Capitalization

Career Readiness Style Guide

Contains capitalization and spelling preferences for terms related to CLA's Career Readiness Initiative. See the Career Readiness Style Guide

See section 8.28 of The Chicago Manual of Style for details on the capitalization of academic titles and their capitalization. The Chicago Manual of Style is available to use for free for UMN staff, faculty, and students.

Use the capitalized form of units, committees, and organizations when using its full official name.

Full, official name	Informal name
College of Liberal Arts	the college
Department of Classical & Near Eastern Religions & Cultures	classical & Near Eastern religions and cultures department the department
Committee on Student Scholastic Standing	student scholastic standing committee the committee
University of Minnesota	Exception: capitalize University when it pertains to the University of Minnesota specifically
Diane Katsiaficas Undergraduate Art Scholarship	the Katsiaficas scholarship the scholarship

In article titles, use title case. Title Case Converter makes it simple to apply the title case style
Use title case for course titles in articles
Do not capitalize generic terms (Twin Cities campus, fall 2017, spring semester)
Capitalize all letters in course designator abbreviations (ANTH 1301, JOUR 1001, DES 1201)
- With description: HIST 1011W - Civilization and the Environment: World History to 1500
Do not capitalize fields of study unless they contain a proper noun. Capitalize proper nouns within the name of the field of study.
- He is a professor of geography.
- I am really excited to take a philosophy class next semester.
- He plans to major in American Indian studies. (Note that "studies" is not capitalized because in this context it is not a proper noun, however, "American Indian" is.)
Do not capitalize web terms (web, not Web; internet, not Internet). Do capitalize World Wide Web.