Random capitals - the Most Common misTake

I can't even begin to tell you how many times each day I hit 'shift + F3' in Word to decapitalise a word/phrase. Many, many writers out there are trigger happy on that shift key as they type. In my years as a proofreader, capitalisation is the issue I come up against more frequently as I work with authors' texts - yes, far more so than spelling and just that bit more than punctuation. Today I've been marking up proofs, and I'd estimate 75 per cent of my changes are to decapitalise words - my hand is cramped from scribbling the BS 5261 proofreading symbol for 'make lower case'.

Perhaps it's that feeling of power as a writer that does it, to make Some Word Seem Very Important. The downside to a penchant for caps lock, however, is that overuse of upper case is off-putting to a reader, and very often grammatically incorrect.

My advice to the writers I work with is simple: Please do use a capital letter for the first word in a sentence and the name of your hometown, but if you're straying into the realms of 'capitals because I feel like it rather than because they are actually required', take a step back and resist. Your writing will be much stronger as a result, and my F3 key may just survive a few more years of proofreading.

If you need to brush up on the rules, dip into a grammar guide. I recommend Oxford guides, and also English Grammar For Dummies (I edited it, so can guarantee it's a great oracle for things like this).