The first thing I learned on the first day of studying communications was that writing is about conveying information to the audience. It’s not about how clever you are, or how much you know, or your ego. It’s about the efficient transfer of information to your audience.
I come back to that every time I put words on paper or screen. It’s something I think about when I see over capitalisation: which is my favourite editorial curse.
Capital letters creep into our sentences like rising damp. They’re everywhere and unnecessary. Rooting them out will improve your writing and help your readers comprehend your message with fewer distractions.
Capitalisation should only be used for proper nouns. What’s a proper noun? It’s a name used for an individual person, place, or organisation (for example, Michael, Melbourne and Microsoft).
Unless a word is strictly a proper noun, there’s no justification for aggrandising it with an initial capital letter. Now let’s all read that last sentence again.
In typography (the art of typeface design) the point of a capital letter is to jolt the eye as the uppercase letter form is encountered along the horizontal line of text. That jolt is designed to mark the beginning of a new sentence or highlight something of importance (a proper noun).
When we over capitalise there are lots of chances for the eye to experience that little jolt. It becomes disruptive to the flow of reading. Think of it like a tiny electric shock. The more of them you get in a sentence, the more your eyes will get fatigued and your mind distracted. When your job is to convey information, distraction is death.
A proper noun is: The Reserve Bank of Australia. That’s it’s full and official title. In subsequent references we should then refer to it as ‘the bank’. That is not it’s full official title, so doesn’t warrant capitalisation at all (and it saves us repeating the full title).
Here’s where it gets fascinating. As we write, we make decisions about capitalisation. Before you know it, the board has become the Board. The doctor has become a Doctor, and a committee is a Committee. We assign importance to things we think deserve it. The Chief Executive Officer gets the treatment but often the cleaner does not.
If ever there is a habit that’s hard to break, it’s what people choose to make important. What they don’t realise is that capitalisation choices lead to poor comprehension and reader distraction. If you want your words to be read and your sentences to flow, ditch the unnecessary capitalisation.