Grammar Girl here.

Last week we talked about capitalizing words in the business world.

Today we're going to talk about capitalization in general.

If you recall, in English, we capitalize proper nouns.

Words that name a specific thing or person, words such as Richard and Helen.

And we lowercase words that are common nouns that could be used to describe general things,

words such as boy and girl.

We also have common adjectives and proper adjectives that follow the same rules.

Let's start with what we call honorifics.

Dr. Professor and Dean are honorifics you might find on an academic campus.

Then we have Mr. Judge, Deacon, Sargent, and so on.

Some of those are professional designations.

Others are courtesy titles.

When they directly proceed a name, honorifics should be capitalized.

For example, when we write Judge Joseph Smith or Deacon Fred Rutherford, we capitalize

Judge and Deacon because they're honorifics that come before the name.

Some also get abbreviated, Professor Erwin Cory with Professor spelled PR-O-F and Dr.

Marcus Welby with Dr. spelled DR.

And Sargent Joe Friday was Sargent abbreviated SGT.

All those abbreviations are capitalized.

Mr. and Ms. of course are uppercase before a name.

This is which is less commonly used than it was several decades ago in which derives

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