Everyone knows that sentences are made up of a combination of UPPER case (or capital) and lower case letters, but as with everything in the English Language, there are rules as to when you use capital letters and when you don't. For instance, you wouldn't use capitals throughout a letter or email as THIS WOULD SEEM LIKE YOU WERE SHOUTING AT THE READER. However, capital letters must be used at certain, specific times when you write. When you are writing your novel, academic essay or business report, you want to be able to use capitalization confidently and with assurance. So, to help you avoid any mistakes, see the list below:

1. The personal pronoun 'I': What shall I have for lunch?

2. To begin a sentence or to begin speech: The girl sat down. She stared at her mother. "What's for lunch?" she asked.

3. Abbreviations and acronyms: GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), NATO or Nato (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)

4. Days of the week, months of the year, holidays: Tuesday, February, Christmas, Easter Day

5. Countries, languages, nationalities and religions: India, Sweden, Chinese, English, Christianity, Buddhism

6. People's names and titles: John, Charles Dickens, Professor Smith, Dr Brown, Princess Anne, Ms Cole, Queen Elizabeth I

7. Trade-marks and names of companies and other organizations: Tetra Pak, Walkman, Mitsubishi, Ikea, the United Nations, the Red Cross

8. Places and monuments: London, Berlin, the Jewish Quarter, Big Ben, Asia, the South Pole, Fifth Avenue, Mars, Buckingham Palace, Lake Windermere

9. Names of vehicles like ships, trains and spacecraft: the Titanic, the Orient Express, the Flying Scotsman, Challenger 2

10. Titles of books, poems, songs, plays, films etc: War and Peace, Romeo and Juliet, Brief Encounter, Dancing Queen

11. Headings, titles of articles, books etc, and newspaper headlines - these (sometimes) use only capitals: HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT FAST! CAT SAVAGES DOG, Chapter 1: JANE AUSTEN'S EARLY YEARS

Now you know how to use those capital letters confidently and correctly. So, go forth and capitalize!

KJ Hutchings is the founder of KJ Language Services, providing professional writing, editing and proofreading services and advice on how you can make your English language documents the very best they can be. For more information, visit http://www.kjlanguageservices.com/.