Updated on January 11, 2022

Capitalisation

There are few rules governing the use of capitals (upper case) in English. Consistency is what matters most. The current view is that OVERUSE of capitals reduces the importance of those words which must appear in capital and SPOILS the appearance of the printed page. Direct messaging, where capitalisation is the equivalent of raising one’s voice, has recently made an even stronger argument against capitals.

Many headings and titles whose words would have appeared in capitals before are now appearing in small letters. The ETF follows this trend, using a capital letter, for example, only in the first word of a book title, and putting the following words in small letters (lower case).

The general rule is to put the first letter of nouns and adjectives in names of specific institutions and their subdivisions in upper case (DGs, departments, committees, working groups) and use lower case for general references. More exact rules are set out below but in many cases you will have to make up your own mind. If in doubt, use lower case unless it looks absurd. In the case of very long titles, opt for small letters to avoid having a string of capital letters, e.g.

  • High-level group on the employment and social dimension of the information society
  • Joint FAO/EEC working party on forest and forest product statistics

Many ETF staff capitalise names of authorities, probably out of politeness or to be on the safe side. They should be capitalised only when they are used as parts of a name or a title.

Thus:

‘the prime minister spoke’, but ‘Prime Minister Williams spoke’.
‘the education ministry paid for the project’, but ‘the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports paid for the project’.

Another ETF classic is NQF, which is capitalised when abbreviated but not when spelt out as national qualifications framework. Unless, of course, it is the actual name of a specific NQF, as in: ‘the National Qualifications Framework of Armenia’.

Here are some of the basic rules. Put into capitals:

  • proper nouns, such as the names of people, places, companies: J. A. Smith, Copenhagen, Rhine Valley (but ‘the valley’), European Environment Agency (but ‘the agency’), Unilever;
  • full names of organisations, ministries, departments, treaties, acts: European Commission, House of Lords, Ministry of Labour (but ‘the ministry’), National Employment Agency, High Court (but ‘the court’), Presidency of the Council of the EU, Heidelberg University (but ‘the university’), European Investment Bank, Treaty of Amsterdam;
  • the titles of statutory and political positions, such as President of the Republic, Prime Minister, Minister for Employment and Social Affairs, Member of Parliament, Secretary-General, European Ombudsman;
  • titles of adopted or draft legislation: the Working Time Directive, the Employment Act 1990, Trade Unions and Labour Relations Bill 1997;
  • the names of political parties: the Green Party, the Christian Democrats, European Parliament Group of the Party of European Socialists;
  • names of EU initiatives and programmes: European Social Fund, European Year of Languages 2001, European Works Councils, EU Member States;
  • references to specific EC legislation: Directives, Regulations, Decisions, Recommendations, Joint Opinions, White Papers;
  • geographical places or areas: the Hague, Sweden, Flanders, the Canary Islands, Pyrenees, the Middle East, Eastern Europe.

Keep in lower case:

  • titles or office-holders in an organisation: Mr Smith is chief executive officer; she was appointed deputy leader of the Green Party; they are professors at Oxford;
  • titles of books or periodicals (first word only in capitals): Third European survey on working conditions; The social situation of the European Union 2002;
  • general references to bodies or concepts; government, cabinet, committee, the press, the right-wing, inter-governmental conference, third world, euro-zone;
  • general terms, especially EU-related: social dialogue, labour market, common agricultural policy, European social model, information society, employment guidelines, corporate social responsibility, candidate countries, working time.

(An oddity on the rapid rise is camelCase, where words are separated not by a space but by a capital. The most common ones are proprietary names such as iPhone and eBay but a common one from before the digital age is PhD. In computer programming they have many functions and they are likely to become more common in the years ahead.)

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