CAPITAL LETTERS

We use CAPITAL LETTERS in the following cases:

- To begin a sentence.
There’s a great film playing at the cinema.
- For days of the week, months and public holidays.
This year, Christmas Day falls on the last Sunday of December.
- For names of people and places.
My best friend’s name is Claire and she’s from Cardiff, Wales.
- For people’s titles.
Mr. and Mrs. Graham
Dr Stevens
Professor Brown.
- For nationalities and languages.
They are French.
We love Italian cuisine.
He’s fluent in Portuguese and German.
- For the first word and/or the most important words (e.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives,
adverbs) of titles of books, films, plays, TV programmes, etc.
The Sixth Sense.
Indiana Jones and the Lost Temple.
Alice in Wonderland.

NOTE: The personal pronoun I is always a capital letter.

George and I are going to the funfair.
FULL STOP or PERIOD
 The full stop is mainly used to mark the end of a statement, for example:
Terry Pratchett's latest book is not yet out in paperback.
I asked her whether she could tell me the way to Brighton.
Chinese, uniquely among the world's languages, is written in a logographic script.
The British and the Irish drive on the left; all other Europeans drive on the right.

 BE CAREFUL! The following example shows a common mistake:

*Norway has applied for EC membership, Sweden is expected to do the same.

Here, there are two complete statements separated by a comma, which is wrong. We have
two possible solutions to this problem:

a) Norway has applied for EC membership. Sweden is expected to do the same.

(Separating the two statements by a full stop, but may be considered a bit clumsy to
have two short sentences.)

b) Norway has applied for EC membership, and Sweden is expected to do the same.
(Using the connecting word and to turn the two short statements into a longer one.)

Here are more examples of this very common error, can you rewrite them?

*Bangladesh is one of the world's poorest countries, its annual income is only $80 per
person.

*The British are notoriously bad at learning foreign languages, the Dutch are famously
good at it.

*The proposal to introduce rock music to Radio 3 has caused an outcry, angry letters
have been pouring into the BBC.

*Borg won his fifth straight Wimbledon title in 1980, the following year he lost in the
final to McEnroe.

 Full stops are also sometimes used in punctuating abbreviations, such as e.g., Mr.,P.S.,
etc.