capitalisation

English

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capitalisation

Wikipedia

Alternative forms

capitalization (North American and Oxford British spelling)

Etymology

From capitalise +‎ -ation.

Pronunciation

Rhymes: -eɪʃən

Noun

capitalisation (countable and uncountable, plural capitalisations) (non-Oxford British spelling)

The act or process of capitalising.
1. Choice of case (when writing a word); the act or process of writing a word in a particular case, such as ALL CAPS, Title Case, CamelCase, Sentence case, or all lowercase.
  English and French have different rules for the capitalisation of the names of the days of the week.
  1. (in particular) The act or process of writing (something: either an entire word or text, or just the initial letter(s) thereof) in capital letters.
    The capitalisation of all nouns is a distinctive feature of German.
    - 2021 June 3, Minna Salami, “Why I don’t believe the word ‘black’ should always have a capital ‘b’”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:
      Race is a flawed concept to begin with, and while the capitalisation of the “b” assuages race politics, it also validates race politics.
    - 2023 June 19, Carol Rumens, “Poem of the week: She rose to His Requirement by Emily Dickinson”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:
      Frequent, sometimes unexpected capitalisations are customary in Dickinson’s writing, and here they gain additional nuance.
2. The act or process of seizing (an opportunity) and profiting or obtaining an advantage (from it).
  - 1998, Phillip Brian Harper, Are We Not Men?, page 75:
    [...] apparently indicating the degree to which his identification with black music predicates his capitalization on it [...]
The state of being capitalised.
1. The state of having a particular case, such as ALL CAPS or all lowercase.
  His capitalisation was erratic: sometimes he wrote "British", sometimes "british", sometimes "briTish"...
The total value of all outstanding shares for a publicly traded company
- 1908 February 19, Jack London, The Iron Heel, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., →OCLC:
  I doubt if one of them was interested in any business the total capitalization of which exceeded a couple of hundred thousand dollars.