The Australian Style Guide | Your definitive reference on writing style

Lower case letters are the more common shape for each letter, as opposed to upper case (capital) letters. A word is ‘in lower case’ if every letter uses the lower case form.

The terms ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ case came from early printing, where compositors built a page of text from metal letters. Each type of letter was held in a separate physical case – one above the other. The names of the upper case and the lower case transferred to the type of letters themselves.

Common nouns

Use lower case for non-specific nouns in regular text

a chair

winter

my legal files

the house

water

anticipation

Most words in a sentence are in lower case. But nouns trip up many workplace writers. It can be challenging deciding when to use all lower case for nouns and when to start them with a capital.

Most nouns refer to general things and do not take a capital. This applies to everything from physical objects to seasons of the year.

The roof of the university's sports centre will be repaired over the summer, while most students are on holiday.

Start with a capital only where they are proper nouns such as names and titles.

The Maintenance Unit at Bluebanks University will repair the roof of the Cyan Sport and Recreation Centre.

See our general entry on capital letters to review the different ways you can style text with capitals.

Generic titles and names

Use lower case when you shorten a formal title or name

the minister

the authority

the strategic plan

One of the biggest shifts in style over recent decades was the move from title case to lower case in the short forms of a title or organisation name.

Contemporary style generally reduces the number of capital letters because they can slow down reading and make the text heavy and uninviting. So while we retain the capital letters for a full title or name, the short form or more generic reference should use lower case.