It's embarrassing to think how many Wattpadders simply lack, or maybe refuse, the use of capitals. At the risk of sounding like your Grade 1 teacher, capitals are one of the most important things of punctuation. Do you know how careless or immature you look when you write all of your paragraphs with lower cases at the start of your sentences?
Come on, this is easy stuff and I am incredibly sad that I even have to mention it. So, allow me to go through the rules of capitalization.... I understand that you may capitalize all of your sentences. If so, I'm sorry that I have to waste your time and write an entire chapter about it.
1. Beginning of a Sentence
You always capitalize the first letter in your sentence. Always. It doesn't matter what it is, what paragraph, what chapter, you always capitalize the first letter in your sentence.
2. Names
A name will be capitalized.
Example: Lana
3. "I"
Likewise, so will the letter "I" when left alone.
4. Dialogue
When you start dialogue, unless continuing part of a sentence, it is capitalized at the start.
Example of capitalized dialogue: "I hate you!" I screamed. "You bully!"
Example of non-capitalized dialogue: "I hate you," I screamed, "you bully."
See the difference? The reason that the second sentence is not capitalized is because you are saying one sentence, but it is cut off halfway through, whereas in the first example, we are dealing with two separate sentences, so "You bully" is capitalized at the beginning.
Also, you would capitalize names of holidays like Christmas or the names of companies. Months, seasons, and day of the week are capitalized. When someone is screaming in dialogue, you shouldn't capitalize the letters. Try for an exclamation mark and "he screamed" instead.
This isn't a long chapter because, as I've already stated, this is some pretty simple stuff and there isn't a lot that I have to talk about. So, if you've read this, you really have no excuse to not capitalize your stories when needed, if you ever did have an excuse. (No, if you are in high school, don't try to explain how you were never taught how to capitalize your sentences.) Anyway, I hope this helped some of you.
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Your Guide to Writing the Perfect Story
Non-FictionAs the title states, this is your tutorial, created by me, to writing a story to the very best of your abilities. By carefully reading through the following pages, you can enhance your skills and clear your path to becoming the great author that yo...
