Capitalization: the basics

Deciding when to use capitals can be daunting, but there are rules. Capitalize proper nouns: the specific names of people, cities, provinces, states, counties, countries, languages, and nationalities.

• Marin County in California is located north of San Francisco Bay, on the Pacific Ocean.

• When Krakatoa, a volcano in Indonesia, exploded out of the water in 1883, the resulting tidal wave travelled around the world seven times.

Also capitalize the names of specific geographical features like seas, oceans, mountains and rivers. Examples include the Alaska Panhandle, the Mackenzie River and the Great Lakes.

Geographical regions can also have names that are capitalized, like the Prairies, (also called the Prairie provinces, and known south of the border as the Great Plains.) Another example is the Canadian Shield. This is a vast tract of rocky land with thin soil that includes the boreal forests north of the Great Lakes and stretches all the way to the Arctic Ocean.

Historic events are also capitalized. An example is the Great Depression (1929-1939). This famous economic depression is thus distinguished from the other meaning of the word, which, like most other illnesses or conditions (except those named after people, like Alzheimer's or those that are acronyms, like SARS) is NOT capitalized.

• John Humphrey did not suffer from depression, even though he witnessed the hardships of the Great Depression.

For more rules on capitalization, check with expert Jane Strauss here. And be aware: the way we use punctuation is changing, as my next post shows.