Is not is: Capitalize Correctly, aka Rules for Copywriters

I love that so many young people are making a living as copywriters, whether working as freelancers or in-house. But…quite a few of you could use a reminder about how to capitalize correctly when writing headlines and the like!

So let’s take a quick dive into the rules you need to know…

How to capitalize correctly

Since you’ll be writing headlines, titles, headings, subheadings and the like, let’s quickly talk about how to capitalize correctly, because details count.

To do it correctly, capitalize every:

• Noun
• Verb
• Adjective
• Adverb
• Pronoun
• Word over a certain length (usually four or five letters)

In general, don’t capitalize the word “the” or a preposition (a, an, at, by, for, in, of, on, to, up, and, as, but, or and nor) unless it belongs to a verb, as in “Back Up.”

Your turn to capitalize correctly…

Knowing the rules, what’s wrong with these headlines?

• Minding the Gap: How In-Store Mobile Marketing is Reaching Across Generations
• The Reason Why Clichés are OK in Your Writing
• Nurture is a Framework for your Content, Not a Story with a Fixed Plot

The answers…

In the first two headlines, a verb is lowercase when all verbs should be what? Capitalized, right. These should be written as:

• Minding the Gap: How In-Store Mobile Marketing Is Reaching Across Generations
• The Reason Why Clichés Are OK in Your Writing

In the third headline, the word not is capitalized for no reason. It doesn’t fit into any category on our list of words to capitalize, so therefore it should be lowercase like this:

• Nurture is a Framework for your Content, not a Story with a Fixed Plot

But what about is and it?

(Pardon me for a minute while I pound my head on my desk.)

I see copywriters making the words is, are and it lowercase because these words are only two or three letters, but that is wrong.

First off, is and are are verbs, so they should be capitalized. And it is a pronoun so should also be capitalized. “Your Favorite Shirt is Back in Stock” is wrong because is is a verb.

Your turn to capitalize correctly…

All of these real-life examples are wrong. Do you see why they are wrong?

• Site Security: Bad Bots are Everywhere
• 5 Ways to Know if Your Process is Working
• How To Start a Career in Cloud Computing

The answers…

They are wrong because verbs weren’t capitalized in two of them and a preposition was in the third. Corrected they look like:

• Site Security: Bad Bots Are Everywhere
• 5 Ways to Know if Your Process Is Working
• How to Start a Career in Cloud Computing

Your turn to capitalize correctly…

Do you see the errors in these two titles?

• Face your Holiday Planning Fears with Our Guide to Holiday Marketing
• Reading Helps End Writer’s Block, Letting you get Back to Writing

The answers…

They should be written as:

• Face Your Holiday Planning Fears with Our Guide to Holiday Marketing
• Reading Helps End Writer’s Block, Letting You Get Back to Writing

What kind of capitalization choices do I have?

I’m glad you asked, because it’s a good question! Why? Because you don’t have to capitalize following the rules above unless you choose to use Title Capitalization.

Huh?

I know. Let me explain…

When you as a copywriter write titles, headings or subheadings, you have two choices for capitalizing words correctly.

First, you can use sentence capitalization and only capitalize the first word as in this example:

This is a title written with sentence capitalization

Or you can use title capitalization meaning you capitalize every noun, verb, adjective, adverb and pronoun plus words over a certain length (usually four or more letters as we said above), as in this example:

This Is a Title Written with Title Capitalization

In general, I think title capitalization is more engaging, as you can see in this example.

So yes, you have a choice between these two ways to capitalize. But you do not have a choice when it comes to doing it correctly. Be the copywriter your clients or boss can count on: Capitalize correctly.

 

Photo by Lisa Fotios: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-white-ceramci-be-happy-painted-mug-851213/