Let's talk about why capitalization of some words is a capital idea, and why uppercasing

other words could be considered a capital offense.

One reason capitalization matters is that a word's meaning can change depending on whether

it's uppercase or lowercase.

Maybe those three domiciles over there, well, I live in the White House.

That's quite different from, I live in the White House, capital W, capital H. That White

House is where the president lives.

In English, we capitalize words that are proper nouns.

That is, they describe a specific thing or entity.

They could be a title, a name, or a specific place, such as the president's residence,

the White House.

We lowercase words that are considered common nouns, that is, they can be used to describe

many things, such as any one of the multitude of White-Colored houses in the world.

As an aside, I'll note that in German all nouns, uncertain pronouns get uppercased.

Now, there's a gratuitous DOS capital reference just waiting to be made, and so I made one.

One business conundrum is figuring out when to capitalize job titles and job descriptions.

Here's the rule.

If the title is an actual title, not just a description, and it comes before the person's name, it

should generally be uppercase, as in, executive vice president, Xavier Gloop knocks the fourth.

In that case, executive vice president is capitalized because it's a job title before the name.

If the title comes after the name, though, make it lowercase.

In that case, it's in a positive phrase, serving as an identifier.

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