CAPITALIZATION GUIDELINES

Capitalization has always been a nagging question especially for the early beginners of transcription. Here we discuss some basic rules of capitalization that are to be kept in mind when transcribing medical reports:

· Capitalize all the proper nouns-This includes names of a person, place, organization, languages, countries, races, days of the week, and months. For example:
George Bush
English
France
White House
Monday
June

· Capitalize brand names of drugs and not their generic names.
 For example:
 aspirin (generic) should be small unless the sentence starts with it.
 Ecotrin (brand name)

· As discussed earlier, capitalize the words building, center, room, only when they accompany a proper noun or are part of the official name, otherwise not. For example:
Washington State Building
The patient was taken to Mercy Medical Center.

· Capitalize eponyms, but do not capitalize the adjectives, prefixes, and common nouns that accompany them. Also, do not capitalize the nouns, adjectives, and verbs derived from eponyms.

For example:
non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
Parkinson’s disease
red rubber Robinson catheter
parkinsonism
pasteurized milk

· All Acronyms are transcribed in upper-case letters (capitalized) except for a few, like wbc, rbc.

For example:
CABG from coronary artery bypass grafting.
COPD from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
However, in abbreviated form (like S aureus, H pylori), the genus is capitalized.

· Capitalize compass directions (east, west, north, south) when part of the geographic name, otherwise not.
For example:
East Africa
South Korea
His house is in the west where the dark men reign.

· Capitalize name of religious holidays and festivals.

For example:
Thanksgiving
Memorial Day
Christmas Day
New Year Day

· Always capitalize sociocultural designations like races, religions.
For example:
Spanish
African-American
Hispanic
Caucasian
Methodist

CAPITALIZATION GUIDELINES