In English, we have uppercase letters and lowercase letters. Capital letters are uppercase letters. Sometimes, uppercase letters are called “a big letter” and lowercase letters are called “a little letter”.
So, we can say, write a capital “A” or a little “a”. Or write a lowercase “r” or a big “R”.
Capital letters (uppercase letters/big letters) look like this:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
(I AM SURE YOU ALL KNOW THE CAPS LOCK ON YOUR KEYBOARD. CAPS IS SHORT FOR CAPITAL; AS IN CAPITAL LETTER)
Lowercase (little letters) look like this:
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Let’s look at the different ways that we use capital (big letters).
1. At the beginning of every sentence
- What is your name?
- He likes me.
- Learning English is not that hard.
2. The first word inside quotation marks
- She asked, “How are you?”
- “My name is Michael,” he said.
- They yelled, “Come here!”
3. With proper nouns (Names of people, specific places and things)
If the name is more than one word, you should capitalize the first letter of each word.
- I want to visit Seoul, Korea.
- I saw a movie called The Martian.
- The Eiffel Tower is amazing.
- Ben Johnson is my friend.
- Do you know who Brad Pitt is?
- I have been to Europe, Asia, and South America.
4. Titles
- I need to see Dr. Miller.
- She called Mrs. Smith.
- Do you know Mr. Thompson?
5. The first word of a salutation (like to start/end a letter or email)
- Dear Nick,…
- Sincerely,
6. A direction if it is directly related to a name
- I live in Northern Seoul.
Punctuation is essential for writing in English. Punctuation helps you express your thoughts, feelings, and ideas in a way that is easy for the reader to understand.
