Capitalizing Proper Nouns Educational Resources

How proper! Proper nouns are different from regular nouns -- they’re things like names, cities, businesses, titles, and more. Proper nouns get special recognition in sentences, usually in the form of a capital letter at the beginning. But how do you know what’s a proper noun and what isn’t? Learn about how to write the names of proper nouns in sentences and paragraphs with our worksheets, games, and more.

Your student probably knows that they need to capitalize the first word of the sentence. They may be surprised to learn the number of times other words in a complete sentence should be capitalized. One of these times is when the word is a proper noun.
You student may already know what a noun is: simple a person, place, or thing. These come in many categories, but two of the most frequently used are common and proper. Common nouns are generic, almost like categories. Examples of common nouns are: dog, building, and kid.
Proper nouns refer to specific instances of common nouns: such as Rover or Bobby. Some examples of types proper nouns are:

• A person or pet’s name
• Geographical names (e.g. City name, Country names, Lake names)
• Named calendar elements (e.g. Day name, month names, holidays)
• Religious terms (e.g. Buddha, God, Hindu)
• Building, monument, or landmark names (e.g. The Empire State Building, The Grand Canyon)
• Astrological name (e.g. Earth, Saturn, Andromeda, Orion)
• People’s titles when specific (e.g. President Washington, Prime Minister Brown)
• Titles of books, periodicals, art pieces, etc. (e.g. New York Times, People Magazine)
• Brand names (e.g. Nike, Pepsi, Coca-Cola)
• Historical periods and events (e.g. World War I, The Revolutionary War)
• Nationalities and languages (e.g. Spanish, Chinese, Japanese)

The common thread with proper nouns is that they are typically considered a name. Using the resources provided by Education.com, your students may learn to easily identify these names and understand when to capitalize them.