What you need to know about capitalization:

In Standard English, we capitalize the first letter of a word in the following circumstances:

• The first word of a sentence 

• Proper nouns

• Proper adjectives

• For quoted text:

  • Capitalize the first word of a complete quoted sentence.

  • Don’t capitalize partial quotes that are integrated into the sentence.

  • Capitalize the first word after the quotation mark if it starts a new sentence.

  • Do not capitalize dialogue tags unless they begin the sentence. A dialogue tag is the part of the sentence that is not in quotation marks.

We capitalize these words because doing so signals they are important and unique people and places.

• Distinguish adjectives and adverbs

  • Adjectives modify nouns

  • Adverbs modify verbs

• Capitalization in poetry is freer than in prose writing (our everyday way of writing, the basis of which is sentences)

  • A poem expresses an emotion, mood, or idea