Capitalization
Proper nouns should always be capitalized. However, beyond this basic rule, capitalization conventions vary between organizations and regions. Most of the time, the conventions at WHO follow standard usage rules, but if you are in doubt about when to capitalize a word, consult your style guide.
Here are the guidelines on one problematic application of capital letters – nouns of rank or position.
- Use lowercase for descriptive nouns such as president, state and minister when they stand alone or are used generically (a state budget, a government leader, a health ministry).
- Use capitals for these nouns when they are part of a full name or title, for example, the President of France, Ghana’s Minister of Health. Use Department of the Environment, but government departments.
You may need to include specialized technical or scientific terms in your document, and the WHO Style Guide contains capitalization guidelines for these types of terms.
- For example, generic names in the Linnaean binomial nomenclature, such as Trypanosoma spp. and Schistosoma spp., take an initial capital letter, but the English names of such organisms, trypanosome and schistosome, do not.
