Spelling
and Capitalization
Correct spelling is a sign of
literacy. Errors in spelling and
grammar give people the impression that you are careless or ignorant, which
invalidates anything you have to say.
Now you will not learn to spell every word in the English language in
one easy lesson, so I will not try to convince you that you can. I can only recommend that you keep a good
dictionary handy—and use it. Also, take
advantage of your computer spellchecker, but remember that the computer does
not identify words that are misused. If
it recognizes a group of letters as a word, it will accept that word even if it
is used incorrectly. You must be
smarter than the spellchecker.
We may not be able to fix all the
spelling problems, but we can work on capitalization by noting a few rules:
1. Capitalize proper nouns and their
abbreviations
Mary Uncle John January Sept. House of Blues
2. Capitalize historical events, names of
movements, and titles of literary and art works
the
Civil War Louisiana Purchase Romanticism Star Wars
3. Capitalize the first word of dialogue
She
cried, “Help!”