Les Majuscules

As a general rule, French doesn't use capital letters as much as English. Let's review the main rules regarding capitalization in French.

Note: This is a list of major rules but it's in no way comprehensive. We could write a whole book on capitalization rules if we wanted to!

Months and days of the year are not capitalized: janvier, février, mars, avril, mai, juin, juillet, août, septembre, octobre, novembre, décembre and lundi, mardi, mercredi, jeudi, vendredi, samedi, dimanche.

Names (first, middle, and last) start with a capital letter: Victor Hugo.

NOTE: French family names are normally in all caps for official documents: Often, when writing one’s surname on official documents, the French will write their last name in all caps. For example: Maurice RICHARD or Victor HUGO

Geographical proper names (countries, regions, cities, rivers, mountains, seas, etc.) also start with a capital letter: France, Alsace, Paris, la Seine, les Alpes, la Méditerranée.

When an adjective or a common noun has become a title or a nickname, they acquire a capital letter: Alexandre le Grand (Alexander the Great) or Saint-Germain-des-Prés (a neighborhood in Paris, literally 'Saint-Germain-in-the-Fields').

Now, be prepared for some confusing rules concerning titles and professions. Titles in front of a Proper Noun: For example, in English we would say Professor Smith, because this is a title preceding a proper noun. In French, however, it not be capitalized: le professeur Smith.

Titles and professions do NOT use capital letters: le ministre (the Minister), le prêtre (the priest), le général (the general).

But words which characterize a title or profession DO use a capital letter: le ministre de la Santé (the Minister of Health), le ministère de l'Intérieur (the Department of State), le secrétaire d'État aux Transports (the Secretary of State for Transport), le président de la République (the President of the Republic), le Premier ministre (the Prime Minister).

There's just one exception: le Président, when referring to le président de la République (the President of the Republic).

This is where many differences exist between English and French. Nationalities and languages are not capitalized (unless they are proper nouns): French and le français, Spanish and l’espagnol. “I have a French friend” would become j’ai un ami français. However, if the nationality is used as a proper noun, then it is capitalized in French. For example: “I spoke with an American man today” would become "J’ai parlé avec un Américain aujourd’hui "but "J'ai parlé avec un homme américain."

In French, nationalities require a capital letter if referring to the inhabitant or the people, as in a proper noun: un Français (a Frenchman), un Américain (an American citizen), les Canadiens (Canadians), les Belges (Belgians).

HOWEVER, languages and nationalities do NOT take capital letters in French: un livre espagnol (a Spanish book), la cuisine chinoise (Chinese cuisine), le japonais (Japanese language), l'Union européenne (the European Union), la République française (the French Republic).

The same is true for religious groups and ideologies: les musulmans (Muslims), les juifs (Jews), les chrétiens (Christians), les bouddhistes (Buddhists), les communistes (Communists), les marxistes (Marxists).

The most common use of capital letters is at the beginning of a sentence. Just like in English, French sentences always begin with a capital letter: C'est la vie !

There are quite a few differences between capitalization in English and in French. You may have already noticed that the first person singular pronoun “I” is not capitalized in French except at the beginning of a sentence. For example, you would write: “Je t’aime,” but “Tu sais que je t’aime.”

Now, things get a bit trickier when it comes to words following punctuation marks:

Titles in French are capitalized differently than in English: This can get somewhat complicated. In English, important words and words that are over a certain length are normally capitalized in titles. However, an easy rule to remember is that the first word is always capitalized, along with the second word if the first word is an article.

So, this would give: Les Misérables or Les Fleurs du mal. Importantly, if another word has the same weight as the first capitalized word, than that would be capitalized, too. Here’s an example of this: Dostoyevsky’s Crime et Chatîment. Because these two words (“crime” and “punishment”) are separated by a conjunction and bear equal weight in the sentence, they are both capitalized.