The Most Accurate AI Content Detector
Try Our AI Detector
Grammar

Capitalization Rules — A Complete Guide + Examples

Learn how to capitalize text properly. Get insight with specific capitalization examples, so you can write clearly and professionally.

Trusted By Industry Leaders
Trusted By Industry Leaders

Introduction

Our text compare tool is a fantastic, lightweight tool that provides plagiarism checks between two documents. Whether you are a student, blogger or publisher, this tool offers a great solution to detect and compare similarities between any two pieces of text. In this article, I will discuss the different ways to use the tool, the primary features of the tool and who this tool is for. There is an FAQ at the bottom if you run into any issues when trying to use the tool.

What makes Originality.ai’s text comparison tool stand out?

Keyword density helper – This tool comes with a built-in keyword density helper in some ways similar to the likes of SurferSEO or MarketMuse the difference being, ours is free! This feature shows the user the frequency of single or two word keywords in a document, meaning you can easily compare an article you have written against a competitor to see the major differences in keyword densities. This is especially useful for SEO’s who are looking to optimize their blog content for search engines and improve the blog’s visibility.

Ways to compare

File compare – Text comparison between files is a breeze with our tool. Simply select the files you would like to compare, hit “Upload” and our tool will automatically insert the content into the text area, then simply hit “Compare” and let our tool show you where the differences in the text are. By uploading a file, you can still check the keyword density in your content.

URL compare

Comparing text between URLs is effortless with our tool. Simply paste the URL you would like to get the content from (in our example we use a fantastic blog post by Sherice Jacob found here) hit “Submit URL” and our tool will automatically retrieve the contents of the page and paste it into the text area, then simply click “Compare” and let our tool highlight the difference between the URLs. This feature is especially useful for checking keyword density between pages!

Simple text compare

You can also easily compare text by copying and pasting it into each field, as demonstrated below.

Features of Originality.ai’s Text Compare Tool

Ease of use

Our text compare tool is created with the user in mind, it is designed to be accessible to everyone. Our tool allows users to upload files or enter a URL to extract text, this along with the lightweight design ensures a seamless experience. The interface is simple and straightforward, making it easy for users to compare text and detect the diff.

Multiple text file format support

Our tool provides support for a variety of different text files and microsoft word formats including pdf file, .docx, .odt, .doc, and .txt, giving users the ability to compare text from different sources with ease. This makes it a great solution for students, bloggers, and publishers who are looking for file comparison in different formats.

Protects intellectual property

Our text comparison tool helps you protect your intellectual property and helps prevent plagiarism. This tool provides an accurate comparison of texts, making it easy to ensure that your work is original and not copied from other sources. Our tool is a valuable resource for anyone looking to maintain the originality of their content.

User Data Privacy

Our text compare tool is secure and protects user data privacy. No data is ever saved to the tool, the users’ text is only scanned and pasted into the tool’s text area. This makes certain that users can use our tool with confidence, knowing their data is safe and secure.

Compatibility

Our text comparison tool is designed to work seamlessly across all size devices, ensuring maximum compatibility no matter your screen size. Whether you are using a large desktop monitor, a small laptop, a tablet or a smartphone, this tool adjusts to your screen size. This means that users can compare texts and detect the diff anywhere without the need for specialized hardware or software. This level of accessibility makes it an ideal solution for students or bloggers who value the originality of their work and need to compare text online anywhere at any time.

The basics of English capitalization rules get covered early in language learning and are built upon over time because there are so many. 

Some capitalization conventions come fairly intuitively because we use them frequently—for instance, the capital letter at the beginning of a sentence. 

Other capitalization rules can be more confounding, especially in situations we encounter less frequently. 

For professional writers and marketers, some capitalization rules may vary, depending on what editorial style guide their organization or client follows. 

Learn about capitalization in English grammar and best practices for capitalizing names, places, and titles properly.

Then, conveniently review your text to make sure you are capitalizing correctly with the Originality.ai Grammar Checker.

Why Is Capitalization Used in English Grammar?

Anyone who has received a text message in ALL CAPS knows that capitalization draws a reader’s attention. 

When used correctly and according to the rules of grammar, a capital letter is a signal to a reader and places emphasis on a word for a reason. 

Capitalize the First Letter in Every Sentence

Capitalization of a sentence’s first word is a foundational rule of grammar. Whether it is a noun, adjective, or verb, the first letter of a sentence is capitalized.

Examples:

  • Mary always plants a bright flower garden.
  • Pink is the color of Mary’s flowers. 
  • Is it just me, or are the flowers blooming earlier this year?

Do not capitalize the first word after a colon in a sentence. Unless a proper noun follows the colon, there is no need to capitalize the first word.

Examples:

  • Sharon asked for two things: peace and quiet.
  • Two people came to the party: Sharon and Joe.

Proper Nouns Always Begin with a Capital Letter

A capital letter is used to indicate that a noun is proper and specific rather than common. Here is a quick refresher on those grammar terms:

  • Noun: A noun names a person, place, or thing that is concrete or abstract.
    • Examples: boy, Jim, country, happiness, freedom, Spain, mountain, New York
  • Common noun: A non-specific or general person, place, or thing.
    • Examples: boy, country, happiness, freedom, mountain
  • Proper noun: A specific person, place, or thing.
    • Examples: Jim, Spain, New York

It’s easy to remember to capitalize the names of people, as we are taught to capitalize our own names when we start to write. 

In addition to names, other categories of proper nouns are always capitalized. 

Cities, states, countries, continents, planets, landmarks, and languages

The formal names of specific places and their languages are always capitalized, no matter where they appear in a sentence.

Examples:

  • French is my language because I live in France.
  • I am French and French food is my favorite.
  • The continent of North America includes countries like Canada and the United States.
  • My favorite city in the United States is Chicago.
  • Italian coffee makes my heart sing.
  • The Eiffel Tower is a French landmark.
  • Lake Michigan touches Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
  • Earth is our planet.

Note that in the examples above these common nouns above are not capitalized, even when they appear next to the proper noun: language, food, countries, continent, city, coffee, landmark, and planet.

Similarly, the specific and proper names of streets, rivers, mountain ranges, monuments, religions, and deities are also capitalized. 

Geographical regions

Regions of a country are capitalized. However, the points on a compass are not. 

The distinction here is that when referring to the name for a specific geographical region, capitalize the name. When referring to general compass directions, do not capitalize. 

Examples:

  • Lake Michigan is in the Midwest.
  • Illinois borders the southwest shores of Lake Michigan.
  • We took a trip to the West Coast.
  • I think the shop is on the east side of the street. 
  • She lives in New York’s Lower East Side.

It can sometimes be tricky to know whether a part of a city is a proper, widely recognized name or simply a compass direction, consult the dictionary or style guide used by your organization. 

Company names and trademarks

Names of companies are proper names, so each word in the company name begins with a capital letter.

Examples of company names:

  • Alphabet Inc.
  • Meta Platforms, Inc.

Examples of trademarks:

  • Thermos
  • Styrofoam
  • Photoshop

Sometimes there are exceptions

When a name begins with a lowercase letter, like iPhone, it can be tricky to know how to handle this at the beginning of a sentence. 

So, in certain instances like with ‘iPhone’ the most common practice is to maintain the company’s preferred format, in which case, if ‘iPhone’ is at the beginning of the sentence it may begin with a lowercase letter.

Always refer to your organization’s style guide to confirm.

Title of honor and rank with a proper name

When a professional title or rank precedes a person’s name, it is capitalized because it refers to that specific person. 

If the title or rank does not precede a person’s name, it is usually lowercase.

Examples: 

  • Governor Smith appeared in public today.
  • The governor appeared in public today.
  • Professor Smith gave an excellent lecture.
  • The professor gave an excellent lecture.

Similarly, the title for family members is capitalized when it directly precedes a name but not when it doesn’t precede a name.

Examples: 

  • Auntie Angie is my favorite aunt.
  • My favorite aunt’s name is Angie.

Historical events, periods, and documents

Specific historical eras and events are capitalized. General time periods, such as centuries and decades, are not capitalized. The names of important historical documents are also capitalized.

Examples: 

  • Ice Age
  • World War II
  • Roaring Twenties

The proper names of specific historical documents are capitalized. Words that refer to general, unspecific documents are not.

Examples:

  • U.S. Constitution
  • The country has a written constitution.
  • Magna Carta
  • She drew up a charter of rights.
  • United States Bill of Rights
  • The bill is up for consideration.

Holidays, days of the week, and months of the year

The days of the week, months of the year, and specific holidays are always capitalized; the names of the seasons are not.

Examples:

  • Her birthday is on Monday, July 26.
  • Her birthday is in the summer.
  • Thanksgiving is in November.

The titles of books, films, and works of art

The first letter of every word in the titles of publications and works of art is capitalized.

Examples:

  • Huckleberry Finn
  • Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well
  • The Godfather Part II
  • Mona Lisa
  • The New York Times

Other treatments for a title’s appearance, such as whether it appears in italics or quotation marks, may vary depending on what editorial style guide your organization follows. 

Some specific abbreviations

Some abbreviations are always capitalized. For example:

  • U.S. states: IL, NY, CA
  • Time periods: AD, BC, BCE, CE
  • Academic and professional degrees: BA, MA, PhD, CPA

Final Thoughts

In many cases, capitalization may come naturally to you as you write. But there is no doubt that some rules can get tricky depending on what words you encounter in your writing. 

Professional writers and marketers should check their organization’s editorial style guide as a reference.

Conveniently review your content with the Originality.ai Grammar Checker to ensure your content is capitalized correctly.

Learn more about grammar and spelling best practices in our top guides:

Originality.ai Writers

Our experienced team of writers at Originality.ai are passionate about creating innovative and compelling content across a range of topics, from grammar guides to readability, content marketing, and more!

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to fill out the entire form?

No, that’s one of the benefits, only fill out the areas which you think will be relevant to the prompts you require.

Why is the English so poor for some prompts?

When making the tool we had to make each prompt as general as possible to be able to include every kind of input. Not to worry though ChatGPT is smart and will still understand the prompt.

In The Press

Originality.ai has been featured for its accurate ability to detect GPT-3, Chat GPT and GPT-4 generated content. See some of the coverage below…

View All Press
Featured by Leading Publications

Originality.ai did a fantastic job on all three prompts, precisely detecting them as AI-written. Additionally, after I checked with actual human-written textual content, it did determine it as 100% human-generated, which is important.

Vahan Petrosyan

searchenginejournal.com

I use this tool most frequently to check for AI content personally. My most frequent use-case is checking content submitted by freelance writers we work with for AI and plagiarism.

Tom Demers

searchengineland.com

After extensive research and testing, we determined Originality.ai to be the most accurate technology.

Rock Content Team

rockcontent.com

Jon Gillham, Founder of Originality.ai came up with a tool to detect whether the content is written by humans or AI tools. It’s built on such technology that can specifically detect content by ChatGPT-3 — by giving you a spam score of 0-100, with an accuracy of 94%.

Felix Rose-Collins

ranktracker.com

ChatGPT lacks empathy and originality. It’s also recognized as AI-generated content most of the time by plagiarism and AI detectors like Originality.ai

Ashley Stahl

forbes.com

Originality.ai Do give them a shot! 

Sri Krishna

venturebeat.com

For web publishers, Originality.ai will enable you to scan your content seamlessly, see who has checked it previously, and detect if an AI-powered tool was implored.

Industry Trends

analyticsinsight.net

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is it important to check for plagiarism?

Tools for conducting a plagiarism check between two documents online are important as it helps to ensure the originality and authenticity of written work. Plagiarism undermines the value of professional and educational institutions, as well as the integrity of the authors who write articles. By checking for plagiarism, you can ensure the work that you produce is original or properly attributed to the original author. This helps prevent the distribution of copied and misrepresented information.

What is Text Comparison?

Text comparison is the process of taking two or more pieces of text and comparing them to see if there are any similarities, differences and/or plagiarism. The objective of a text comparison is to see if one of the texts has been copied or paraphrased from another text. This text compare tool for plagiarism check between two documents has been built to help you streamline that process by finding the discrepancies with ease.

How do Text Comparison Tools Work?

Text comparison tools work by analyzing and comparing the contents of two or more text documents to find similarities and differences between them. This is typically done by breaking the texts down into smaller units such as sentences or phrases, and then calculating a similarity score based on the number of identical or nearly identical units. The comparison may be based on the exact wording of the text, or it may take into account synonyms and other variations in language. The results of the comparison are usually presented in the form of a report or visual representation, highlighting the similarities and differences between the texts.

String comparison is a fundamental operation in text comparison tools that involves comparing two sequences of characters to determine if they are identical or not. This comparison can be done at the character level or at a higher level, such as the word or sentence level.

The most basic form of string comparison is the equality test, where the two strings are compared character by character and a Boolean result indicating whether they are equal or not is returned. More sophisticated string comparison algorithms use heuristics and statistical models to determine the similarity between two strings, even if they are not exactly the same. These algorithms often use techniques such as edit distance, which measures the minimum number of operations (such as insertions, deletions, and substitutions) required to transform one string into another.

Another common technique for string comparison is n-gram analysis, where the strings are divided into overlapping sequences of characters (n-grams) and the frequency of each n-gram is compared between the two strings. This allows for a more nuanced comparison that takes into account partial similarities, rather than just exact matches.

String comparison is a crucial component of text comparison tools, as it forms the basis for determining the similarities and differences between texts. The results of the string comparison can then be used to generate a report or visual representation of the similarities and differences between the texts.

What is Syntax Highlighting?

Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors and integrated development environments (IDEs) that helps to visually distinguish different elements of a code or markup language. It does this by coloring different elements of the code, such as keywords, variables, functions, and operators, based on a predefined set of rules.

The purpose of syntax highlighting is to make the code easier to read and understand, by drawing attention to the different elements and their structure. For example, keywords may be colored in a different hue to emphasize their importance, while comments or strings may be colored differently to distinguish them from the code itself. This helps to make the code more readable, reducing the cognitive load of the reader and making it easier to identify potential syntax errors.

How Can I Conduct a Plagiarism Check between Two Documents Online?

With our tool it’s easy, just enter or upload some text, click on the button “Compare text” and the tool will automatically display the diff between the two texts.

What Are the Benefits of Using a Text Compare Tool?

Using text comparison tools is much easier, more efficient, and more reliable than proofreading a piece of text by hand. Eliminate the risk of human error by using a tool to detect and display the text difference within seconds.

What Files Can You Inspect with This Text Compare Tool?

We have support for the file extensions .pdf, .docx, .odt, .doc and .txt. You can also enter your text or copy and paste text to compare.

Will My Data Be Shared?

There is never any data saved by the tool, when you hit “Upload” we are just scanning the text and pasting it into our text area so with our text compare tool, no data ever enters our servers.

Software License Agreement

Copyright © 2023, Originality.ai

All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

  1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

  1. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Will My Data Be Shared?

This table below shows a heat map of features on other sites compared to ours as you can see we almost have greens across the board!

More From The Blog

Al Content Detector & Plagiarism Checker for Marketers and Writers

Use our leading tools to ensure you can hit publish with integrity!