)
 Capitalization

• Always capitalize the pronoun I:

When I heard the news, I laughed.
• Capitalize a term denoting kinship when it is
used before a name:
My uncle Uncle Tom
 Using Titles
• Use italics or underlining of the titles of books,
scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers,
government reports, plays, musical operas or
other long musical compositions, films, television
shows, radio programs or long poems:
The Grapes of Wroth (book)
The Economist (journal)
New Your Times (newspaper)
Hamlet (play)
Song of Myself (long poem)
Notun Kuri (Television show)
 Using Titles
• Use double quotation marks for titles of works like
these:
Magazine article: “Share Market Unrest in
Bangladesh”
Essay: “A Room of One’s Own”
Short story: “Shooting an Elephant”
Short poem: “Mending Wall”
Song: “Burn, Don’t Freeze”
Speech: “The American Scholar”
Chapter in a book: “Fire on the Mountain”
 Using Titles
• Change double to single quotation marks when the title appears
within another title that needs quotation marks, or is mentioned
within a quotation:
“Use of Image in Carlos’ ‘A Red Wheelbarrow’ ”
Professor Ainsley said, “Frost’s ‘Mending Wall’ is a gently
disarming poem.”
• Do not use both underlining and quotation marks unless the
title includes an underlined title:
“Experience” (essay)
Great Expectations (novel)
“On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Again” (poem)
 Using Italics or Underlining
• Use italics or underlining to emphasize a word or
phrase in a statement:
If an inspired guess turns out to be correct, it is not
reported as an inspired guess.
• Use this kind of emphasis carefully. When
overused, it loses its punch.
• Use italics or underlining to identify a letter or
a word treated as a word:
Neither the term feminism nor the term racism existed
fifty years ago.
• Quotation marks can also be used
 Using Italics or Underlining

• Use italics or underlining to identify a foreign word or

phrase not absorbed into English:
jouissance, pastiche
• Use italics or underlining to identify the name of a
ship, or airplane or the like:
Queen Elizabeth II (ship)
Spirit of St. Louis (airplane)
Apollo 2 (spaceship)
 Using Numbers
• When you refer to a number in your writing, you have
to decide whether to use a figure or to spell it out as a
word.
• In much scientific and technical writing, figures
predominates; in magazines and books of general
interest, word are common, though figures are also
used.
• Spell out a number when it begins a sentence:
Eighty five distinguished teachers attended the seminar.
Two hundred dignitaries had been invited.
 Using Numbers

• Spell out a number that can be written in one or two

words:
She owns seven hundred rare books.
The firefighters worked without relief for twenty-two days.
• A hyphenated number may be counted as one word.
• Use numerals if spelling out a number would require
more than tw0 words:
The stadium can hold 45,000 spectators.
Attendance at last Saturday’s game was 50,000.
 Using Numbers
 Use numerals for addresses, dates, exact times of day,
exact sums of money, and exact measurements such as
miles per hour, scores of games, mathematical ratios,
fractions, and page numbers:
22 East London
16 December 2001
500 B.C.
11:15 A.M
£40
65 mph
a ratio of 2 to 1
Page 120
 Using Numbers

• When a time of day or a sum of money is given as a

round figure, spell it out:
Uncle Ben always gets up at six.
I reached the border at around eight o’clock.
He used to earn two dollars for ten hours of work.
It’s hard to believe that fifty cents can no longer buy a cup of
coffee.