CAPITALIZATION
Capitalization is writing a word with its first letter as capital letter or upper case.
Rules in Capitalization
1. Capitalize the first word of a sentence. (Ex. Grade 10 students are very participative.)
2. Capitalize the names of the people. (Ex. Mark and Justine will go to the beach on summer vacation.)
3. Capitalize proper nouns. Proper noun names a specific person, specific place, or specific thing.
4. Capitalize the first word of a quoted sentence. (Ex. My girlfriend said, “You betrayed my trust!”
5. Do not capitalize after a colon, except if the word following the colon is a proper noun. (Ex. He was planning to study
these subjects: philosophy, sociology, and economics. / One of the places I want to visit: Switzerland.)
6. Capitalize days, months, and holidays, but not season. (Ex. I love Mondays!)
7. Capitalize most words in titles of books, movies, and other works. (Sense and Sensibility is better than Pride and
Prejudice.)
ACRONYM
Acronyms are usually formed using the first letter of each word in a phrase. (Ex. Department of Health (DOH),
Information Technology (IT)
Introduce every acronym before using it in the text. The first time you use the term, put the acronym in
parentheses after the full term. Thereafter, you can stick to using the acronym. (Ex. The International Olympic
Committee (IOC) is headquartered in Switzerland. The IOC President is elected by secret ballot.)
Pluralize acronyms by adding “s” without an apostrophe. (Many CEOs of major MNCs attend the forum.)
ABBREVIATION
An abbreviation is a short form of a word or phrase that is usually made by deleting certain letters. (Ex. Dr. Jones
cannot attend the conference on Oct. 2024.)
There are some Latin abbreviations that are common in academic writing.
ACTIVITY 1
Direction: Read the following sentences. Some sentences have errors in capitalization, acronym, and abbreviation.
Rewrite the correct sentence and put a check mark if the sentence has no mistakes.
1. Chris drove to the University yesterday.
2. My family and i live in an apartment building.
3. I can speak three languages but not german.
4. deped philippines declared that there will be no classes Nationwide due to the high rising temperature.
5. Hon Melissa Melendez, mayor of Lake city, met the secretary of dpwh.
6. Let’s get our telescope and look at the moon.
7. Did you know that mr Johnson is a policeman?
8. I ordered cheeseburger and soda at the school cafeteria.
9. There was a strong earthquake happened in the NCR.
10. One of the oldest university in the Philippines is ust.
ACTIVITY 2
Direction: Give the following.
5 examples of acronyms with the full term. (DOH – Department of Health)
5 examples of abbreviation with the correct or full word. (Dr. – Doctor)
