Capitalisation

Use all capitals for acronyms (ie a pronounceable name made up of a series of initial letters or syllables) made up of four or fewer letters.

NATO; OPEC; WHO; AIDS

Use an initial capital for acronyms made up of five or more letters unless it spells a common English word and would be confusing. In this case, use all caps.

Slorc; Anzac; Qantas; Cobol; Fortran; BASIC

Please note: UNESCO is an exception to this rule.

If the group of initial letters or syllables is not a pronounceable word, use all capitals no matter how long it is.

UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees)

Do not capitalize acronyms that have taken a common meaning as words in their own right.

laser; scuba; radar; sonar

See CMoS 6.61

Unless the material following a colon is direct speech, begin with a lower-case letter.

This cafe has two things going for it: the food is great and it’s cheap.

Quotes following a colon may or may not start with a capital letter (it depends on the capitalisation of the original material).

Kennedy encapsulated the spirit of America in the ’60s when he said: ‘Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.’

Lower-case ‘embassy’, ‘consulate’ and ‘high commission’ in general text.

A peaceful protest took place outside the Australian embassy.

Lower-case ‘immigration’ and ‘customs’.

The immigration queue at the airport is usually very long.

Lower-case food dishes, cocktails or other menu items unless they are derived from a proper noun. Follow capitalisation style in Collins/Webster’s.

rainbow trout with almonds; beef Wellington

Use title case for recognised regions; use lower case if the use is purely descriptive.

Southeast Asia; Calcutta is in northeastern India; the South (in USA)

Do not capitalise ‘empire’, ‘dynasty’, ‘kingdom’ etc unless it is a recognised geopolitical region.

Roman Empire; Zulu kingdom; Ming dynasty; Genghis Khan’s empire

Avoid relying on the Eastern/Western dichotomy. Instead use specific geopolitical terms (eg Asian, European).

See CMoS 8.155, 8.157–159, 8.174 (series and editions), 15.104 (hyphenation)

In headings and titles of works, capitalise the first and last words; all verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives and adverbs; and all prepositions and coordinate conjunctions of six or more letters.

Boats along the Mekong River

London Through the Ages

Family-Friendly Adventures in Phuket

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

In headings, the second and subsequent elements are capitalised unless they are articles, prepositions, or coordinating conjunctions, eg Island-Hopping not Island-hopping.

Straplines in guidebooks are always sentence case.

Note: headings within articles on lp.com take sentence case.

See CMoS 8.18–32

Official titles are capitalised when they immediately precede a name and are treated as part of the name.

In 2018 Prime Minister Theresa May announced…

When titles are used in apposition to a name, they are not part of the name and so are lower-cased.

The US president, George W Bush, announced today…

When the title is merely descriptive and not the official title, it is lower-cased.

the sultan of Brunei, the queen of England, the king of Thailand

Follow the company’s preference for capitals or other symbols within a name.

FedEx, MasterCard, iPhone, easyJet

Exception: do not capitalise or lower-case all letters of trade names simply because that is the company’s preference.

Qantas, not QANTAS

Topographical terms such as island, lake and mountain are capitalised when part of a proper name, but not when used generically.

If the proper name of an airport, train/bus station, ferry terminal or port is not known, do not capitalise the name. If you are certain the full proper name is being used, capitalise ‘Airport’, ‘Station’, ‘Terminal’ or ‘Port’.

Kingsford Smith Airport, but Sydney airport

All website URLs should be lowercase.