===== Capitalization =====

In fiction, the first few words or letters of a chapter are often either capitalized or formatted differently. Make these words consistent with the rest of the text. This may require changing the text to sentence case and re-capitalizing anything that needs to be recapitalized (such as proper names). We do this because some screenreaders read UPPERCASE words as separate letters (i.e. U-P-P-E-R-C-A-S-E) which sounds like an abbreviation and is annoying. 

Excerpt of a book where drop caps and capitalization should be changed to sentence case: [[https://i.stack.imgur.com/DAZAS.png|Drop caps and capitalization]]

<note>When capitalization is used for an abbreviation or acronym, it should of course be maintained. More information about formatting abbreviations can be found on on the [[public:nnels:etext:symbols|Symbols, Abbreviations & Acronyms]] page.</note>


[[https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Change-the-capitalization-of-text-9E3A6B90-5AA4-4FE9-85DA-2852605C57AF|Change capitalization in Word]]

<note>If the author uses capitalization of individual words within a sentence as a stylistic choice, then we keep it (Think Emily Dickinson Poems.) Remember, we are not editors, just reformatting for accessibility purposes.</note>

<note>#Hashtags, and other phrases that use all capitals in compound words can be changed to Pascal Case. This will retain the string-of-words effect visually, but allow the assisted reader to read each word separately. Bonus, it also makes it easier for sighted, or partially sighted, readers to understand the phrase.</note>

<WRAP center round box 80%>
**Example:**

#thisisanexample should be changed to #ThisIsAnExample

--

PHRASEINALLCAPSWITHNOSPACES should be changed to PhraseInAllCapsWithNoSpaces
</WRAP>
 
<note tip>Visually scanning for ALL CAPITAL LETTERS can be time consuming and difficult. This tip will help you do it quickly.
  * Open ''Advanced Find & Replace'' and turn on ''wild cards''.
  * Close ''Advanced Find & Replace''
  * Enter ''[A-Z]{2,}'' into the search bar and it will find all the all capital words.

Note: This also finds acronyms and abbreviations, so you have to just scroll through all of the all cap instances and manually change any that are proper words and phrases into either Sentence case of Capitalize Each Word. You can also create a [[public:nnels:etext:keyboard-shortcuts|keyboard shortcut]] for change capitalization.

Here is a quick [[https://somup.com/crl6bv0541|video demo of how to find All Capital Letters]]</note>

<note tip>If you have any questions, check the archive below, if still not clear, post your question on the [[public:nnels:etext:q_a|Production Q&A]]
</note>


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==== Q&A Archive ====
Q: In the book the Haunting of Room 909, the author frequently capitalizes whole words in dialogue to indicate the speaker is yelling or emphasizing something. I understand that leaving the words capitalized will mean that one letter is read at a time. Should I just make these words lower-case, or use emphasis style, or is there another way I can make them stand out?

A: Just remove the all-capital letters, we do not need to add anything to the text.
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**Q: There is a name in my text that appears as follows: Richard III. Should I change it to Richard the 3rd?
**

A: No, TTS is smart and will pronounce it like "Richard the 3rd" :) Most always, we avoid editing the original writing in any way. We can change how the TTS pronounces words by adding specific tags into the code.

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Q: I am working on "Until We Are Free" and one of the person's mentioned in the book stylizes their name as "iZrEAL Jones." I understand that this formatting will created problems for screen readers and that the name should be converted to standard capitalization for proper nouns. I am wondering though if there are any special considerations for proper nouns that I should be aware of?

A:You can follow the wiki guidelines for capitalization. The screenreader wont be able to read this name otherwise.




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