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:

v     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

v     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)

v     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.

v     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

v     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.

v     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.

v     Capitalize name of religious holidays and festivals.  For example:

Thanksgiving

Memorial Day

Christmas Day

New Year Day

v     Always capitalize sociocultural designations like races, religions. 

For example:

Spanish

African-American

Hispanic

Caucasian

      Methodist