Capitalization

• Capitalize colleges, departments, schools and other academic units in their full and proper forms.
• For correct names, see the list of faculties-academics and Senate-approved research institutes and centres.
• It’s okay to capitalize the short form of a faculty or school name (e.g., Arts student, the School) after the full name has already been referenced (e.g., Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Health, School of Pharmacy).
• Do not use capitals when referring to a generic, as opposed to specific, department.

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• Capitalize committees, administrative or service departments and governing bodies
  in their full and proper forms. 
• When in doubt, check with the source. 

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• Use capitals when referring to a specific varsity team. 
  Example: Waterloo Women’s Varsity Basketball
• Use lowercase when mentioning teams generically.
  Example: Most Ontario universities have a men's varsity hockey teams

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• Capitalize awards, honours and decorations. Lowercase common-noun references standing alone
  (e.g., the award, the prize, the cross)
• Capitalize principle words in awards, honours, funding awards, and scholarships.

Examples:

• the Order of Canada
• the Prix de Rome in Architecture for Emerging Practitioners
• the Distinguished Teacher Award
• Fine Arts History Scholarships
• a Canada Research Chair
• Nobel Prize, Donna Strickland (Nobel Prize in physics, 2018)

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• Use capitals for Permanent Resident but not for citizen, as in Canadian citizen, or for study permit.  
• Names of races, nations and the like are capitalized. Examples: Indigenous Peoples, Black culture, People of Colour, African-American, Asian, Caucasian, Chipewyan, Chinese, English-Canadian, French-Canadian, Indian, Inuk, Inuit, Jew, Jewish, Latin, Nordic.
• Terms such as “Islamophobia” are to be capitalized
• When writing about racism or anti-racism, capitalize only the name of the citizenship, nationality or race, not the word “anti” or “racism” unless it's being used in a title or at the beginning of a sentence. Examples: anti-Asian racism, anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, President’s Anti-Racism Taskforce (PART)

Note: The Canadian Press Stylebook recommends writers use sensitivity and good taste when identifying race and nationality. Also, writers should only identify a person by national origin or immigration status when it is truly pertinent.

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• Capitalize formal course names; articles (e.g., at, the, a, of, etc.) are lowercase. Examples: History of Modern Revolutions, Physiology of the Eye
• Capitalization is not needed when referring to general courses such as introductory physics. 

Refer to the conventions for academic calendar section of the Waterloo Writing Style Guide.

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Follow these capitalization rules for degrees:

• Do not capitalize the word degree.
• Capitalize full names of degrees, but not when referring to types of degrees generically.
  Examples: Bachelor of Arts, doctorate, Doctor of Philosophy, bachelor’s degree, Master of Science,
  master’s degree.
• Do not include punctuation in abbreviations of university degrees and do not leave spaces between letters.
  Examples: BA, BEd, BMath, MASc, OD, PhD, BA (Hons).
• Waterloo alumni degrees generally follow the name and are enclosed in parentheses, except where this would interfere with good style or readability. Use a left-facing apostrophe with just the decade years, and leave a space before the apostrophe. 
  Examples: David R. Cheriton (MMath ’74, PhD ’78), who donated $25 million; former editor Linda Kenyon (BA ’83, MA ’87); Richard Yim (BASc ’16, MBET ’17).

• More information under the formatting section.

  Refer to the Undergraduate Studies Academic Calendar and Graduate Studies Academic Calendar for a full list of degrees.

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Lowercase proper names that have acquired independent meaning (e.g., big data, French fries, roman type).

• Do not capitalize unless it is part of the name of a department or program appearing in its full and proper form, or unless it is a proper noun. 
• Terms that are not proper nouns do not need capitals.
  Note: Proper nouns remain capitalized (e.g., a student of English). 

Examples: School of Architecture, Department of Physics and Astronomy, physics researchers, the architecture school.

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• Capitalize faculty when referring to one of Waterloo’s six faculties. For example, the Faculty of Arts or the Faculty (on the second reference).
• Use a lowercase “f” to refer to the faculties in general or when referring to more than one.
  Examples: Waterloo has six faculties, faculties of Arts and Science, all faculties have a colour palette, approved at the faculty level, faculty member.
• Use a lowercase “f” when referring to faculty members (i.e., professors).

Refer to list of faculties online for correct spelling and capitalization.

• Use capitals and do not italicize the titles of forms, including web forms.
  Example: OUAC Form 101

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• Use sentence case for headings (including web page titles) and subheadings.
• Note: Due to design, some website headings will be displayed in all-caps. Text should be entered with proper casing to support other unformatted usage of the text. 
• Exception: Style isn’t followed when the heading includes an item such as a publication or title of an academic talk that would normally be capitalized or online form.

See the formatting section for more information.

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• Do not capitalize occupations, professions or job names.
  Exception: Capitalization is permitted when occupations, professions or job names are presented
  in a list.

See People and titles for more information.

• Capitalize proper program names 
  (e.g., Earth Sciences, Chemistry). 
• Do not capitalize program descriptions
  (e.g., chemistry courses)
  Example:  No single discipline is better poised to confront these third-millennium challenges than
  chemical engineering. 
• Capitalize specializations, minors, certificates,
  majors, diplomas and options when they are used
  in their full form.  

Refer to the Undergraduate Studies Academic Calendar and Graduate Studies Academic Calendar.

Examples: 

• Please complete the online application if you would like to declare a Human Nutrition Minor. 
• As you may be aware, Planning students often pursue an Urban Design Specialization. 
• Taylor chose to add a minor in Biology. 
• Three-Year General Economics.

A student is doing a general degree in Economics.

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Do not capitalize terms such as co-op and regular unless they are part of the official name of a department or program appearing in its full, proper, and official form.

Examples: Co-operative and Experiential Education vs. Honours Co-operative Biology.

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Do not capitalize the names of academic terms or seasons (i.e., spring, summer, fall or autumn, winter).

Examples: fall term, spring 2020.

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