This piece is a gentle call for restraint – both with initial capitals and with the ampersand – in pursuit of clarity, consistency, and egalitarianism.
You know the sort. The ones who Capitalise Every Other Word, as if narrating their own headlines. Or they scatter ampersands around like graphic confetti. Perhaps in an attempt to lend a touch of elegance or a nod to Designery Design. It rarely works. And it rarely helps.
What deserves a capital?
A capital letter is, in essence, a flag: a visual signal that says, look here – this matters. But if everything’s flagged, nothing stands out. There are good, solid reasons to use initial capitals:
- The start of a sentence or line
- Proper nouns: Susan, London, Mind
- Certain legal or formal definitions, where a term is being defined as a capitalised entity (“the Company” in a contract, for instance)
That’s about it. For anything else – proceed with caution.
The cluttered page
Overuse of initial capitals makes a page look jumpy – cluttered and clumsy. Initial caps are not as bad as BLOCK CAPS, admittedly – which can give the impression that THE WRITER IS SHOUTING AT YOU – but they’re from the same shouty family. Particularly on screen, capitals create visual drag. They slow the reader down. They disrupt the rhythm.
Take restaurant menus, for example. Many insist on capitalising every dish: Grilled Chicken with Seasonal Vegetables. Why? It’s not a novel. It’s a plate of food. Lowercase feels less stiff – and often more appetising.
Grilled Chicken with Seasonal Vegetables
Email subject lines suffer the same fate. Meeting Request From The Director – oh dear. Now we’re half-expecting a summons. Team update: new process for reports is perfectly clear, perfectly polite, and free from typographic histrionics.
And then there’s the matter of headings. Leading style guides can’t even agree on how to handle title case. The Chicago Manual tells you to capitalise most words – but not prepositions, even long ones like concerning or underneath, unless they’re acting adverbially. AP Style, on the other hand, just says: capitalise everything four letters or more. Simple, but utterly arbitrary. Sentence case avoids the grammatical gymnastics – cleaner, quicker, and no reference book required. Most UK style guides already prefer sentence case – and really, shouldn’t that just be the rule for English full stop?
Once you start capitalising Some Words Some of the Time, you’ve opened the door to inconsistency. Why this word and not that one? Why now and not then? Suddenly you’re in a tangle, and your reader is, too.
The etiquette of respect
Capitalisation often becomes a question of deference. Some people will instinctively capitalise certain job titles – Director, Manager, Company Secretary – but wouldn’t dream of doing so for plumber, cleaner or gardener. It can come across as invidious, even classist.
Let’s not do that. Let’s be egalitarian. If the role isn’t a proper noun, don’t treat it like one. The manager, the director, the electrician – all equal in lowercase.
Acronyms, abbreviations and capital confusion
Let’s untangle two related – but distinct – points about capitalisation and shortened forms.
1. All caps or all lowercase – pick one
When acronyms become familiar enough, they often shed their capital letters altogether. We write scuba and laser in lowercase without a second thought – both started life as acronyms. And nimby (for “not in my back yard”) is now common enough that it too can comfortably live in lowercase. STEM (“science, technology, engineering and mathematics”) is still written in block capitals.
What doesn’t work is the awkward halfway house: Nimby, Stem. Neither acronym nor ordinary word. Just typographic indecision. If you’re going to capitalise, capitalise. If the term has settled into everyday usage, let it relax into lowercase.
2. Don’t over-capitalise when spelling things out
Writers often default to capital letters when expanding an abbreviation, even if the expanded form is just a string of common nouns. But unless the thing you’re naming is a formal entity or a proper noun, there’s no need to shout.
Take automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) – a perfectly normal piece of technical vocabulary. There’s no need to write Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) unless you’re trying to turn it into a Brand. Use lowercase for clarity and calm.
And while we’re here: ANPR isn’t an acronym in the strict sense. It’s an initialism – pronounced as individual letters, not as a word. Acronyms roll off the tongue (like UNESCO or NATO); initialisms don’t. But either way, they don’t need typographic fanfare.
& finally…
The ampersand – typographic darling, visual twist, and mild irritant.
It comes from a Latin ligature of et – meaning and. Once upon a time, it was even considered part of the alphabet. Children would recite it after Z, calling it “and per se and” – which slurred into ampersand. (Yes, that really is the origin.)
Today, the ampersand has its rightful uses:
- In official names: Marks & Spencer, Procter & Gamble
- In set abbreviations: R&D, M&A, Ts & Cs
- Where space is tight – for instance, in menus or navigation links
But let’s be clear: in prose, and is better. An ampersand mid-sentence is rarely helpful. It doesn’t add clarity. It just looks like you’re trying too hard.
And in subject lines? Just as bad. People & Culture Update tries to sound glossy and important. People and culture update simply tells you what’s inside. One invites a click. The other might get skipped.
So what’s the case for restraint?
Capitalisation is not decoration. Neither is the ampersand. They’re tools – useful when rightly used, but too often misapplied. Over-capitalising doesn’t add clarity. It adds clutter. And sometimes, it adds confusion.
So: if in doubt, use lowercase. Spell out and. Your writing will be clearer, more consistent – and kinder to the reader’s eye.
Typography isn’t about showing off. It’s about showing up, cleanly and clearly. Let’s avoid capital offences – and make a stronger case for clarity.
If you’re struggling to enforce consistency across documents, teams, or brands, I compile bespoke style guides – a calm, clear rulebook for exactly this sort of thing.