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Some
Rules for Capitals*
The North American
trend for capitalizing words is now “modified down.”
What this means is that if you can’t decide whether
to capitalize a word or not, you should probably leave it
in lower case.
A good
guideline is if you are using the official name of the organization,
use capital letters. If you are shortening the name, choose
the lower case for the common noun.
Government of Ontario
Ontario government
Words such as city,
town, bank, committee, department, company, staff, board and
administration are always lowercased.
Only the articles
(a, an, the) that are part of an organization’s proper
name should be capitalized.
I am
going to visit The Hospital for Sick Children.
There is a regional cancer centre at the Credit Valley Hospital.
If you are not
sure that an article is part of an organization’s proper
name, then check their letterhead or website.
Formal titles directly
preceding a name are capitalized: Prime Minister Stephen Harper,
Mayor McCallion, Sgt. Fournier.
Occupations or
job descriptions are lowercased: doctors, nurses, lawyers,
auditors, chairman John Roberts.
* These
rules are based on The Canadian Press book CAPS and SPELLING,
2003. www.cp.org
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