1. What Words Are Capitalized?
Writing Consultant Presentation
EG 1003: Intro to Engineering and Design
Polytechnic Institute of NYU

2. What words are capitalized?
Follow typographic conventions
Capitalize “proper” nouns
Leave “generic” nouns in lowercase

3. Conventions about capital letters
First word of a sentence (sentence case)
Precision is the repeatability of a result.
Acronyms
LED, LabVIEW
Boolean operators and terms from computer languages
AND, OR, and NOT (use format of the language)
“Important words” of a title (title case)
Lab 3: Product Evaluation and Quality Improvement

4. What makes a word “important”?
War of the Worlds
A Long Day’s Journey into Night
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Despicable Me
I Am Legend
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Rebel Without a Cause

5. Use title case for labels
The Title of a Report
Section Heading for a Report
Figure 1: Title for Graph/Chart
Column Head
Row Label
The data
More data
Yet more
And more

6. What words are capitalized?
Follow typographic conventions
Capitalize “proper” nouns
Leave “generic” nouns in lowercase

7. What is a proper noun? Name of a specific person, place, or thing
Has a finite existence (lifetime)
People and places
George Boole
Adjectives named after people
Boolean equation
Trademarks
Styrofoam, Lego
Official names of organizations
Polytechnic Institute of New York University

8. Unit symbols can be tricky
Generic units not capitalized
m, cm, mm
In the U.S.,1 liter often a capital L
Heinrich Hertz – source of “hertz”
mHz
Alexander Graham Bell – “decibel” dB
Michael Faraday, Alessandro Volta
F, V
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, Anders Celsius
ºF, ºC
1 National Institute for Standards and Technology, “Guide for the Use of the International System of Units,” retrieved 31 January 2011 from nist.gov.

9. What words are capitalized?
Follow typographic conventions
Capitalize “proper” nouns
Leave “generic” nouns in lowercase

10. No definite lifespan = no capital
Spelled out words of an acronym
light emitting diode, data acquisition board
Components or elements
copper, magnesium, piezoelectric film
Descriptive labels of places
high school, laboratory
General concepts or ideas
precision, electromagnetism, design ratio, sum of products

11. Some examples
The team is building a bomb disarming robot. The robot is called Detonator.
Then, precision and accuracy were calculated. Today, reverse engineering has many uses. The first step was to make a truth table.
The lecture was given by Prof. Doucette. Give the professor your work.
The kits are manufactured by Texas Instruments. My favorite book is Keys for Writers.
This is pretty clear.

12. Things to remember
Most common error is add a capital where it does not belong
Important thing is be consistent:
Titles of slides throughout the presentation
Bulleted lists on a slide
Headings of a report section
Parts of a table
Labels in a diagram
This is pretty clear.

13. What words are capitalized?
Follow typographic conventions
Capitalize “proper” nouns
Leave “generic” nouns in lowercase