Dear W___:
You wrote:
>I have a question regarding capitalization in business writing.
>When writing a meeting’s topic agenda, is it okay to treat the listed topics like titles, capitalizing every word?
>Sometimes agenda items can be longer than the examples provided below, yet are almost always incomplete sentences. Should I continue capitalizing every word, or are there certain
words such as “And” and “Of”, in item 3 below, that should remain lower case?
>I was even unsure about the capitalization of certain letters in the subject line of this e-mail.
>
>
> Agenda
> 1- Meeting Introduction
> 2- Project A Deadline
> 3- Determine Roles And Responsibilities Of Third Party Vendor
> 4- Discuss Plan C
> 5- Roundtable Project Status
> 6- Next Steps
> 7- Action Item Recap
>
It depends on the purpose of your list. The example you gave is really something like chapter headings, so the capitalizing as you show it would be appropriate except for “And” and “Of” in item 3.
If the presentation were more like an outline, then only the first word would be capitalized. For what it is worth, your subject line was fine, but a true bulleted list is simply a variation of the outline. The example you gave is really more like a table of contents.
In titles, the first and last word are always capitalized. Articles, conjunctions, and short prepositions are not otherwise capitalized unless there is a specific reason to do so for emphasis. Item 3 should read “Determine Roles and Responsibilities of Third Party Vendor.”
If there is such a thing as a formal e-mail, then the subject line should follow title rules, but e-mails are not usually that formal.
I hope this helps
Hello, I am a Teacher who constantly writes lesson plans but I’m confused whether to capitalize the first word of every objectives I have. What I usually did during college was to capitalize the first word, but my colleague said that it must not be capitalized. What’s really the rule on capitalization regarding this? My example below:
At the end of the end of the topic, the students can:
1. Describe the three states of matter,
2. Identify matter as solid, liquid or gas,
3. Differentiate the….
The basic rule of thumb is that each entry corresponds to a sentence – not that they have to be sentences, but that they represent them. Therefore, each entry should begin with a capital letter. Outlines also correspond to a Tale of Contents, again each new entry in a Table of Contents normally begins with a capital letter. Virtually any published outline, whatever format it uses, follows that pattern. If your colleague is a supervisor, then, of course, you do what your supervisor tells you, but not capitalizing the entries is not the standard.