CAPITAL LETTERS, ACRONYMS

& ABBREVIATIONS RULES

PRESENTED BY: students from II

semester
 CAPITAL LETTERS (UPPER CASE
LETTERS) - RULES
HOW TO USE CAPITAL LETTERS?
1. At the beginning of any phrase:
- Hello, how are you?

2. Proper nouns of people & places:

- Jane and Alex. - Germany

3. Personal pronouns, specially “I”:

-She knows the answer, but I don’t.

4. First letter of: Months, Days of the week, Holidays,

Nationalities, Religions, Languages, Planets.
EXCEPT: Seasons, the earth, the sun or the moon.
 5. First word of a quotation:
- She said “Hello, Mr. President”.

6. Titles of a person: - Mr. Brown.

- Lord Henry. - Captain Smith.

7. Words formed from proper nouns:

- English (England). [like nationalities]

8. First letter in every word of the title of a

book, movie, article, song, etc.
- “A Tale of Two Cities”. - “Almost Paradise”

9. If after (:)* follows 2 phrases:

- I like John Fowles’ writing: His book, The
Collector, was great. Also The Magnus.
An acronym is a word
formed from the initial
letters of a name or ACRONYMS
phrase. It is pronounced
as if it were a word.
1. To avoid awkward repetition of phrases:
- AIDS (Acquired Inmunodeficiency
Syndrome).
- HIV (Human Inmunodeficiency Virus)
- UNICEF (United Nations International
Childen’s Emergency Fund)

2. When they’re integrated as common

nouns, they’re not capitalized:
- Laser , radar , scuba.

3. When using it for 1st time, spell the phrase out &
follow it with the acronym in parentheses:
- Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)….. generates
HTML code.
4. Plural form- add a lower case “s” without
an apostrophe:
- I have more CDs than you.

5. Many acronyms still recquired articles:

- INCORRECT: NWO (New World Order)
has emerged in the 21st century.
- CORRECT: An NWO has emerged in…

6. Don’t use too many acronyms

in a text.

7. Acronyms in a text message

(informal ways):
- BFF (Best Friend Forever)
- ASAP (As Soon As Possible)
 ABBREVIATIONS
Abbreviations are shorter forms of words.

1. Titles before names: - Mrs. (Mmes) - Mr. (Messrs.)

- Ms. - Prof. - Dr. - St. (Saint)

2. Titles after names: - Karla Espinoza PhD.

-Arthur Banks Jr. AVOID: Mr. Banks Jr.
3. Names of Familiar Institutions, countries,
corporations, some familiar objects:
- UCLA, CIA, FBI - U.S.A., U.K. - IBM, CNN
- TV, CD-ROM

4. Mathematical units: - 15 in. - 10 ft - 8 kg

- 5 m - 20 lb (no plural forms)

5. Common phrases: - rpm(revolutions per

minute) - mph (miles per hour) - 1985 B.C.
6. Common Latin terms:
- etc. (et cetera-and so forth), i.e. (id
est-that is), e.g. (exempli gratia-for
example), et al. (et alii-and others),
v. /vs.(versus)

7. Informal abbreviations:
- sth (something) - r (are) - w/e
(whatever) - LOL (laughing out loud)
- TTYL (talk to you later) - TMI (to much
information)
THX